# Star War Rogue One



## Ibanezsam4

A Star Wars heist/action movie. Looks exciting. Love seeing OT designs again.


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## celticelk

I'm excited. And hey, it premieres on my birthday!


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## musicaldeath

I am excited. It actually looks even better than VII... and I loved VII.


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## synrgy

The casting for Mon Mothma is eerily superb.

Also.. If Ben Mendelsohn looked any more like Gary Oldman in that shot, I might have had a heart attack.


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## Kryss

looks more interesting than 7 did to me. 7 was really bland other than a few interesting scenes. 8 needs to be incredible to setup a lot of stuff for the newest trilogy. they really needed imo to make 7 a bigger movie, there is nothing at all stated about the current situation for the empire and the local star systems, 7 just felt so confined compared to all the other ones. even a few short scenes talking about the various conflicts going on would have helped a ton imo, or even a few rumors to intro episode 8.


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## odibrom

I think this is a parallel story to the VII movie and not a follow up. It shall all blend in the near future, but for now it looks parallel. As stated in the logo, it is "a Star Wars Story"...


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## celticelk

odibrom said:


> I think this is a parallel story to the VII movie and not a follow up. It shall all blend in the near future, but for now it looks parallel. As stated in the logo, it is "a Star Wars Story"...



It's a prequel, of sorts. It happens just before the events of Episode IV.


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## celticelk

Kryss said:


> they really needed imo to make 7 a bigger movie, there is nothing at all stated about the current situation for the empire and the local star systems, 7 just felt so confined compared to all the other ones. even a few short scenes talking about the various conflicts going on would have helped a ton imo, or even a few rumors to intro episode 8.



Reading the opening crawl where they talked about the First Order rising "from the ashes of the Empire" and the New Republic sponsoring the Resistance to its control would also have helped. People keep complaining about not having had enough backstory in Episode VII, and I just feel like Tony Stark: "Am I the only one who did the reading?"


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## Lorcan Ward

This looks amazing!


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## synrgy

celticelk said:


> Reading the opening crawl where they talked about the First Order rising "from the ashes of the Empire" and the New Republic sponsoring the Resistance to its control would also have helped. People keep complaining about not having had enough backstory in Episode VII, and I just feel like Tony Stark: "Am I the only one who did the reading?"



It's baffling to me, but some folks are super into on-screen exposition, especially when delivered via terrible and unrealistic dialogue. Apparently, anyway, given its ubiquity. 

Like, did anyone else ever see Ninja Assassin? If you haven't, don't bother, but if you have, the whole 'sub-plot' with the detectives is a perfect example. They exist only to deliver terrible dialogue which spells out every little thing that's happening.


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## Ralyks

Forest Whitaker in a Star Wars movie. Sold.

Y'know, other than the fact that it just looks awesome in general.


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## awake69

I like what I've seen. A Star Wars movie with NO Skywalkers involved. I'm looking forward to seeing this one more than I was Force Awakens. It looks wholly original and intriguing.


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## bostjan

awake69 said:


> I like what I've seen. A Star Wars movie with NO Skywalkers involved. I'm looking forward to seeing this one more than I was Force Awakens. It looks wholly original and intriguing.



It'll be a few months, at least, before anyone can see this, but I'll be sure to check it out. It seems that the middle film in each trilogy featured a whiny Skywalker that took something away from the intended tone of the films. I thought Luke was great in Ep IV and VI, and Anakin was okay to me in Ep III (I realize that's an unpopular opinion), and


Spoiler



Luke was really just a McGuffin in Ep VII


, so a Star Wars feature film sans Skywalker should be refreshing.


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## mongey

I was doubter on this movie but it looks pretty great


ghost dog with a light saber FtW


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## wankerness

awake69 said:


> I like what I've seen. *A Star Wars movie with NO Skywalkers involved.* I'm looking forward to seeing this one more than I was Force Awakens. It looks wholly original and intriguing.



You might think that, but odds are, the lead will end up banging Luke and giving birth to Rey or something. 

I laugh nearly every time I see someone write "Star War" instead of "Star Wars." I guess it's because of this.


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## StevenC

I had a fun December asking people if they'd seen the new Star War.


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## A-Branger

wankerness said:


> You might think that, but odds are, the lead will end up banging Luke and giving birth to Rey or something.



lol I though the same when I watched that trailer, but then when I saw that in that storyline they are just finishing the deathstar I figre it was too early for taht to happen. But who knows, this might be for another movie lol

Not sure whats the story in this movie. Maybe is the story on how the rebels got hold for the deathstar building plans, so they could destroyed on IV


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## MFB

That's exactly what the story is.


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## Bloody_Inferno

MFB said:


> That's exactly what the story is.









It's Dark Forces in movie form. I'm down.


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## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's Dark Forces in movie form. I'm down.



I didn't even think of it that way. If only they actually use Kyle Katarn...


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## skeels

Is that ....Donnie Yen? Fighting. ...Stormtroopers? 

*swoons*


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## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I didn't even think of it that way. If only they actually use Kyle Katarn...



I'm fairly amused at how they seem to be going out of their way in these new things to just immediately stomp on some of the best-known EU stories. Next thing you know, the bothans won't be hairy dog people. (not that they'd be in this anyway, since it's not the second death star!)


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## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> I didn't even think of it that way. If only they actually use Kyle Katarn...



Since the Disney assimilation and the mass retconning of everything outside the 6 canon films... I guess that's gonna happen no matter what. Still, it's good to see the strong female protagonist evolve more above and beyond the Catfish Jellybean persona. 



skeels said:


> Is that ....Donnie Yen? Fighting. ...Stormtroopers?
> 
> *swoons*



...which reminds me, I kinda wished Episode VII used the cast of The Raid a little better. But I guess that's pushing it.


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## Hollowway

I was not a fan of VII. I felt like they just copied IV, and then went in and changed enough so they couldn't be busted for plagiarism. I hope this next one is completely original. If the general plot involves someone finding out that a Sith Lord is their father, and gets their arm cut off, I'm going to frickin lose my .....


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## Bloody_Inferno

Hollowway said:


> I was not a fan of VII. I felt like they just copied IV, and then went in and changed enough so they couldn't be busted for plagiarism.



Thank this guy for that one:







...and fanservice. Lots of fanservice. 

The whole movie was genetically engineered to please even the most staunch hardcore Star Wars fan, hence why with all the classic nods like the ships, characters and references all coming out taking a bow and feeling like a classic Star Wars film, right down to being an Episode IV retread and leaving key points to the sequels, as a sacrifice over something different. It was the whole point of the movie trying to win the fans back over after the bad taste of the prequels. And for fans like me... ok, I'll let JJ Abrams go on this one, because I enjoyed it regardless. 

Rouge One isn't a new plot, but Episode VIII will be. And this time Rian Johnson is the director so I certainly won't expect a retread of Empire.


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## QuantumCybin

The trailer looks awesome, although it does make me sad that we'll never get to see Kyle Katarn's epic pixelated assault on the Imperial base to get those plans in live action. 

When I was a kid and I played Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, I always thought it was so cool how they did live action cut scenes. Really made it feel like a Star Wars movie. I like that this (hopefully) is going to be gritty and dark. Even if they're not using Katarn, it looks like they'll use elements of the stories of Dark Forces. I'm guessing those black troops are the epic Shadow Troopers?


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## protest

I wanted to dislike this, but it looks too good. Reminds me of the feel of the newer X-Men movies.


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## wankerness

QuantumCybin said:


> The trailer looks awesome, although it does make me sad that we'll never get to see Kyle Katarn's epic pixelated assault on the Imperial base to get those plans in live action.
> 
> When I was a kid and I played Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, I always thought it was so cool how they did live action cut scenes. Really made it feel like a Star Wars movie. I like that this (hopefully) is going to be gritty and dark. Even if they're not using Katarn, it looks like *they'll use elements of the stories of Dark Forces. I'm guessing those black troops are the epic Shadow Troopers?*



I'm guessing NOT.  If any of these things have elements from a video game plot, it will probably be a coincidence. 

Kinda like people who keep expecting to see Grand Admiral Thrawn show up in the sequels - yeah right!


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## Lorcan Ward

QuantumCybin said:


> When I was a kid and I played Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, I always thought it was so cool how they did live action cut scenes. Really made it feel like a Star Wars movie. I like that this (hopefully) is going to be gritty and dark. Even if they're not using Katarn, it looks like they'll use elements of the stories of Dark Forces. I'm guessing those black troops are the epic Shadow Troopers?



I loved that game. It was brutally unforgiving but the story was so good.


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## wankerness

Hollowway said:


> *I was not a fan of VII. I felt like they just copied IV, and then went in and changed enough so they couldn't be busted for plagiarism. * I hope this next one is completely original. If the general plot involves someone finding out that a Sith Lord is their father, and gets their arm cut off, I'm going to frickin lose my .....



This is such a boring complaint, and it just gets parroted everywhere. When I wanted to see it again simply because I liked the three main characters so much, I realized the movie succeeded where it counts. They're what's important and what will sustain the sequels, and they really aren't like the characters in the first one.


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## wankerness

Lorcan Ward said:


> I loved that game. It was brutally unforgiving but the story was so good.



Yeah, that game is murderous. If you play on hard, even the first level is a nightmare. I think Jedi Knight 2 was even worse on the high difficulties. I played all the way through DF1, DF2:JK and JK2 way back in the day and I know for sure I had to do easy mode on the latter 2  The latter two were quite a precursor to modern action games with how they were FPS games, but you earned skill points to gain new powers and you had different "trees."


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## Rev2010

Just a trailer but from the look of it I agree with some others that say it looks far more interesting than 7. 

Only thing though.... anyone else getting sick of the constant plot of having to destroy the super weapon? I mean, in 4 and 6 they blow up the Death Star (planet destroying weapon). In 7 they destroy the solar power channelling super weapon. In this trailer they say, "We have a mission for you. A major weapon's test is imminent and we need to know what it is and how to destroy it". 

I'd think other plots can be devised other than, "There's yet another badass super weapon that we need to go blow up!".


Rev.


