Anyone else seen it yet? For me it was amazing. Had a brilliant feel, engaging, and makes the events of Episode IV much more intense.

Spoiler stuff behind the spoiler tag

Quick joke on this -


Guy#1 - Hey, It would be really cool is we all go in costume for the Rogue One midnight show! You in?
Guy#2 - Well, OK. I'll bring my kid too, so I guess I will get a costume for him too.
Guy#1 - Awesome! See you and your kid tonight!

Later that night, a few minutes before going in the theater...

Guy#1 - You Rebel scu.... WHAT! NO! GUUUUYSSS!!!
Guy#2 - Omelette du fromage!
Kid - ...just kill me now...


https://i.reddituploads.com/dbf1bcfa9c21...9602fd022f76eef

WTF?? They look like they mistook the mall for a scifi convention.

Or put this on the seat next to you and tell everyone it is your friend cosplaying as Obi-Wan...

https://i.redd.it/o6hazyza4r3y.jpg

Nothing a little music can't fix.






The Jedi Master

Going tomorrow afternoon! Can't wait to see the AT-AT's.

Aren't they called AT-CTs? There are some differences such as weaponry from the old...er, future AT-ATs.



The Jedi Master

I'll take your word for it, I haven't seen it yet.

Just get back from the theater, I saw it with the same groupe of people with which I saw Episode VII last year. At the time our feelings were mixed, but this time everyone agreed*, it wasn't good at all.
Episode IV Death Star Attack still shivers me, but here, while there are numerous combat scenes, in most of them I felt nothing but boredom. John William music is greatly missed. Actors didn't convinced me and there are a couple of (quite huge)incoherences.


(*well, it receive mostly positive reviews in press here in France)

What? A French critic that thought the movie was #%&*$#?

Checks out.



Just joking, thanks for the input... I have also seen other reviews that say the movie is "too much by the numbers'. Can't wait to see for myself.

According to what I have read, they are called AT-ACTs: All Terrain Armored Cargo Transports.

I'll be seeing it either on the 23rd or the 27th, depending on when my buddy's wife and children let him go watch that film with me. So please no spoilers.

Awesome movie.

Going back for a second viewing.

Did I mention awesome movie?

Watched it yesterday , it was ok 6/10
Definitely better than the last one (Force awakens was pants) , this new one had a dark theme to it

Heretic!

Force Awakens was 8/10, this was 11/10

Company organizes an event, going to see it on Thursday.

John Williams didn't do the music for this one?

Because this is not

STAR WARS: Subtitle

This is

Title: A STAR WARS' STORY

Which means it is a different copyright altogether...and therefore Mr. Williams' music cannot be used - only a rendition of it.

I loved it... this is not "Star Wars".

This is a WAR MOVIE... in "star wars land".

One kid was crying at the end.


But I loved it.

Edit:
I should point out that I was kinda lukewarm (no pun intended) over "Force Awakens"... nothing in it was bad, some of it quite good, but overall it didn't WOW me or blow me away. Rogue on the other hand, loved it all... well the one guy with heavy accent was slightly clumsy with dialogue, but I was ok with that too.

One thing Rogue really highlights is that wars cost lives. The body count is high in this.

I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as TFA or ESB. Better than the prequels. Definitely more of a war movie as mentioned and it expands the universe nicely. Much darker picture of the rebellion, which was nice and took the Disney-fication fear out. Kind of dull the first 45 minutes. Will certainly buy it.
The battle was awesome--something you can play through on SWBF dlc, from space to ground.

First thing I did after watching was run home to watch the sequel!

By the way... one of the characters is connected to the Clone Wars animated series.

Watch the fist few episodes of season five to find out.


Or, get spoiled:

I have the urge to see this again knowing that the tone is so different. It isn't totally devoid of humor, but it's much more serious and dry than the other SW movies. I knew it was supposed to be darker, but I think I'd enjoy it more now knowing the extent of it. It's less endearing for SW, but refreshing as something new.

It actually has the most enjoyable droid "humor" of all the latest movies. It's not so overthetop, or "In your face" as the others. K2 is my new droid hero.

It also has plenty of easter eggs for various other Star Wars media, like several tie-ins to "Star Wars Rebels".

Some of the footage of Red Five and Biggs was found in the basement as the Skywalker Ranch, and was footage cut from A New Hope they redigitized and added into the movie.

I dunno, I thought they copied a lot of K2's personality from HK-47 (from Knights of the Old Republic).

I can guarantee that none of the screenwriters or Alan Tudyk played KOTOR.

He said a lot of his lines he ad libbed and they put them into the movie.



The Jedi Master

Tried to find the first seasons of SW Rebels a while back and couldn't find them, just Clones. Recorded most of season 3 but haven't watched yet hoping to start from the beginning.
What little humor there is in the movie refrained from being "cute". About time.

I have them all on BD, Clone Wars and Rebels.
It is good to watch Rebels from the beginning, there are through lines that will be a bit odd if you skip ahead.

Also, many Clone Wars characters have appearances.




The Jedi Master

Largely spoiler-free until minute 21:

That is a hilarious review. It may sound deprecating and offensive at times, but keep in mind these guys are Star Wars fans too.

