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 Post subject: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2016 9:42 pm 
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I'm pretty sure there are plenty of Star Wars fans on these boards.

And though Disney really doesn't need much plugging, much less from me, I saw the movie last night and it exceeded my (high) expectations. I thought it was the best Star Wars movie they have done since they released Empire Strikes Back at the dawn of the 80s. And stands with the Matrix, the Fellowship of the Ring and Inception as more recent powerful action movies.

If you don't profess to hate Star Wars then you really need to see this movie. Portland is semi-locked down cause there is snow on the ground (and no one here really knows how to drive in it). So I got into a 10:45 showing last night.

I don't want to drop a lot of spoilers. I was pleasantly surprise to discover that a solid third of the trailers aren't in the movie ... and thus everything isn't already told shown or explained. For me - that's very Nice! I wonder if that's intentional or a result of (the controversial at the time) reshoots. I will say the entire third act is kinda what you'd expect if Star Wars and the Dirty Dozen has a big budget love child in orbit. I'm not too proud to admit I'm still swooning a little over it.

Ben Mendelson plays the main villain called Krennic and his performance (consuming ambition, ego, meanace, false solicitude, rivalries, & manipulativeness) is awesome. And probably makes the movie. Felicity Jones is solid as Jyn. Alan Tudyk steals scenes (no surprise) as the droid K2SO. Everyone else is highly watchable. Donnie Yen & Wen Jiang in particular.

There are plenty of Easter Eggs for long time fans. But they tend to be fast and sometimes sly. And they aren't cheap gags. Nice.

It's not quite a perfect movie. The script could have been tightened in the first third. After a great opening sequence, I thought it's starts off feeling rushed as they bring everyone together. Maybe could have saved some time starting in media res. ::shrug:: But the movie finds it footing on the planet of Jeddah. From there the external action and the internal emotions synch to deliver the emotional beats of the movie.

Last thought: Darth Vader has what might be his best action scene ever in this movie. And he's scary. I had the thought that facing him as a grunt was exactly like trying to stand up against Leonydas.

First movie that I've seen in 2016 that I give a full 5 out of 5 stars.

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 9:24 pm 

Joined: Sun Oct 09, 2016 3:31 pm
Posts: 69
Location: U.S.A. Ohio
val Holryn wrote:
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of Star Wars fans on these boards.

And though Disney really doesn't need much plugging, much less from me, I saw the movie last night and it exceeded my (high) expectations. I thought it was the best Star Wars movie they have done since they released Empire Strikes Back at the dawn of the 80s. And stands with the Matrix, the Fellowship of the Ring and Inception as more recent powerful action movies.

If you don't profess to hate Star Wars then you really need to see this movie. Portland is semi-locked down cause there is snow on the ground (and no one here really knows how to drive in it). So I got into a 10:45 showing last night.

I don't want to drop a lot of spoilers. I was pleasantly surprise to discover that a solid third of the trailers aren't in the movie ... and thus everything isn't already told shown or explained. For me - that's very Nice! I wonder if that's intentional or a result of (the controversial at the time) reshoots. I will say the entire third act is kinda what you'd expect if Star Wars and the Dirty Dozen has a big budget love child in orbit. I'm not too proud to admit I'm still swooning a little over it.

Ben Mendelson plays the main villain called Krennic and his performance (consuming ambition, ego, meanace, false solicitude, rivalries, & manipulativeness) is awesome. And probably makes the movie. Felicity Jones is solid as Jyn. Alan Tudyk steals scenes (no surprise) as the droid K2SO. Everyone else is highly watchable. Donnie Yen & Wen Jiang in particular.

There are plenty of Easter Eggs for long time fans. But they tend to be fast and sometimes sly. And they aren't cheap gags. Nice.

It's not quite a perfect movie. The script could have been tightened in the first third. After a great opening sequence, I thought it's starts off feeling rushed as they bring everyone together. Maybe could have saved some time starting in media res. ::shrug:: But the movie finds it footing on the planet of Jeddah. From there the external action and the internal emotions synch to deliver the emotional beats of the movie.

