Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Saw it this afternoon. Saw it on a massive 80ft screen with Dolby Atmos sound. So, it looked and sounded fantastic! Wow, that sound system is incredible.

The movie itself is okay. I liked it. It is definitely uneven, though.

The characters were pretty thin. Didn't find Jyn all that interesting, sadly. She seemed more intriguing in the trailers. Diego Luna's character is okay, but didn't stray too far from a generic "rebel" character. The droid was pretty fun. I really liked Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen. Forest Whitaker was entirely wasted. Riz Ahmed was underused.

On the Empire side, Ben Mendelsohn was mostly wasted. I was hoping they'd let him be a really over the top evil Empire villain. I wasn't expecting "bureaucrat feeling resentful that his boss never appreciates his work". Mendelsohn tried, but that is not that much fun. I ended up almost feeling sorry for him because his bosses were such assholes. CGI Tarkin was very distracting. I guess I appreciate what they were going for, but wow, that didn't quite work. The CGI cameo at the end worked better because it was so short. All of Tarkin's movement seemed off, his facial expressions were inhuman. This stands out horribly when he is put next to Mendelsohn, who has a very expressive face. Vader was.... okay, I guess. The scene at the end felt a bit unnecessary. His final line to Mendelsohn's character was clearly scripted to be clever, but it was just stupid.

Plot was.... exactly what it seemed like it would be. The first half was a bit slow, the second half was a bit messy. But, overall it was solid. Felt like we didn't need the scene on Erdu. Don't know why they didn't immediately jump to the Scarif bit. Seemed to just create drama for the sake of drama. (I mean, I know why, but it seems a lame reason.)

Battle scene was a bit jumbled, but I liked it. There is good "Return of the Jedi"-esque tension in it. I also enjoyed the "suicide mission" feel of it- how they did some crazy things b/c they figured they were all going to die anyway.

I also appreciate that it didn't break the laws of physics as egregiously as "The Force Awakens" did.

One last thing, I did appreciate how it made the Rebel Alliance look competent. I was afraid this film would show them getting mowed down by the Empire. But, they seemed to hold up pretty well, all things considering.

I'd put it about on par with "The Force Awakens", maybe a bit better? Better than the prequels, definitely.

They came out today and said they couldnt make this story without tarkin, which is complete bullshit. They could have easily just used more vader or had krennic just receive messages from someone else.

Bingo. Could have easily done Tarkin as a hologram. The whole "I'm taking over your project" bit could have been a threat issued remotely. Tarkin didn't need to be there for the first test of the weapon. Could have used Vader instead in some of those spots. Logistically, Tarkin needed to be there by the end, but a 1 minute CGI Tarkin scene at the end would have been way less distracting.

I think part of using Tarkin as much as they did (and of some of the other, weirder choices they made) was that they're trying to establish what they can get away with, stylistically, i.e., what are people more and less likely to let slide. The stuff everyone's complaining about is less likely to repeat, whereas the stuff that's being let slide (the lack or crawl or music in the opening, the planet labels, the time jump, everyone dying) they now know they can get away with.

Lone Locust of the Apocalypse Oh yeah, him. I rewatched Force Awakens just last week and forgot he was in a couple of crowd scenes at the Rebel base. He may have said a couple of sentences.

You know, I thought the same thing about Chirrut and Baze, at least after the way they played that last scene.

Hadn't thought about it, but I'd buy it. I thought they were the two best characters.

I also loved Baze's big ass gun. Wooo!

There was an Asian pilot in ROTJ.

We will cross our fingers for an Extended Version release of Rogue One, then. As I've thought about it today, putting Galen, Krennic, and the plans in different places seems more and more like it hamstrings the movie - if they were in the same place, we'd have an opportunity to understand Galen and Krennic by seeing them interact more, and by streamlining the plot (by skipping the Eadu trip) you'd have time for more incidental development of the heist team. I'd love to get a sense of Krennic feeling personally betrayed by Galen's treachery.

I may be being led astray by my need for more Mads in the film though.

Ooh, I know this one from the Star Wars CCG! Those are code cylinders that they can insert them into dataports, like the ones R2 plugs into, to identify themselves and open doors and such. 

They already recast Tarkin once for Episode III, with Wayne Pygram- Scorpius from Farscape. It might not have been perfect, Auberjonois would be more interesting, but I would rather they had stuck with that than the creepy CGI simulacrum.

Here's something Rogue One brought up again for me, speaking of the Alliance: how many ships does it have? How BIG is it? To go up against the Empire, even as a guerrilla force, it must have thousands of ships. But in A New Hope, the limits of FX meant it only had, like, 20 ships total, which in narrative terms is something that's always bugged me.

Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazon would be my pick for the most gratuituous cameo, because


It's kind of this full Battle of Endor-esque engagement (complete with their own version of Admiral Ackbar.)

What's kind of fun for me are the Hammerhead corvettes the Rebel Alliance uses - the design concept originates from the Knight of the Old Republic games - and, no spoilers, but they find something interesting to do with them during the battle sequence.

I love Auberjonois, but Scorpius was essentially Tarkin - Tarkin in Darth Vader's skin, if you'll forgive that terrible turn of phrase - so I hoped for years that he would reprise the role, possibly in the long gestating TV series.

And then of course that never happened. I think a key problem, though, is Wayne Pygram was playing Tarkin decades before A New Hope, this version of Tarkin is literally a couple of days younger than the Tarkin we encounter in that film.

Powerthirteen I always kind of assumed the Rebel Alliance was this haphazard guerilla warfare thing - pitched battles with Imperial fleets is, with the exception of Endor, something we never see them do in the original trilogy - if the Empire shows up, they run away. They probably have lots and lots of fighters, and extensive networks of spies, but fleets...

Well given that strategy, it makes sense that they either do not have many capital ships, or even if they do, cannot get enough of them to Endor even given enough time to prepare. In the additional lore, a lot of their capital ships are not even capital ships at all - Admiral Ackbar's flagship was a repurposed civilian ship, and Admiral Raddus's flagship in Rogue One was a repurposed government building.