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## Kryss

I kind of get the impression they played it safe on the story for episode 7. this looks like they are going to push the boundaries a bit and do something original that still ties into the transition between 3 and 4. almost a test to see how people will receive something totally fresh and new storywise. 7 was ok but not nearly as well rec'd because it was so similar to a new hope. it's like they are possibly just feeling out what direction to go a bit from here on out. I think after seeing this preview vid it will probably do far better than episode 7 did overall and over time could be the far better movie. tough to tell from just a trailer but I think this will definitely be a better movie from 7.


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## Xaios

wankerness said:


> I played all the way through DF1, DF2:JK and *JK2*



Heh, you mean Dark Forces 3: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast?


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## QuantumCybin

Xaios said:


> Heh, you mean Dark Forces 3: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast?



Don't forget Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy


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## Captain Butterscotch

Minor spoiler, but I did some digging into the production of this film and they've hired the guy that crafted the original Darth Vader suit from ANH and have made several of them; including at least 2 stunt suits. And there is a supposed battlefield scene where we get to see Darth Vader at the height of his powers, being a force of nature and a general badass.


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## Ibanezsam4

Kryss said:


> I kind of get the impression they played it safe on the story for episode 7. this looks like they are going to push the boundaries a bit and do something original that still ties into the transition between 3 and 4. almost a test to see how people will receive something totally fresh and new storywise. 7 was ok but not nearly as well rec'd because it was so similar to a new hope. it's like they are possibly just feeling out what direction to go a bit from here on out. I think after seeing this preview vid it will probably do far better than episode 7 did overall and over time could be the far better movie. tough to tell from just a trailer but I think this will definitely be a better movie from 7.



i understand all the comments about the same-i-ness of 7, but after watching it on blue ray at home, the movie comes in to its own when Rey and Kylo embrace their roles. 

Kylo's sneering "we're not done yet" and "that lightsaber is mine"... chills.

after my third viewing the final act really differentiates itself IMO

Rogue one makes me happy because it is a throwback and i get to see more of the universe


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## wankerness

The big climax of VII is that lightsaber fight, which has no parallel in the original at all, unless I guess you say it's a shot-for-shot remake of the trench run when Luke and Han take out darth vader's tie fighter through combined efforts! I'm so sick of people smugly parroting that "it's a shot-for-shot remake cause i heard so on youtube LOL!11" when anyone who's actually watched the two and has a modicum of senses can tell that's obviously not the case.


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## VBCheeseGrater

wankerness said:


> This is such a boring complaint, and it just gets parroted everywhere. When I wanted to see it again simply because I liked the three main characters so much, I realized the movie succeeded where it counts. They're what's important and what will sustain the sequels, and they really aren't like the characters in the first one.



Exactly. I knew 20 minutes in this was going to be a fun ride, because the characters were real and exciting - and excited themselves. Finn personifies this quality the best for me - indeed bringing back the swashbuckling nature of the originals, as you mention without rehashing the same characters.

The director could have gone any number of directions with it, any of which would have certain fans panning the movie - that's what they do. I think he pulled it off nicely overall - it's a FUN movie.


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## Varcolac

QuantumCybin said:


> Don't forget Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy



Colon Cancer.



wankerness said:


> I'm guessing NOT.  If any of these things have elements from a video game plot, it will probably be a coincidence.
> 
> Kinda like people who keep expecting to see Grand Admiral Thrawn show up in the sequels - yeah right!



Well they are reintroducing plenty of stuff from the old expanded universe including stuff that Thrawn was involved in. In the _Rebels_ animated show on Disney XD, they reintroduced Interdictors, the good old "yank-your-ship-from-Hyperspace" ambush ship that Thrawn used so much. They're reusing elements that they like but trimming the fat. I'm skeptical that Thrawn will return exactly as he appears in Timothy Zahn's books, but a similar kind of character? That's possible.


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## QuantumCybin

It's just a shame because I thought the Thrawn trilogy was absolutely excellent. Well thought out and overall pretty believable in the context of Star Wars. I kind of wish the story of Han and Chewie panned out more like it did in one of the EU novels I read. I can't remember the name, but I think Chewie basically ends up killing himself to save Han and his kid (maybe, can't remember exact details), and as a result Han becomes a total recluse and basically spends his days drinking himself into a stupor on the Falcon. It was a cool story for sure, very dark.


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## mongey

QuantumCybin said:


> Don't forget Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy



Jedi academy was great

still the best star wars game ever I think


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## Captain Butterscotch

Nein, Knights of the Old Republic is the winner.


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## wankerness

That's probably the generally accepted answer (well, either that or Tie Fighter). I remember liking it a lot, but not much of anything else. It's one of those games I'd probably play only be motivated to play again if they had an HD version with the controls brought up to modern standards. I bought 2 when it finally showed up on Steam a couple years ago, but haven't gotten around to playing it.

Dark Forces 2 and Jedi Knight 2 were probably the ones that impressed me the most, I definitely played through Super Star Wars/ESB/ROTJ a whole ton of times, Rogue Squadron was pretty awesome, even Shadows of the Empire had its levels that were great. There are probably another 10 that I remember liking a lot, and I don't even think I've played any of the tons of games that were released later than Jedi Knight 2! Star Wars games used to have an unusually high rate of being good. Even some of the crappier ones like Rebel Assault 2 got a ton of play. I think the only ones I played that were outright bad were Rebel Assault 1 and Masters of Teras Kasi. X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter I think was supposed to be crummy, as was the Phantom Menace game, and after that I kind of lost track...I've never played any of the Battlefront games, or Bounty Hunter, or Force Unleashed, or Jedi Academy, or Starfighter, etc. I DID play three or four characters to max level in the early months of that Old Republic MMO, though.


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## QuantumCybin

Oh man, Masters of Teras Kasi...so deliciously horrible lol. One of clunkliest fighters I've ever played. That phantom menace game was AWFUL. I remember renting it as a kid from Blockbuster (lol) and good god, not only was it impossibly difficult for a kid without cheats, it just flat out SUCKED lol.


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## gnoll

Hmmmmm.

It's really cool to see all the old ships and uniforms and stuff. I mean, AT-AT's.... heeelll yeaah....

However, I'm a bit worried that the movie won't have enough depth. Stealing the DS plans and having lots of cool action isn't enough to make a great movie. It needs to have great story and characters. These days I feel like the strong female character has sort of become a cliché to the point where those kinds of characters almost never seem to have enough depth to them. I wouldn't be happy with a simple action movie with one-dimensional characters. I don't think that cuts it, especially not for Star Wars.


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## wankerness

gnoll said:


> Hmmmmm.
> 
> It's really cool to see all the old ships and uniforms and stuff. I mean, AT-AT's.... heeelll yeaah....
> 
> However, I'm a bit worried that the movie won't have enough depth. Stealing the DS plans and having lots of cool action isn't enough to make a great movie. It needs to have great story and characters. These days I feel like the strong female character has sort of become a cliché to the point where those kinds of characters almost never seem to have enough depth to them. I wouldn't be happy with a simple action movie with one-dimensional characters. I don't think that cuts it, especially not for Star Wars.



How is it a cliche? What movies can you name that starred a "strong female character?" In the last year as far as movies anyone cared about went I can only think of Star Wars, Hunger Games 2 (didn't see it, but doesn't she pretty much sit around moping all movie, in contrast to the first two?) and (very arguably) Sicario, where she gets sidelined in the last act anyway. I think if men vastly, vastly outnumber the women that the cliche would still be the strong male character!


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## MFB

wankerness said:


> How is it a cliche? What movies can you name that starred a "strong female character?" In the last year as far as movies anyone cared about went I can only think of Star Wars, Hunger Games 2 (didn't see it, but doesn't she pretty much sit around moping all movie, in contrast to the first two?) and (very arguably) Sicario, where she gets sidelined in the last act anyway. I think if men vastly, vastly outnumber the women that the cliche would still be the strong male character!



Not pertaining to the last year specifically but in general: Force Awakens, Hunger Games, Divergent, Mortal Instruments, Kill Bill, Harry Potter, Pacific Rim, Mad Max: Fury Road, etc...

I'm all for strong female leads, I'm just getting tired of the 'angsty, white female character is brought in by a shadowy organization that questions her past despite them wanting her to be the hero they need in spite of having no formal training' that every Y.A. movie adaptation is doing.


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## wankerness

MFB said:


> Not pertaining to the last year specifically but in general: Force Awakens, Hunger Games, Divergent, Mortal Instruments, Kill Bill, Harry Potter, Pacific Rim, Mad Max: Fury Road, etc...
> 
> I'm all for strong female leads, I'm just getting tired of the 'angsty, white female character is brought in by a shadowy organization that questions her past despite them wanting her to be the hero they need in spite of having no formal training' that every Y.A. movie adaptation is doing.



Oh yeah, Mad Max Fury Road.

Harry Potter doesn't really count since she's not the lead. Same deal with Pacific Rim, even though the movie would have been far better if she'd been the lead instead of CHARLIE HUNNAM, the English treasure. She was Asian, by the way. 

I just don't get how this is a "cliche" when way, way, way more movies have a STRONG MALE LEAD. Unless there's more than a 50/50 balance it seems ridiculous to complain about any action movie starring a woman being a cliche. I'm not complaining there are too few currently, just saying that with the number there are now, there's absolutely no reason to complain there are too many!


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## gnoll

I really don't care much about the gender of the characters, what I care about is that they are GOOD and well-written characters.

The feeling I got from that trailer was just that this doesn't seem like a very interesting character. It just feels like I've seen it before too many times. Having said that, I'm aware that this is only a teaser trailer and I could very well be very wrong. Again, just the feeling I got.

The problem with one type of character becoming cliché isn't that all of a sudden there's "too many female characters" or "too many male characters", it's that characters start popping up that are too reminiscent of something you've seen before and that they become too uninteresting.


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## wankerness

gnoll said:


> I really don't care much about the gender of the characters, what I care about is that they are GOOD and well-written characters.
> 
> The feeling I got from that trailer was just that this doesn't seem like a very interesting character. It just feels like I've seen it before too many times. Having said that, I'm aware that this is only a teaser trailer and I could very well be very wrong. Again, just the feeling I got.
> 
> The problem with one type of character becoming cliché isn't that all of a sudden there's "too many female characters" or "too many male characters", it's that characters start popping up that are too reminiscent of something you've seen before and that they become too uninteresting.