Last thought: Darth Vader has what might be his best action scene ever in this movie. And he's scary. I had the thought that facing him as a grunt was exactly like trying to stand up against Leonydas.

First movie that I've seen in 2016 that I give a full 5 out of 5 stars.


Thought it was a great movie. Certainly not perfect, i'd say 8/10 for me. I only gave Force Awakens a 7/10. There are also several name drops, relating to the Starwars Rebels Cartoon. Also they cleverly add in some bits from another movie in the series you may have noticed them during the final act. Your right about that Vader scene! I felt so bad for those guys.

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2016 5:31 pm 
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Saw it last night.

There are some very subtle references and links in the first third of the movie to SW:ANH as well ("blink and you miss" even though there is related dialogue by named characters).

Gratuitous droid scene that didn't seem to fit at the time, but on reflection was fixed with some non-obvious dialogue a few shots later.

Continuity-wise, there are some little blips (dialogue related) if you want to watch SW:ANH afterwards. Nothing can be done there without remaking the original. :lol:

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:14 am 

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I found the disconnect between how R1 ends and the original trilogy starts to be jarring. IMO, its an unforgivable lapse, given that the original trilogy has been canon (well mostly, glaring at Lucas) for a long time.

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2016 7:20 am 
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??? Let's see Tantive IV leaves the scene of the battle and it's pretty obvious Vader will be in hot pursuit shortly. Fade to battle over Tatooine. How is that not a pretty smooth and obvious transition? Don't see a disconnect here. Now we can discuss why here ship was in the hanger of the Alliance flagship but that's another discussion.

Now if you want to glare at Lucas...well there's that whole issue of Han shot first! :)

And while I overall enjoyed I-III they could have been MUCH better with an improved script, better actors and more importantly a better director at the helm. But I liked the overall story arc.

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 1:00 am 

Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 4:12 pm
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Personally, I thought Rogue One was about on par with Force Awakens (6-7/10) - better than Episodes 1-3 but not even close to the original trilogy. Some of the things that really bugged me with R1 (without giving too much away):
  • Continuity with the original trilogy (in dialog and tech)
  • Sol's pointless death did not seem to fit the character at all (to me)
  • Explosions (admittedly Star Wars has always had problems with realistic explosions)

I did like the Darth Vader scene and some of the small nods to ANH.

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 8:03 am 
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If you are referring to Saw Guerra's death I think the issue there was the realization that there was simply no time to evacuate. The rebels already had a ship inbound. It's also possible that the Partisans had no ships. Either way I see his death as a passing of the torch to Jyn. "Save the Rebellion, save the dream!" was the line as I recall it.

As for explosions, well....the first time I saw a real grenade go off in the Army I thought "that's it?!" Didn't look like that on the A-Team! We've been conditioned by Hollywood to see a certain style of explosion as cinematic reality.

As for continuity I thought they did a pretty fine job of evoking the 1970s version of Star Wars. There may have been some differences but nothing that struck me as a problem.

One thing I REALLY liked was the gritty realism of the movie. We finally moved away from Jedi/Sith mysticism into the world most people of the Star Wars universe lived in. To paraphrase Obi-Wan we finally got to experience a larger world. I can only hope the new Han Solo movie does for scum and villainy what Rogue One did for the war movie.

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 11:06 am 

Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 4:12 pm
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Haakon_val'Ishi wrote:
If you are referring to Saw Guerra's death I think the issue there was the realization that there was simply no time to evacuate. The rebels already had a ship inbound. It's also possible that the Partisans had no ships. Either way I see his death as a passing of the torch to Jyn. "Save the Rebellion, save the dream!" was the line as I recall it.


Oh, I agree that's what they were trying to do with the scene but it made no sense to me. They certainly had room for one more on their ship and Saw was apparently still very important to the rebellion.