Well, that actress is VERY good, so I don't think there's any chance she'll be uninteresting. Even if the dialogue is wretched she'll probably transcend it. Unless it's prequel-level bad and she has to explain why she doesn't like sand, or something. She might end up being unconvincing in action scenes or something, but I think with this kind of budget and Disney's care with these and Marvel movies she'll probably be fine. We also didn't get to see Mads Mikkelsen in the trailer, and he's always great.


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## bostjan

Nathalie Portman is an excellent actress, and I've seen Hayden Christiansen in other films, and he was pretty good, so I'd argue that a good cast doesn't make a good film, necessarily. I mean, I'm sure you could have me direct Tom Hanks and Leo Dicaprio in a film with a $67M budget and it'd suck, just because I don't know what I'm doing directing a film.

Actually, to that point, I'd argue that a couple terrible actors paired up with a brilliant director and film editor could make a decent film.

Back OT, though, I've seen the Rogue One trailer, and I'm actually pretty optimistic about it. The trailer seems pretty good, although it doesn't seem to give much away. I think there will be plenty to keep Star Wars geeks happy, and the premise leaves plenty of room for a good plot. My biggest concern is that it does seem that there are going to be quite a few characters to track. It could be great, but it might just be too much for one film.


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## gnoll

I'm always more concerned with the script than anything else. I'm not often bothered by bad acting unless it's really bad to the point where I can't be properly immersed in the film. Often when people complain about bad acting in a film I didn't even notice it. I guess to me those people in the film are supposed to be those characters and so I just accept that and don't think about them as actors at all  Ignorance is bliss I guess, hah...


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## MFB

wankerness said:


> Harry Potter doesn't really count since she's not the lead. Same deal with Pacific Rim, even though the movie would have been far better if she'd been the lead instead of CHARLIE HUNNAM, the English treasure. She was Asian, by the way.



They might not have been THE lead, but to say they weren't A lead is a disservice to their characters. That's more what I was basing my selections on.


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## wankerness

bostjan said:


> Nathalie Portman is an excellent actress, and I've seen Hayden Christiansen in other films, and he was pretty good, so I'd argue that a good cast doesn't make a good film, necessarily. I mean, I'm sure you could have me direct Tom Hanks and Leo Dicaprio in a film with a $67M budget and it'd suck, just because I don't know what I'm doing directing a film.



I had a disclaimer in there about there being a certain level of awful in the dialogue where the actor no longer can fix it.

I would argue that neither Natalie Portman nor Hayden Christiansen is a good enough actor to transcend the material, anyway. I've seen a lot of movies where she's lousy. An actor like say, Naomi Watts, or Phillip Seymour Hoffman, or Jennifer Lawrence, or even the frickin Rock is often by far the best thing about a crappy movie. Natalie Portman is never above the level of whatever movie she's in. She's just been in some very good movies.


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## bostjan

I think how good or bad an actor is relates more to how difficult they are to direct than how they end up looking on screen. But that's just my opinion. Example: Naomi Watts - Diana. Her performance was panned. Jennifer Lawrence was in Garden Party.


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## wankerness

bostjan said:


> I think how good or bad an actor is relates more to how difficult they are to direct than how they end up looking on screen. But that's just my opinion. Example: Naomi Watts - Diana. Her performance was panned. Jennifer Lawrence was in Garden Party.



Yeah, even great actors tend to have some bad ones on their resume. But, the ones I mentioned are frequently far better than the material, while Natalie Portman is NEVER better than the material. Sometimes even slightly above-average movies she's been in like Thor have her sleepwalking through it. You know something's up when Chris Hemsworth is by far the more engaging of a couple, especially when the other one has an Oscar! 

Never heard of Garden Party before. Apparently it was her first movie and she is about 25 characters down the cast list? I'm going to go ahead and not count that one against her! Unlike GARDEN STATE against Natalie Portman :vomit:


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## Varcolac

Not a second trailer yet, but we do have this:
[Youtubevid]jXEMO_Zv_gQ[/Youtubevid]


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## wankerness

That is the thing in that video that has me the most hyped. Look at that f'in guy!! IMMORTAN WAMPA!!!


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## wankerness

I think embeds are broken, so here's a direct link as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdj1zb9sMY



The visuals look incredible. The dialogue all seems really stilted and bad. I dunno what to think!!


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## mongey

trailer did look amazing visually . content wise it was ok . keeping my expectations medium with this one 

I really like what they are trying to do. just not sure if they can do it


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## Ibanezsam4

The more i see trailers for this the more i'm convinced it's less a heist movie and more Seven Samurai. 

It looks like a 3 or 4 memorable characters while the rest will serve as tragic cannon fodder for the final assault/defense/escape... that shot of all of them standing up in the shuttle is an homage to SS... it actually looks more similarly composed to 13 Assassins (another SS homage!).


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## gnoll

Some cool shots in that trailer... Other than that, I dunno... I'm still unsure if I think these characters/this plot will be any good. I'm sad to say I'm not terribly excited for this one...


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## dh848

wow, just now seeing this. Great trailer!


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## A-Branger

just came back from the cinema. Im pretty pretty happy about the movie

some dialog/acting was a bit "meh" but I really dig the movie. A good action movie. I love how they keep the technology of the bases and ships pretty "analog" looking, just like the original trilogy.

And the end was pretty awesome. I think I got more hyped about the whole ending scene thing than the rest of the movie, which is cool. 

either way it was pretty fun to watch. I know this kinds of movie (same as the new harry potter one) could be seen as a money cash grab without being a sequel thing. But I kinda dig the concept, to see other side of that world and story without having to relly purely on the main characters


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## bostjan

I'm going to go see it tomorrow.


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## wankerness

It's going to snow between 9-12 inches here tomorrow, so I don't think I'm going to be going out to see it


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## Lorcan Ward

That was amazing! My favourite film by a mile!! The closing scene


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## Rachmaninoff

SPOILERS AHEAD... 



I was completely baffled on how they had Grand Moff Tarkin on the film, since Peter Cushing died back in 1994... his facial movements looked a bit strange and it kinda fell into uncanney valley to me, but nonetheless it was a great CGI work.

The same was valid for Princess Leia at the last scene, interpreted by Ingvild Deila (with CGI), as I read in the final credits. And I must say this last scene was receive with a rush of adrenaline at the room I was, which was _packed_ with Star Wars fans... lots of applause and screams.

It also made me think how the Rebels are portrayed as terrorists, which can perform atrocities in the name of a cause they believe. The heroes on this movie are no saints.

In the end this was so much better than Episode VII... which felt like a rippoff of the Death Star and blah blah blah... so yeah, great film. As a Star Wars fan, I really enjoyed it. Made me want to go home and watch Episode IV right away, because the gap was perfectly filled.


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## A-Branger

Rachmaninoff said:


> Made me want to go home and watch Episode IV right away, because the gap was perfectly filled.



also if you want to write spoilers use [spo..ilers] [/spo....ilers] thing without the dots



Spoiler



I loved that so much. For a moment I though I was going to see the exact first scene of Darth Vader of episode IV where he enters the rebel ship while I had aside view of Leia recording the message. But I though "hey lights are off, its not the same scene....wait....BAM!! finally DArth VAder being Evil Jedy whooooooo... and I must say, they did it with class, with slow movements more similar to the fighting style of the original trilogy with a new tiwst. Nothing like the stupid flashy jumping/backfliping acrobatics stupidity of the pre-quels


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## Gravy Train

I'm going to see it tonight! After how The Force Awakens, I am pretty pumped!


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## Random3

Ok so Rogue One. I'm going to try and arrange my thoughts into something coherent. Anything that could be considered spoilers I'll put in spoiler tags but I will try to keep everything as vague as possible. The bits in spoiler tags aren't full on spoilers, but you might want to avoid them if you don't want details. That said, if you want to go in completely blind with no hints as to what happens, dont read my post.

Things I liked:

K-2SO. He was the best character in the film hands down. He was hilarious, but not in a goofy immersion-breaking way. I loved this character.

Tone. The general tone and sense of humour was very similar to The Force Awakens. I found this to be a good thing, but if you were expecting something overly dark and grimy then you may be disappointed.

Action. The entire battle sequence is the best battle sequence we have seen so far in a Star Wars film. I would recommend seeing the film in the cinema purely for this. It was incredible.

Krennic. I liked this character. I am expecting him to get a lot of hate because you could kinda describe him as generic villain #6, but I actually liked his dynamic with the other villains especially. He was used appropriately and wasnt elevated to the level of the big bad like Vader or Kylo Ren, to whom he just wouldnt compare. As a villainous character I thought he was great.

Vader.


Spoiler



So if you know anything about Rogue One you know Vader is in this film with James Earl Jones providing the voice. Presumably this will be the last time we see this character in this manner. One of his scenes was absolutely brilliant. The other I will mention later.



Death Star.


Spoiler



I really appreciated that they explained the fatal flaw of the Death Star. Fans have been debating it and people have been parodying it since 1977, and finally we have a totally logical answer which makes complete sense in the context of this film. Whoevers idea this was deserves a medal.




Things I didnt like:

Characters. The biggest complaint I guess is the characters, or lack of. Jyn Erso is the only character who has any depth or backstory. There are no characters in the film with anything like the development of Han Solo, Kylo Ren or Darth Vader.

Pacing. The pacing through the first 45 minutes of the film was waaaay off. I would put money on there being a bunch of cut footage here. There were times where we were literally spending 2 minutes on one planet with one character, then 2 minutes introducing another character on another new planet etc

Dialogue. There were a couple of times when the dialogue really pulled me out of the film. This happened twice in the first 5 minutes. Wasnt as noticeable after that but I dont see how this ended up in the film. In a very vague sense, what happens is that one character says to another Yo come with me and help me out with this, to which the other character responds You will never win!! as a way of defying the first character. Did no one point this out in the test screenings? It was as if they had cut out half of the conversation and we were left with the first and last lines from it.

The Force. This one might be a bit nit-picky, but there are a couple of scenes where non-Jedi characters say things like Believe in the Force. This doesnt quite make sense to me. The Force isnt a God-like deity with religious-esque followers and believers. It is established in Episodes 4 and 5 as something that objectively exists, but only Jedi are really aware of it or can use it. A non-Jedi saying Put your faith in the Force is kinda like a Muslim saying Put your faith in Vishnu. This wouldnt have bothered me as much, but we are later introduced to Donnie Yens character, who is not a Jedi either but is established as a sort of fanatic. He will literally chant I am one with the Force over and over. This character was cool, but the presence of other characters being like Hey, may the Force be with you! for no reason definitely diminished the character somewhat.

Music. Maybe I should have expected this but the score was lacking. There were a couple of hints at John Williams themes and cues, but none of the new stuff was memorable, apart from during one sequence.

Fan service. If you thought The Force Awakens was excessive with the service then you might not be able to handle this one. In TFA the fan service was things like a brief trash compactor reference and Finn accidentally turning on the Harryhausen chess board. In Rogue One, the fan service is things like C3PO appearing totally inconsequentially and saying, almost literally, oh boy, look at those X-Wings taking off to go to that planet! and Jyn randomly bumping into the guy from A New Hope who gets his arm cut off in the Cantina by Obi-Wan. Jyn bumping into Scrotum-Face wouldnt have stuck out as nonsensical fan service if it had taken place in the Cantina on Tatooine, but it doesnt. It takes place on a totally different freaking planet.

Forest Whitakers tentacle thing. Forest Whitaker has a mind reading tentacle monster that was entirely superfluous and did nothing. This scene could have been cut entirely. I assume it was referencing something from the animated TV show which I havent seen, which is also apparently where Forest Whitakers character is from.

Bail Organa. This character did not need to be in the film. It was evidently a conscious effort to bridge the gap between Episode 3 and 4, but it stuck out as weird because up until now Disney have made no effort to validate the prequels as even existing.

Motion capture faces.


Spoiler



Spoiler tags just in case. So Tarkin appears in this film in multiple scenes. As Peter Cushing died like 20 years ago I would have thought they would recast him, but instead they decided to do a motion capture CGI face on top of another actor. This sadly made him look like a character from a video game and was extremely distracting. Given the plot of the film, I understand why it had to be Tarkin and not some other Imperial general, but I do think they did the film a disservice by not recasting the role. One thing I am not sure how they did was Leia. She appears for literally 3 seconds in the final shot of the film, and we see her face clearly. If this was CGI it was SO much better than the Tarkin CGI. It looked like archive footage. That is the only way I can see this as being possible. I dont see how this could have been done with makeup. This looked like Carrie Fisher did in 1977.



Vader.


Spoiler



So I mentioned the second Vader scene was incredible. Unfortunately the first Vader scene was not. It was practically meaningless and superfluous to the plot. It seemed very much like an excuse to dangle the character in front of you. What made this worse in retrospect is how damn GREAT the second Vader scene is. If Vaders only appearance in the film had been the one at the end it would have been even better.


Lack of an emotional sucker punch. This is my last point. There were a couple of scenes that were sad or heartfelt. There was nothing that came close to the biggest moments in Episodes 4-7.


Spoiler



Given the plot of the film and the fact that none of these characters appear in Episodes 4-7 I do think they could have done a better job of building these characters to make the ending more powerful.



After that slight rant, I want to say I did like the film. It was about as good as I expected it would be. If all the future Star Wars movies are of this quality I dont think many people will have a problem with them.
As a frame of reference heres my ratings of other Star Wars Films.

Phantom Menace: 4/10
Attack of the Clones: 4/10
Revenge of the Sith: 5/10
Rogue One: 7/10
A New Hope: 9/10
Empire Strikes Back: 9/10
Return of the Jedi: 8/10
The Force Awakens: 8/10


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## bostjan

I disagree with a couple of points, but it's all subjective.

I thought the characters were great. I fully understood each character's motivation in the film. Flawless character handling, IMO, except Vader...

I really thought that the overall plot was okay. I thought the plot in VII was rehashed, and the plots in the prequels were garbage, except III, but III had other issues.

Looking back, I wish the prequels would have been a lot more like Rogue One. Ep I could have been the clone wars and EP III could have been Rogue One.

There were flaws in the film, and I agree that the first half of the film could have been done better.

I'd like to give a more explicit review, but for now, I'll just say that I really enjoyed it, mostly because of the characters and plot. 8/10


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## TonyFlyingSquirrel

Gonna see it this afternoon right after work, with much anticipation.


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## bostjan

Oh, and as far as the CGI, I agree that


Spoiler



Tarkin looked weird. Also, in his first scene on screen, he sounded weird. Leia looked "normal," to me.



I reiterate that I think the characters were done well. I do not believe I am the only one who felt that way.


Spoiler



In the climax scene, many people in the audience were reacting very strongly



I've heard critics say that the film's villain was too "Snidely Whiplash," but I disagree to an extent. He might have been stereotypical in many ways, but there was some subtlety to his performance. Certainly better than I-already-forgot-his-name from VII, you know, the guy who gave the speech to the stormtroopers...

Some of the cameos were gratuitous, yes, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the prequels.



Spoiler



I agree that Vader should have only been in the very end. In fact, the whole idea of Vader showing up at the climax battle rubbed me a little wrong. It would have been more epic to have seen him first when he was slicing through rebel soldiers taking over the ship.





Spoiler



The overuse of the Death Star bothered me a little. I didn't expect to see it used at all, but, I guess, whatever... I mean, it really was not necessary, given the characters' situation in the climax scene...



I think they clearly did a good job with K2SO, the guy played by Donnie Yen, and Jyn. I've heard critics complain about all three, but I don't think the complaints I've seen nor heard make any sense, for the most part. This was my issue with the prequels - no one in the prequels was really likeable, except Obi-Wan, and we already knew he was going to end up being fine, so there was pretty much no investment in the characters. They could have done much better if they had made Mace Windu more likable instead of just grouchy, or made Padme more likable instead of a cardboard cutout. Then it would have been "Oh, I wonder if Mace Windu will die?" for those who were familiar with the OT.

Now I am actually more excited for the next spin-off than I am for Ep. VIII.


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## wankerness

I don't really think the


Spoiler



Tarkin


 thing is spoiler material, as literally every review I've seen discusses it. I do kind of wonder how I'd have reacted if I hadn't heard it was in it first, though, so I'll leave it in tags. I might have actually disliked it MORE without the warning, however. As someone who has watched probably upwards of 25 movies starring the guy in the last two years, it was bizarre. Though strangely, I was more bothered by how off the VOICE was!!!

I liked it, but didn't love it. I do NOT think it was remotely the same tone as Episode VII, so I find that a bizarre statement. Most of the rest of your post also contradicts that! Episode VII is a VERY light and breezy movie that is more about character than action, especially in its first half, while this is very much the opposite. I think the things that the majority of people, even detractors, can agree on there were that Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren were extremely strong characters with extremely distinct personalities. I think here, the things that the majority of people can agree on are that the action scenes are nuts. There are some jokes here and there from K2SO, but overall it's even less humorous than The Empire Strikes Back.


Spoiler



Plus, EVERY character is dead by the end, with the main two embracing while being consumed by a huge fireball, like some of those nightmare 80s films like Miracle Mile!!



The "fan service" statement I also find bizarre. Practically all of Episode VII (which I love, by the way) is call-backs to the previous films on a very conceptual level. This really doesn't have anything other than the two things you pointed out which don't make total sense with the story it's telling, considering it's a very, VERY direct prequel to Episode IV. Jimmy Smits was slightly distracting, but FAR less distracting than he was in the prequel trilogy, where he always stood around looking like he was in a daytime soap and not at all meshing with the other characters or even the sets. 

The characters were very much bland cut-outs. Our hero could really only be described as "generic tough as nails, determined person." Rey had more personality within the first two minutes of her introduction than Jyn does by the end of the film!!! It's nuts. And as I posted above, despite her terrible appearance in the trailers, I was fully expecting her to be great, as Felicity Jones is f'in incredible in the otherwise lame "Theory of Everything." She richly deserved that Oscar nomination, as she imbued that character with so much warmth and life that was not there in the script. Here, however, she seems to have been asked to just look gritty and tough 100% of the time, which she's fine at, but only just fine. I could maybe have seen this working if they'd cast Emily Blunt and had her do the exact same thing as she did in Edge of Tomorrow, which is a similar character that manages to be completely awesome instead of boring.

All of her sidekicks are similar, too. None of them are annoying or anything, they just are all dreadfully dull, with the exception of Ip Man kicking ass a couple times. He doesn't work as an interesting character, but he is awesome when he cuts loose. K2SO obviously gets all the best lines, but when the robot is the character with by far the most personality, you've got a problem.

The action and effects in this are miles beyond any of the previous movies, IMO. I need to rewatch this in a huge theater with pristine picture, because I saw it on a substandard small theater screen and even there I was pretty impressed. The climactic space battle is like the ROTJ battle on steroids and is as exciting as hell and never feels like a videogame like the prequels did. The shots with the AT-ATs are also just awesome, and they have such a sense of heft to them. It's effects done perfectly, there was NO point during those battle scenes in which I was like "ugh CGI bland blah" like my constant reaction to the prequels. The only time the CGI kind of bugged me apart from


Spoiler



Tarkin and Leia


 were with the...whatever they're called, the Admiral Ackbars. They looked a bit too fake, like something that came from Episode I. 

So, yeah. I'd give it 7/10 primarily for the quality of the effects and action. I don't think the characters were interesting at all, apart from maybe Mads Mikkelsen, but I think that was just cause he's such a damn good actor that he forced you to care in his emotional scenes even though the writing just wasn't there. And people really need to stop hiring Forest Whittaker unless they want him to just go nuts (ex in The Shield with his awesome "HE'S PISSING ALL OVER US!!!!" freakout). I couldn't understand half his lines, and he is just so bizarre in all his scenes.


PS - Was anyone else a terrible racist like me who thought Cassian was played by the guy who played Red Viper?? I've even seen Y Tu Mama Tambien, and kept thinking Diego Luna was Pedro Pascal.