Haakon_val'Ishi wrote:
As for explosions, well....the first time I saw a real grenade go off in the Army I thought "that's it?!" Didn't look like that on the A-Team! We've been conditioned by Hollywood to see a certain style of explosion as cinematic reality.


Yeah. I wasn't even looking for realistic space explosions (almost no movie gets those right - ironically, the original explosions in space in Star Wars were more realistic than those in the special editions). The two major land-based explosions were so far-fetched that they pulled me out of the movie and made my mind go "WTF?!".

Haakon_val'Ishi wrote:
As for continuity I thought they did a pretty fine job of evoking the 1970s version of Star Wars. There may have been some differences but nothing that struck me as a problem.


The two biggest continuity problems I saw with respect to the original movies were no Bothans ("many Bothan spies died to bring us these plans") and having ships, weapons, and tech in Rogue One (because they were cool) that did not appear anywhere in the original trilogy. Probably the biggest problematic one was the shield gate - if those existed, they certainly would have used them in other places in the "later" movies.

I've already forgotten the couple of internal consistency issues I noticed (they weren't major - they just annoyed me)...

Haakon_val'Ishi wrote:
One thing I REALLY liked was the gritty realism of the movie. We finally moved away from Jedi/Sith mysticism into the world most people of the Star Wars universe lived in. To paraphrase Obi-Wan we finally got to experience a larger world. I can only hope the new Han Solo movie does for scum and villainy what Rogue One did for the war movie.


I did like that. I liked the almost-sorta-Jedi (one of the guardians of the Khyber Temple whose character name I can't remember).

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 2:46 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2014 11:17 am
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wilcoxon wrote:
The two biggest continuity problems I saw with respect to the original movies were no Bothans ("many Bothan spies died to bring us these plans")


You're making a mistake that line is from Episode 6. It is referencing the plans for the second Death Star, not the first Death Star from Episode 4.

wilcoxon wrote:
and having ships, weapons, and tech in Rogue One (because they were cool) that did not appear anywhere in the original trilogy. Probably the biggest problematic one was the shield gate - if those existed, they certainly would have used them in other places in the "later" movies


I don't know about that. I feel they did things really well with the tech. I mean the rebellion had older model ships (ETA-2s) that were part of of Episode 3 as well as the newer ones that were part of Ep 4 (X-wings). If you notice they used the older models for the ill fated Blue Squadron, while Gold Squadron got the Y-Wings, and Red got the X-Wings. This is exactly the set up they had in Episode 4 except there was no Blue Squadron in Ep4 as they were all killed in R1.
They had AT-ATs from Ep 5 but before they were retrofitted to be mobile heavy artillery they were cargo transports (having hollow centres and removable panels on the sides in R1.) As for the gate that seems like an inferior version on the shield used on the Second Death Star in Ep 6. My understanding of R1 was that with the destruction of the gate the entire shield failed. If the gate was generating the shield and it went down the shield went down. If the gate was a plug that simply created a hole in the shield, when the gate goes, the hole closes, which wouldn't help them.
The empire learned from that attack, not to have the shield generator so exposed. And by EP 6 the put the generator on a planet, not in space, project the shield where they want, and guard the generator within the shield itself. If you recall in EP6 Han's team had to use a stolen shuttle with code to have the shield lowered, and land on the Endor. The code did not just let them pass the fleet. Much better tech in the future.
Even the tech new to us was inferior to future films. Baze's pulse laser rifle, where he had to carry the energy pack on his back and stop to reload, or perhaps prevent over heating, seemed dated when compared to other rapid fire lasers in EP 4-7.

I believe they actively tried to show tech that was replaced from EP3 and was the predecessor of future tech.

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 Post subject: Re: Star Wars: Rogue One (my thoughts)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 27, 2016 7:54 am 
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In gaming terms I would qualify Baze's weapon as a light repeating blaster since it seemed to do more damage and have more punch than a regular blaster rifle. It may have been older tech but I thought it was damned cool.

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