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## Bloody_Inferno

Saw it this morning. It's good, not far off from being great actually. It has it's issues, but enjoyable all the the same. 

For the first time, it was refreshing that a Star Wars movie didn't feel like a slave to constant look of feel of A New Hope... that is, from a cinematic standpoint. Obviously it's still a Star Wars movie, but it's quite a breath of fresh air compared to say The Force Awakens (which I love by the way). 

I certainly like where the story is focused: instead of the Jedi, the Skywalkers etc, it's focused on how the rebels aren't just a bunch of clean cut good guys. It's a strong and interesting premise that gives Rogue One an edge to the films of the main story line, hell it's almost as dark as Empire in a sense. It was strong enough for me to feel that whenever the references, callbacks and leitmotifs to the other Star Wars films turn up felt a little distracting. It's weird, especially when I loved the entire third act when all of that comes piling down. Yeah, we all know it's a Star Wars film, but do we need the movie itself to constantly remind us of that? 

Speaking of leitmotifs, I heard that Michael Giacchino had originally written a different score, only to be rewritten to have more of John Williams' classic themes. That's nice and all and it was a fine tightrope between original and classic themes. What I didn't like is how the main theme was a 1564 chord progression, as it seems to be the lazy way out when it comes to scores. But that's just petty nitpicking now. 

The CGI parts were something I tried not to be bothered with. Yeah it's sticks out like a puss bleeding pimple, but movies need to continue experimenting if they're ever going to get this looking better, so I'll look the other way when it comes to those criticisms. 

One thing is for sure, Rouge One has given new possibilities to what a Star Wars film can be. It can tell new bold stories (like the upcoming Han Solo film), it doesn't have to be a slave to the standards of the first 3 movies (IV, V and VI), and it certainly doesn't have to pander to the loud and annoying fanboys that Attack Of The Clones tried so hard to do and failed miserably (despite Force Awakens also pandering yet succeeding well).


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## ElysianGuitars

I saw it last night, loved it. Loved the score,


Spoiler



loved that they brought Tarkin back (and man they did the CG well on that)


,


Spoiler



loved seeing the Leia of the first movie


, loved how dark it was while still having light moments.


Spoiler



Was really shocked when basically everyone died by the end, wow. Dark for a Star Wars movie.



One of my main complaints was actually


Spoiler



Darth Vader. I didn't feel like his voice was right this time, the voice acting just felt wrong, didn't feel like his character, if that makes sense. I didn't like his dialog with the director, the only stuff I really enjoyed was the light saber stuff at the end. I didn't even really like his force choke on the director, when he turned around with his hand all clutched he looked really goofy.


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## wankerness

Darth Vader's voice was just off cause they had James Earl Jones do it and he's 85 now, so obviously his voice isn't remotely as strong as it used to be, even ten years ago for revenge of the sith. I think if they do another movie with Vader in it, whatever imposter they hire might sound more "right."


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## ElysianGuitars

wankerness said:


> Darth Vader's voice was just off cause they had James Earl Jones do it and he's 85 now, so obviously his voice isn't remotely as strong as it used to be, even ten years ago for revenge of the sith. I think if they do another movie with Vader in it, whatever imposter they hire might sound more "right."



Yeah I agree. He didn't have the presence he used to have, didn't sound nearly as menacing.


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## dhgrind

Really enjoyed the movie, I'm not really a critic. I felt that it put context into the urgency (more so than the deathstar blowing things up) to episode iv. My wife and I were feeling so tense for the last 3rd of the movie. I'm looking forward to seeing the DVD and hoping to see if they release the deleted scenes.

I didn't mind the semi blandish characters in my mind they were realistically more in line with just some ordinary and plausibly uncharismatic everyday people. 

The whole thing felt like a pretty good first step for spin off material. Let's just remember i-iii was some gaudy space opera. I'm truely hoping to see more spin offs maybe even a shadows of the empire film.


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## A-Branger

wankerness said:


> Darth Vader's voice was just off cause they had James Earl Jones do it and he's 85 now, so obviously his voice isn't remotely as strong as it used to be, even ten years ago for revenge of the sith. I think if they do another movie with Vader in it, whatever imposter they hire might sound more "right."



and the sad part is that it wont happen, this was it for Vader. This was a "pre-quel" to episode IV, 


Spoiler



till the point they could erase the end credits and the opening credits of IV and cut the two movies together perfectly (one of the reasons I LOVE the ending)



so I dont think they would release another kind of pre-quel again. Like "this canon film would sit before X movie, but after Y in between Z". It would start to complicate things. And since episode IV-V-VI almost happen on a row (time wise, give or take couple of years), not sure how many other stories can they trow in there that would need Vader to be on it too without clashing with the main Star Wars story.

So as awesome that was to see VAder in this film, sadly this is as good as it would ever get. I though it was tatesfull how they used him, they gave him a good honour to his name/evilness. And I though "yup, this was enough for now, Im happy"...... until I realise later on that "this is it, no more"... then I was like (insert Vader's voice): "nnnnnoooooooooooo......"


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## GodOfChugs

Saw this movie last night, as a stand alone I thought it could have been very awesome. I kind of felt like it was too short. I don't know 100% about the whole SW lore but from what I got this was supposed to be a prequel to how majority of the events in Star Wars happened. I feel like for a single movie


Spoiler



How everyone died, it was too short :/


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## wankerness

A-Branger said:


> and the sad part is that it wont happen, this was it for Vader. This was a "pre-quel" to episode IV,
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> till the point they could erase the end credits and the opening credits of IV and cut the two movies together perfectly (one of the reasons I LOVE the ending)
> 
> 
> 
> *so I dont think they would release another kind of pre-quel again.* Like "this canon film would sit before X movie, but after Y in between Z". It would start to complicate things. And since episode IV-V-VI almost happen on a row (time wise, give or take couple of years), not sure how many other stories can they trow in there that would need Vader to be on it too without clashing with the main Star Wars story.
> 
> So as awesome that was to see VAder in this film, sadly this is as good as it would ever get. I though it was tatesfull how they used him, they gave him a good honour to his name/evilness. And I though "yup, this was enough for now, Im happy"...... until I realise later on that "this is it, no more"... then I was like (insert Vader's voice): "nnnnnoooooooooooo......"



I guess you aren't aware of the young Han Solo movie coming out in 2018!


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## A-Branger

wankerness said:


> I guess you aren't aware of the young Han Solo movie coming out in 2018!



yeah I know, but that one is more of a "stand alone", it would be so early on the saga that it wont affect anything of it. ITs not like sudenly young Han is gonna cross paths with JarJarBinks, bet money on the pod race, and help the clone army.

Roge One, might have been called "Episode 0", or "Episode 3.5" for how close to the main plot and story line goes.

In order to have another movie with Vader on it, it would have to be or either Between EpIII and Rogue One, which it would be a prequel of a prequel, but a kinda of sequel of III...it would start to be confusing on releasing reverse time line movies prequels all the time.

or the movie would have to fit after EpIV, but earlier than VI events. So again another movie trying to fit between there as a prequel/sequel/sidestory thing.

Thats what I mean, sadly there wont be more Vader, unless they fully re-do the I-III trilogy. 

There would be side stories and movie events that they would happen during the main saga time line, but If you want Vader, then the story has to fit on a specific point of the main SW, and in some way be related to it, which it would make it a some kind of prequel/sequel thing, which I dont think it would happen anymore, as it gets confusing for some ppl


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## Andromalia

I loved the movie, to me it is one of the best. For the record I was 50/50 about ep7.



Spoiler



-The Tarkin CGI allows to not have to explain who he is again. The Leia CGI is however completely useless: you know it's her just seeing her from behind.

-I'd bet a pretty hefty sum that Vader's majordomo is in fact Snoke and this is the reason that scene is here

-We didn't get a lot of details on the characters, but remember the lore of the main villains was established through a ton of books, two RPGs, computer games etc etc. Vader in Ep IV without any additional material is just "the excited dude in black yelling all the time that killed Luke's father". He only got to be cool in EP IV, where he showed to be cunning and traded his "yelling sergeant" attitude for a more refined one, including his way of walking.

-Music was globally meh, but if I got the story right the score had to be done in a month because the original scorer had to leave because lots of parts were reshot and he had a commitment to the new Besson movie, so he was replaced.

-The R2/C3PO scene isn't needed but they are the only characters to have appeared in all SW movies so far so I guess this was to continue that trend.


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## bostjan

I really don't understand why so many internet reviews .... all over this movie...

If anybody was expecting it not to have anything to do with Star Wars, or their main complaint is that this is a cash grab, then their reviews might as well have been written without seeing the film.

Some of you guys here, in this thread, though, have brought up much better points about flaws in the film than anything I've seen from professional critics.

How good or bad the characters were, I guess, is subjective. At least a majority of the people in the cinema when I saw the film, were audibly invested in some of the characters. Admittedly, though, Jyn was not the most likable character, but she did a fine job moving the plot right along. I thought they did a great job with Cassian, though, since he did some things, and kind of had a nice character arc. It's certainly not Shakespeare, but for a Star Wars flick, I thought he was ahead of the curve on character development, particularly for what I expected.


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## bhakan

I didn't mind the "bland" characters. I felt like the main "character development" was the rebellion as a whole and giving us insight into what it really was. It didn't strike me like it was supposed to about a group or remarkable rebels, but about of unremarkable rebels doing a remarkable thing.


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## TonyFlyingSquirrel

I rather liked it, some gaps in the Star Wars overall story are now filled, and there's opportunity for other side stories.


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## wankerness

bhakan said:


> I didn't mind the "bland" characters. I felt like the main "character development" was the rebellion as a whole and giving us insight into what it really was. It didn't strike me like it was supposed to about a group or remarkable rebels, but about of unremarkable rebels doing a remarkable thing.



I saw a much longer, more detailed version of this exact same idea in the comments on AVClub or Birthmoviesdeath. I sort of get it. The way the movie


Spoiler



keeps on going after every single character dies


 certainly adds to that idea.


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## protest

It was exactly what I wanted it to be, a cool, gritty movie that felt more like a Star Wars video game than a Star Wars movie. I liked the increased darkness and violence showomg off that it was an actual war. The tie ins with the other movies was great, and Vader's usage was perfect.

Even though the characters were cookie cutter, I thought the movie captured the nervous tension and gravity of the situation. It did a lot of things Star Wars could not do before, and was much more realistic. I thought it was great for what it was, the same way I thought VII was great for being essentially a reboot and way to draw everyone back in.


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## Demiurge

Gonna see it this afternoon. I'm excited to see it even though the ending has been spoiled. I mean, I kinda figured what was going to happen, but there was really no way to avoid it. Even normal news outlets had items like (should I tag it?)


Spoiler



"Funny That Felicity Jones' Contract Had Multiple Films On It (Spoilers Inside!)"


 that kind of lent to the conclusion that, yeah, I was right.


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## Kanye

Watched it, loved it. Im just here for the green blocks lol


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## Demiurge

It was good! Though, hearing the news about Carrie Fisher upon emerging from the theater put a damper on the proceedings.

Some things about the movie that bugged me:
-Is there a functional purpose for Darth Vader's castle to be built on a volcanically-active area? Good on him for not having any stigma about lava (sand, still a deal-breaker), but the Bowser's castle aesthetic is bit excessive.
-


Spoiler



Saw Guerera seemed like a semi-interesting character that was disposed-of too quick. I dunno- was he created just to tie-in with that Rebels cartoon?


-


Spoiler



The whole thing at the end with claw-machine file-access chamber and the randomly-placed switches for the satellite dish seemed like a video game contrivance.


-


Spoiler



The Rebellion: "No, we're not going to do anything." "Oh, this small ship ended up going to Scarif without our appoval... eh, y'know, let's send almost all our assets anyway." The resulting Star Destroyer dominoes was worth it, though.


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## StevenC

Demiurge said:


> -Is there a functional purpose for Darth Vader's castle to be built on a volcanically-active area? Good on him for not having any stigma about lava (sand, still a deal-breaker), but the Bowser's castle aesthetic is bit excessive.



Yeah, it's Mustafar and it's to really piss him off to become closer to the dark side.


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## wakjob

What trailers were shown before you guys saw the movie?

Oh, and Carrie Fisher had a heart attack yesterday.
Anyone hear about this?


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## Demiurge

wakjob said:


> What trailers were shown before you guys saw the movie?



I arrived late but I caught Dunkirk, Fast & The Furious, Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, and a slow-motion sequence featuring chunks of a beloved Disney character spraying onto the roadway that I presume to be the new Cars sequel.


----------



## lewis

wakjob said:


> What trailers were shown before you guys saw the movie?
> 
> Oh, and Carrie Fisher had a heart attack yesterday.
> Anyone hear about this?



yeah I saw this. I wish her all the best in her recovery and hope it goes well. She is so iconic. To be 60 and have this happen is crazy. Look at Harrison for example, must be older than that and still going along.


----------



## TheHandOfStone

This was actually my favorite SW movie outside of the original three. It wasn't perfect, but man was it good!



Demiurge said:


> Is there a functional purpose for Darth Vader's castle to be built on a volcanically-active area? Good on him for not having any stigma about lava (sand, still a deal-breaker), but the Bowser's castle aesthetic is bit excessive.


I laughed out loud at that scene. All the dark tower needed was a big flaming eye!


----------



## Grindspine

TheHandOfStone said:


> This was actually my favorite SW movie outside of the original three. It wasn't perfect, but man was it good!
> 
> I laughed out loud at that scene. All the dark tower needed was a big flaming eye!



Yeah, I was expecting the Eye of Sauron atop that tower too!

I thought the movie was epic; it completely lived up to my expectations.

There were two scenes that I think could have been omitted.



Spoiler



Saw using the octopus thing to mind probe the pilot and Jyn running into the drunks from the cantina, namely.



Grand Moff Tarkin was just as creepy as I remember from seeing the originals back in the eighties.


----------



## A-Branger

Demiurge said:


> Some things about the movie that bugged me:
> -Is there a functional purpose for Darth Vader's castle to be built on a volcanically-active area? Good on him for not having any stigma about lava (sand, still a deal-breaker), but the Bowser's castle aesthetic is bit excessive.



because it was the place were he was "born", Ep III thats were he got beaten up on the lava planet factory thing. Maybe the "castle" is more of the old factory.

Reason why I have no idea, but as soon as I saw lava I though about that


----------



## Danukenator

It's interesting that some people feel the characters in this were either weak or bland. I actually felt the development was quite well done compared to Episode VII. 

I'm reminded of the scene where Finn and Poe befriend each other in the span of 2 minutes as they escape the Star Destroyer. Their interactions as characters seemed inconsistent with what they each knew about one another. Additionally, their interactions were kinda' tonally inappropriate given the rather dark scene which proceeded their escape. I didn't get anything like this from Rouge One. Each character seemed to behave in a manner that was consistent with the plot and each character's individual knowledge. 

Overall, the characters in Lucas style films are never really robust or fully 3-D. Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker, as characters, are both are defined by their primary motives and a handful of character traits. And I think that is completely appropreate given Star Wars and Indiana Jones are not character studies but rather adventure films. Jyn and Cassian were both sufficiently developed for me to enjoy the characters and sympathize with them. 

However, I am coming off a legendary streak of dud films so I might be overly generous .


----------



## wankerness

I saw it again tonight, and the characters seemed even worse this time. Jyn has ONE good scene, which is the one where she watches the hologram. There, you see her as someone that acts so constipated all the time because to not do that is to open herself up to pain. But, then the rest of the movie, she just emits bland platitudes about hope. Those two "inspirational" speeches she gives before the third act are almost as cringeworthy as the "I don't like sand" scene!!

Cassian and Jyn aren't like...without believable motivations. They're just without interest and lack sufficient character development for anyone to really care by the end. The other characters are even worse. I think the standard audience favorite would be the robot, who does have some good snarky lines throughout. But, besides him, what do we have? There's the defector pilot, who spends almost the entire movie just sitting around freaking out. There's Donny Yen, who kicks ass, but his character is so underbaked I don't think I even know what his name was. They try to substitute him repeating that stupid line about the force over and over for a personality. I kind of like the concept, but he's got no depth or charisma. Same with his husband - that guy seems pretty cool and all, but again, there's no development there. When the movie asks you to care deeply about these guys in the last act, it just does not work. I saw someone try and align this with Mad Max Fury Road, where we get characters with even LESS dialogue who mainly just go through action scenes, but I don't think they're even remotely comparable. Even the wives in that movie have more developed personalities and more charisma than most of these people!

For all its faults, Episode VII introduced three new characters with VERY strong personalities and put three actors with tremendous charisma in the roles. They might do weird things, or they might be able to be accused of being Mary Sues, but I'd take them over the gray cut-outs in this one ANY day.

This all said, the space battle in the last act is a thing of greatness, and there are plenty of cool shots throughout. Gareth Edwards is the master of establishing scale of huge things.


----------



## Danukenator

I think that's a fair counter-argument. I completely agree that the uplifting, lets have hope speech to the senate-type people was outlandishly awful. It was also kinda hilarious when


Spoiler



it completely failed 


. 

I think Cassian deserves more credit, however.


Spoiler



His introduction, where he killed the informant, established him as a ruthless member of the rebel alliance with an efficient "spy" personality. It was his interactions with other characters that made me like him. The way his personality changed over the course of the film didn't make me think "wow, this character's entire personality changed because Jyn has a great speech writer!" But rather that he made personal choices in accordance with the less explicit parts of his personality. I think (and I'd have to re-watch it) there were several instances where character choices deepened our understanding of various characters.



And, while I'm happy to see Donnie Yen in anything, I think he and his commando friend were probably included for very specific plot related reasons. Namely that Episode VII didn't make a ....load of money in China and some producers needed to stop that from happening again.


----------



## Andromalia

That will likely work, the copy sellers will make even better business.


----------



## wankerness

Danukenator said:


> And, while I'm happy to see Donnie Yen in anything, I think he and his commando friend were probably included for very specific plot related reasons. Namely that Episode VII didn't make a ....load of money in China and some producers needed to stop that from happening again.



Oh, absolutely. It's completely transparent. While Donnie Yen is wasted (he only gets one real kickass scene and mostly just hits one guy with a stick or shoots one thing with his staff crossbow thing), he THE ACTOR does have a lot of charisma that at least tries to run counter to the lame character. That "are you KIDDING ME" line probably got the biggest laugh with both audiences I saw it with.

I've seen articles from the Woke Brigade trying to claim their relationship is explicitly gay, but even watching the movie a second time specifically looking for it, there's literally nothing in the movie that suggests anything beyond "very long-term friends." I sort of think those sorts of internet commentators just aren't familiar with the concept of platonic friendship between people of the same gender 

Plus, considering China's attitudes towards homosexuality, there is NO possible way in hell they'd do anything like that with the Chinese characters


----------



## Xaios

I give it a 6.5 or a 7 out of 10. Great action, great visual effects and a good story overall. I found the acting passable to good (I personally think that Mads Mikkelsen's performance was probably the best of the bunch), but they were forced to play characters that I didn't really care about, a fact that wasn't helped by some truly cringe-worthy dialogue.

In particular, there's a scene in which (hopefully without giving up too much) Cassian is talking to Jyn about committing unsavory acts because they serve the cause. I couldn't help but be reminded of a similar scene from Star Trek: DS9. The gist of the scenes are the same, but the scene from Rogue One pales in comparison because of the dialogue as well as the delivery, which are done better here:





Spoiler



I also thought that the CGI'd Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia (RIP Carrie Fischer) were seriously uncanny valley, they did not look convincingly human.



That said, the action and effects were REALLY great. Gareth Edwards really knows how to set up a sense of scale, that's for sure. The overall plot is also good, despite my misgivings about dialogue and characterization.


----------



## wankerness

On second watch I found the latter CGI character to not look that bad at all. The first didn't get any better.


----------



## bostjan

I saw it again. I liked it even better the second time. The


Spoiler



Tarkin


 CGI looked even weirder, though, and the voice still seemed awkward.

I still don't personally see how the general consensus has become that the charters in Rogue 1 were worse than the characters in Ep VII. Jyn's backstory was sufficient for me to explain all of her motivations. On the other hand, there is no reasonable explanation for Rey's actions in Ep VII. Cassian is a ruthless and efficient soldier, whose choices in the film reflect on his awakening, where he has an epiphany about why he became such a good soldier for the rebellion in the first place, whilst Finn watches his best friend get slaughtered by rebels, which should solidify Finn's allegiance toward the First Order, if anything, yet, at the drop of a hat, he turns on his friends and starts blasting away, without any apparent reason. Mads Mikkelsen's character had only a few moments of screen time, yet he still supplied a character who faced moral dilemma, and cleverly dealt with it in a way that makes perfect motivational sense. K2SO was witty and provided comic relief, yet was still a badass in the final scenes. Donnie Yen and the other guy with the heavy gun might not have had a lot of character development, but, to be fair, they were second string characters in the film, and they still compelled the audience better than Poe Dameron, whose main mission was to apparently disappear and reappear inexplicably throughout Ep. VII.

I guess you could argue that Director Snidely Whiplash was more a caricature of villainy than an in-depth character, whereas Kylo Ren, despite being the typical Star-Wars-franchise whiny boy angst bad guy, still was a compelling character. But overall, if you are going to compare VII with Rogue One, I'm a little lost at sea when it comes to how VII could be considered a better flick overall.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

bostjan said:


> But overall, if you are going to compare VII with Rogue One, I'm a little lost at sea when it comes to how VII could be considered a better flick overall.


Ditto


----------



## wankerness

bostjan said:


> I saw it again. I liked it even better the second time. The
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Tarkin
> 
> 
> CGI looked even weirder, though, and the voice still seemed awkward.
> 
> I still don't personally see how the general consensus has become that the charters in Rogue 1 were worse than the characters in Ep VII. Jyn's backstory was sufficient for me to explain all of her motivations. On the other hand, there is no reasonable explanation for Rey's actions in Ep VII. Cassian is a ruthless and efficient soldier, whose choices in the film reflect on his awakening, where he has an epiphany about why he became such a good soldier for the rebellion in the first place, whilst Finn watches his best friend get slaughtered by rebels, which should solidify Finn's allegiance toward the First Order, if anything, yet, at the drop of a hat, he turns on his friends and starts blasting away, without any apparent reason. Mads Mikkelsen's character had only a few moments of screen time, yet he still supplied a character who faced moral dilemma, and cleverly dealt with it in a way that makes perfect motivational sense. K2SO was witty and provided comic relief, yet was still a badass in the final scenes. Donnie Yen and the other guy with the heavy gun might not have had a lot of character development, but, to be fair, they were second string characters in the film, and they still compelled the audience better than Poe Dameron, whose main mission was to apparently disappear and reappear inexplicably throughout Ep. VII.
> 
> I guess you could argue that Director Snidely Whiplash was more a caricature of villainy than an in-depth character, whereas Kylo Ren, despite being the typical Star-Wars-franchise whiny boy angst bad guy, still was a compelling character. But overall, if you are going to compare VII with Rogue One, I'm a little lost at sea when it comes to how VII could be considered a better flick overall.



Not one single non-robot character has a character arc. NO ONE is in a different place at the end than they are at the beginning. They make the biggest attempt at this with Jyn, but it falls flatter than flat, since they show her being heroic and saving a baby BEFORE what's supposed to be the turning point of her character realizing that she can't only care for herself.

K2SO is the only one that even remotely changes, but his character is muddy, too. They introduce him as "a reprogrammed imperial droid," but when in the movie does that actually have anything to do with his personality? It is used as a camouflage gimmick a couple times, but that's it.

The bad guy has LESS personality at the end than he does at the beginning! He seems intelligent and morally conflicted in the very first scene, but he's pure moustache-twirler for the entire rest of the movie. You can tell he has some kind of respect for and history with Galen (or whatever his name is), but that's just completely thrown out the window for the rest of the movie.

Cassian also is introduced as being moral gray area man with shooting that dude, but then he immediately turns heroic for no apparent reason and stays that way for the entire rest of the movie.

The characters are vaguely drawn and flat-out bad.

And Darth Vader? What the hell does he have to do with anything in this movie? The movie is supposed to stand on its own, supposedly, but he has utterly no relevance to the plot and if anyone actually watched this as a standalone they'd be confused as hell. 

I saw someone compare his big scene at the end to if at the end of the movie Glory,


Spoiler



after all the heroes die for a larger cause, there was a scene where some Confederate general showed up and slaughtered a whole bunch of Union soldiers and you were supposed to think it was awesome.


 Dead on, IMHO. It is great fan-service, but kind of WTF.

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE the movie, but it has tremendous character problems. I did not get emotionally invested. I just thought the look of it was incredible and thought it remained entertaining throughout.


----------



## Xaios

wankerness said:


> And Darth Vader? What the hell does he have to do with anything in this movie? The movie is supposed to stand on its own, supposedly, but he has utterly no relevance to the plot and if anyone actually watched this as a standalone they'd be confused as hell.
> 
> I saw someone compare his big scene at the end to if at the end of the movie Glory,
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> after all the heroes die for a larger cause, there was a scene where some Confederate general showed up and slaughtered a whole bunch of Union soldiers and you were supposed to think it was awesome.
> 
> 
> Dead on, IMHO. It is great fan-service, but kind of WTF.



Oh Lord, not gonna lie, that is a GREAT comparison.


----------



## bostjan

wankerness said:


> Not one single non-robot character has a character arc. NO ONE is in a different place at the end than they are at the beginning. They make the biggest attempt at this with Jyn, but it falls flatter than flat, since they show her being heroic and saving a baby BEFORE what's supposed to be the turning point of her character realizing that she can't only care for herself.
> 
> K2SO is the only one that even remotely changes, but his character is muddy, too. They introduce him as "a reprogrammed imperial droid," but when in the movie does that actually have anything to do with his personality? It is used as a camouflage gimmick a couple times, but that's it.
> 
> The bad guy has LESS personality at the end than he does at the beginning! He seems intelligent and morally conflicted in the very first scene, but he's pure moustache-twirler for the entire rest of the movie. You can tell he has some kind of respect for and history with Galen (or whatever his name is), but that's just completely thrown out the window for the rest of the movie.
> 
> Cassian also is introduced as being moral gray area man with shooting that dude, but then he immediately turns heroic for no apparent reason and stays that way for the entire rest of the movie.
> 
> The characters are vaguely drawn and flat-out bad.
> 
> And Darth Vader? What the hell does he have to do with anything in this movie? The movie is supposed to stand on its own, supposedly, but he has utterly no relevance to the plot and if anyone actually watched this as a standalone they'd be confused as hell.
> 
> I saw someone compare his big scene at the end to if at the end of the movie Glory,
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> after all the heroes die for a larger cause, there was a scene where some Confederate general showed up and slaughtered a whole bunch of Union soldiers and you were supposed to think it was awesome.
> 
> 
> Dead on, IMHO. It is great fan-service, but kind of WTF.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I LIKE the movie, but it has tremendous character problems. I did not get emotionally invested. I just thought the look of it was incredible and thought it remained entertaining throughout.



Jyn goes from simply wanting her freedom, to meeting with Saw, and starts to realize that she needs to make some sacrifices for the rebel cause, after seeing the destructive power of the weapon. It is a character arc, since she goes from simply wanting to run away and disappear and have nothing to do with the empire nor the rebels at the beginning of the story, and then, by the end of the story, she is willing to die for the rebel cause, after what she has witnessed and what she has gained and, more importantly, what she lost. The scene of her saving a baby doesn't contradict anything, since she's never portrayed as a scoundrel, only as someone wanting to run away from her past and her demons. Once she's already involved in a firefight, it is only a small act to run the child away from the battle.

If you are not compelled by that arc, then that's one thing, but to simply dismiss it as no arc at all, just comes off as arrogant, since, it seems more like you just ignored the details rather than analyzed what was there before concluding that you didn't like it.

Cassian goes through a simpler arc, but still, it's all happening on screen, and I think I already explained it. Again, if it doesn't grab you, that's fine, but to dismiss it altogether, just seems silly to me.

I wasn't too impressed with the scene between Vader and the director. All of the Vader stuff at the end was out of place in the film, as a stand-alone, but it worked at a lead-in to Ep IV, so I'll give that a pass as a fan service tie-in, although it might have been better as an after-credits scene. Since the Death Star plans were the McGuffin for Ep IV, and the major plot point of the last act of Rogue One, and the final scene simply shows what happened to them after the battle of Scarif, I think there is some justification for the final scene, but I can see how you could take it or leave it just the same. The statement that the final scene is simply gratuitous is not entirely wrong.

One issue is that films like this introduce too many characters, and without hope of further character development in sequels and stuff, it's tough to show as much development for each character. Ep IV had similar problems, though. I mean, what was Han Solo's motivation to go back and fight for the Rebels? There's a lot of handwaving with the characters that old films like that get away with. But yeah, I think it's maybe just too many characters to really go in depth. At least there is a main character: Jyn Erso. Who was the main character in Ep I? Obi Wan? Anakin? Did anyone even care, because laser blasts and explosions and STAR WARS? 

I like Star Wars as much as any 80's kid, but, to me, I'd much rather have had three movies like Rogue One to whatever happened in the prequel trilogy. Heck, I'd take Rogue One over most mainstream hollywood popcorn flicks. Is it on par with Memento, Shawshank Redemption, or even Donnie Darko? No. But if anybody was expecting something with that level of character detail from a Star Wars move, then I don't know what to tell them.


----------



## blacai

Not a fan at all... I am 31 yo and the first one I saw was the Episode VII. I enjoyed it more than Rogue One.

Rogue One was for me, just some "silly" jokes and from what my friends told me, I need to know all the previous just to get the point, too many references.


----------



## TedEH

I find what I liked about this movie is that it put some of the mystery back into the universe. Where the prequels were all about explaining everything away, the original movie(s) had a big sense of mystery, adventure, wonder, etc. You were presented with concepts like the force, and left to imagine what its implications were instead of just being told outright. The Jedi were basically these magical space wizards, the limits of their power unknown, their history unknown- and even the characters in the movie treated them this way - Han Solo treats the force like it's a religion or a myth, because in the universe at the time, it was supposed to be.

Rogue One gives you just a little bit of that back. Characters whose back stories are unknown, but give you just enough to have motivation, but leave enough out to have a sense of mystery. There are times where you can argue that the force is being used, or has a strong influence, but it's not called out, or explicitly said "this person uses the force" - you just see someone with familiar abilities, and are left to wonder what their connection to the force really is.

Similar to the moment in Ep 7 where the force is used to stop a blaster bolt in mid air- the point is to show us there there are still things about the force (and the characters that use it) to be imagined and explored. The movie is telling us at that there's still cinematic room to explore this universe.


----------



## wankerness

bostjan said:


> Jyn goes from simply wanting her freedom, to meeting with Saw, and starts to realize that she needs to make some sacrifices for the rebel cause, after seeing the destructive power of the weapon. It is a character arc, since she goes from simply wanting to run away and disappear and have nothing to do with the empire nor the rebels at the beginning of the story, and then, by the end of the story, she is willing to die for the rebel cause, after what she has witnessed and what she has gained and, more importantly, what she lost. The scene of her saving a baby doesn't contradict anything, since she's never portrayed as a scoundrel, only as someone wanting to run away from her past and her demons. Once she's already involved in a firefight, it is only a small act to run the child away from the battle.
> 
> If you are not compelled by that arc, then that's one thing, but to simply dismiss it as no arc at all, just comes off as arrogant, since, it seems more like you just ignored the details rather than analyzed what was there before concluding that you didn't like it.
> 
> Cassian goes through a simpler arc, but still, it's all happening on screen, and I think I already explained it. Again, if it doesn't grab you, that's fine, but to dismiss it altogether, just seems silly to me.
> 
> I wasn't too impressed with the scene between Vader and the director. All of the Vader stuff at the end was out of place in the film, as a stand-alone, but it worked at a lead-in to Ep IV, so I'll give that a pass as a fan service tie-in, although it might have been better as an after-credits scene. Since the Death Star plans were the McGuffin for Ep IV, and the major plot point of the last act of Rogue One, and the final scene simply shows what happened to them after the battle of Scarif, I think there is some justification for the final scene, but I can see how you could take it or leave it just the same. The statement that the final scene is simply gratuitous is not entirely wrong.
> 
> One issue is that films like this introduce too many characters, and without hope of further character development in sequels and stuff, it's tough to show as much development for each character. Ep IV had similar problems, though. I mean, what was Han Solo's motivation to go back and fight for the Rebels? There's a lot of handwaving with the characters that old films like that get away with. But yeah, I think it's maybe just too many characters to really go in depth. At least there is a main character: Jyn Erso. Who was the main character in Ep I? Obi Wan? Anakin? Did anyone even care, because laser blasts and explosions and STAR WARS?
> 
> I like Star Wars as much as any 80's kid, but, to me, I'd much rather have had three movies like Rogue One to whatever happened in the prequel trilogy. Heck, I'd take Rogue One over most mainstream hollywood popcorn flicks. Is it on par with Memento, Shawshank Redemption, or even Donnie Darko? No. But if anybody was expecting something with that level of character detail from a Star Wars move, then I don't know what to tell them.



At no point did I ever hint it was worse than the prequels, besides those two abominable speeches getting close to their level! It's definitely much, much better. I'd give it about a 6.5/10.

"Cassian is a ruthless and efficient soldier, whose choices in the film reflect on his awakening, where he has an epiphany about why he became such a good soldier for the rebellion in the first place, "

It seems like he's the same throughout, a dedicated rebel who will do almost anything for the cause, though some of those things make him feel bad (ex shooting the guy at the beginning). It's like he had a bad day at the beginning. It's like he was always the same, at the beginning he followed orders and was sad about it (shooting the guy) and later he didn't follow orders and was less sad about it (not shooting the guy, and then going to help Jyn). Seems like his character is the same throughout and didn't change, just was put in different situations? I dunno. I guess maybe you could say his arc was he realized he didn't have to follow orders.

Your explanation of Jyn is good, I guess I can buy that. I still think she's bland and that either the actress was wrong or almost everything (the exception being the hologram scene) about the presentation of her was dull. Zero charisma! She's just like your standard action movie tough. There's nothing like the depth of other good action movie heroes/heroines. Like, Nausicaa, or Ripley (in Aliens!), or Max/Furiosa in FR, or A$hitaka (lol word filter). 

I dunno how what I wrote was "arrogant," it's not like I suggested I could do better!  I think this is a problem that might be related to Gareth Edwards. His Godzilla is completely without interesting characters (even though I really like it) and Monsters has two near-ciphers at its core (even though I like that one too!).


----------



## mongey

Saw it yesterday. I liked it allot. I rate it as a better movie than VII 

It does have its flaws , like the speech , but let's not forget so do the originals. 

I thought they did a a great job of making it look and sound like ep IV. The Vader stuff was pure fan service but it is justified given the lead in to IV imho.


----------



## jwade

Loved it, would've preferred it if they'd not featured Vader as much though.


----------



## protest

I'll take Vader fan service all day everyday...just sayin.


----------



## bostjan

The entire Star Wars plot arc is a ride through good versus evil, in some sense. This is presented in a somewhat odd way, though, since, in the Prequels, the Republic is the "good" and the separatists are "evil." As the story progresses, the Republic becomes the Empire, and the separatists become the rebellion, and the roles of good and evil are switched, all the while, a greater evil (Palpatine) is manipulating both of them. Ep III left us with the Empire being born in order to bring peace to the galaxy, and Ep IV had picked up with the Empire being flat out evil, willing to murder entire planets worth of people. 

I had kind of hoped to see Rogue One expose some of the in-between, which it almost did; however, even in the flashback scene, the Imperial force was seemingly willing to murder a man's family in order to pressure him to cooperate.

I'm the guy in the audience who is way more interested in the villain's character arc than the good guy's. I think people are generally neutral in character until circumstances precipitate to define who they are in deed. Luke, in the OT, made some difficult choices to become the hero in the end. He could have taken a simpler path to assassinate the Emperor or whatever, but, instead he chose to become pacifist when the chips were all down, knowing it could kill him, but he hoped to redeem his father (whom he hardly knew), and it worked.

In the PT, Anakin started off kind of naive and overly optimistic, became overly angsty and too self-confident, and was manipulated by Palpatine due to his naivety, objection to authority, and overly active emotions. Palpatine had used his apprentices to his whim and then threw them away at the same whims, but Anakin had somehow managed to survive being destroyed by his failure. The part that seemed out-of-place to me, was Palpatine's willingness to rebuild Anakin as a cyborg.

Anyway, the director, Tarkin, Palpatine, etc., none of them really give us any insight as to what made them evil men, in the films. I'm not saying it's awful, but, to me, there is a missed series of opportunities there for some interesting character arcs. I guess since they all died as villains, with no redemption, it justifies them being extremely one dimensional.

Maybe it's just me, but, in Ep VII, I thought Kylo Ren had the most potential for character depth. Yeah, he's basically Anakin 2.0 at this point in time, but he seems to have an interesting backstory, and, I hope, it will get more interesting in Ep VIII, and give us some more of his motivation.


----------



## Murdstone

Did anybody over the age of 14 actually think K2SO was funny?


----------



## wankerness

Murdstone said:


> Did anybody over the age of 14 actually think K2SO was funny?



Yes. Most people.


----------



## jwade

Yep. Best character in the movie.


----------



## A-Branger

jwade said:


> Loved it, would've preferred it if they'd not featured Vader as much though.


as much?, he only had two scenes  I agree the first one was odd, but the last scene it was a must in order to be able to tie the two movies together

remember this movie was in the era right just before EP IV, so everyone is going to be asking "wheres Vader?", being him the lider of the Empire, you HAVE to at least mention him, and to not show him it was going to be a disaster for the fans. One of the most iconic characters of the saga, and you make a movie who fits on the timeline of him and not show him? 

If not I would say, they show him too little (taking into account what I already said before, this would be it for this character, theres no other movie they can do to use him again) 



protest said:


> I'll take Vader fan service all day everyday...just sayin.



yup



jwade said:


> Yep. Best character in the movie.



agree here. I loved they give a more "real" personality to it, rather than a "robot" personality. Bit more like bender


----------



## jwade

I think that it would've made more sense to axe the entire first scene with Vader and just have it be an intimidating hologram message, making his appearance at the end significantly more impactful. The first scene was awkward and, in my opinion, very out of character.


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## TedEH

I actually like the inclusion of the first Vader scene because there was so much done there to try to make the character feel grand again- it's the only scene I can think of in the movie where the cinematography in itself is trying to tell you a story - the shadows, angles, framing, etc., trying to play at a sense of scale. To me, it seemed reasonably clear that the intention was to re-establish Vader's role, remind you that you're supposed to fear him. It would have been a great scene had Vader either been more in-character, or just said nothing at all. The dialog ruined an otherwise great scene, IMO.


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## Demiurge

What's kind of funny about the first Vader scene is that its context is like a grandiose version of office politics. Krennic flies to Lava Planet and disturbs him from his chambers just to mewl about getting proper credit as if Vader is a middle manager and the Death Star is the TPS Report. Maybe it was supposed to show Krennic as bold, but it could also read as him having a painful lack of self-awareness of his expendability.


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## Lorcan Ward

While a film shouldn't be judged by what it was or could have been and only by its final version. It is worth noting that Rogue One had a LOT of reshoots and edits. Originally Krennic had more scenes with Vader and they seemed to have a genuine relationship. If you watch the old trailers you can see these scenes. The introduction and end battle were also quite different. 

There are a number of times in the film where I knew something had been cut out but they had to leave traces of it for continuity reasons, example being the mindreading monster thing, Forest Whitaker's character, Jyn's character arc etc


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## jwade

It was a bummer that Forrest didn't get more screen time. He was one of the most interesting characters and he was given what, 5 minutes of screen time? Hopefully there's a bit of deleted scenes to show more of his character.


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