I agree with some of what they said, but it would have been difficult to get anything commercially viable from Disney without the constant SW self referencing.

I have made myself that question since I saw my first screening - If you remove all the previous movies' references and characters, do you still have a movie that stands on it's own as a good movie?

Character-wise, I have to say, no.

But as it is now, it is a good Star Wars' fan service movie, and I do not expect anything else from it.

And also, for so many fans that complained about TFA copying ANH's plot... they should watch The Guns of Navarone.

Just back from the theatre, watched it in 3D. Great movie.

The only thing I really didn`t like, was the missing of Williams music (I know why, but still...)

Saw it tonight. Kids loved it, I thought it was ok. ( WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD )

Two things that bugged me about it: in ep4, the theft of the DS plans were ( it seemed to me ) implied to be the result of covert action or spycraft; this movie makes it out the be a full on fleet action.

Secondly, Vader sees the rebel ship escape - and yet in Episode 4 the crew members claim when boarded that they are on a peaceful diplomatic mission..... DESPITE THE SHIP JUST UN-DOCKING FROM THE F'ING REBEL FLAGSHIP RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY.

I hate prequels.

Didn't the Ep4 opening crawl always imply that the theft of the plans was part of some kind of major engagement, a noteworthy victory against the Empire:



At the beginning of EP4 the Tantive IV is exchanging fire with the Star Destroyer. When boarded they prepare to fire upon the stormtroopers at first sight. That is not the behavior of an imperial senators crew on a peaceful diplomatic mission. They already know that they've lost their cover and there is no hope anybody will buy this story.

Well, there is a new hope.

Also telling was that prior to the unauthorized mission launch in Rogue One the Rebel leaders were indeed demoralized and despairing after seeing the Death Star. That battle and the stealing of the plans gave them hope. Luke's arrival and destruction of the Death Star cemented it.



The Jedi Master

Dropping a lot of Star Wars conventions helped, IMO, to make it a better movie on its own merits. To that extent I am fully satisfied with what I got. That the characters may not have been as strong as in some of the other movies is acceptable, given that most of them die anyway. No, it was a good film. I would even rate it to be one of the best.

If I had to show kids Star Wars for the first time, I'd be hard pressed to set a sequence, but I think it'd look like this:
Episode IV, V, II, III, Rogue One, VI.

Episone I simply isn't necessary to understand any of the storyline, and it has a lot of JJB in it. Two reasons to drop it from screening. If the kids were screaming for more, I'd then tell them that there was also Episode I, if they insisted on it. And then I'd show them Episode VII (because it starts a new storyline (and, at the same time, says good-bye to a lot of established characters), plus, it's essentially a remake of Episode IV, and we don't really klnow how the story will continue from there.

Starting with IV and V is, I think, a really strong opening. Then go back to see how Anakin becomes Vader, and conclude his story arc with Episode VI. Throwing in Rogue One before watching Episode VI helps to keep spirits high, and by the time that they are through with four Episodes kids will probably be able to handle Rogue One, and recognize the tragedy of Vader by the end of Ep VI.


All in all, the departure of George Lucas seems to do the whole franchise good. I'd rate Rogue One rather high, to be honest. Episone I is the pits, I suppose we all agree on that, and The Force Awakens ... well, the best thing that can be said about it is that it manages to revive a withering spirit, I guess. It had its moments.

Well, I saw it tonight, and, I'm probably alone, but... meh.

The dialogue was bad, the characters were cardboard, and the first half was so skitzophrenic they never allowed any substance to develop.

I cared about the robot the most. That's saying something. The robot was more relatable than the humans. The main character needed significantly more time in the beginning to flesh out why we should care about her and her father. Just shooting her mom wasn't enough. I wanted to see more her #%&*$# life before she became significant to the rebellion. We got none of that. As a result, I didn't care about her or hardly any other of her crew... other than the robot.

I finally got around to watching it this past Saturday. A few observations:

1. Mon Mothma sure did age a LOT in the couple of years between ANH and Return of the Jedi!

2. I guess cloud computing doesn't exist in the Star Wars universe. That hard drive/data farm was fricking huge!

3. Did the estate or family of Peter Cushing get compensated for his likeness being used so significantly in the film?



I enjoyed Rogue One significantly more than Force Awakens.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/rogue-one-peter-cushing-digital-likeness.html

it's almost certain that Disney did their due diligence in making sure that the use of Cushing's likeness was legal; when reached for comment, a Disney representative pointed to two mentions of Cushing in the credits: "With Special Acknowledgment to Peter Cushing, OBE" and "Special Thanks to The Estate of Peter Cushing, OBE." Actors' union SAG-AFTRA, meanwhile, issued this comment: "Using a digital or virtual re-creation of a performer, deceased or living, in a film, television show, video game, or any other audio-visual work, requires, at minimum, prior consent of the performer or the performers' beneficiaries. The issue for us is straightforward and clear: The use of performers' work in this manner has obvious economic value and should be treated accordingly."

Thanks for that info Falstar. Kudos to Disney!

I'm going to see it tomorrow.I don't usually go to the cinema but my bro said I need to,plus he wants to see it for the 3rd time.

I saw this for a second time, and I honestly cannot get myself to like it as much as others do. To me, this is closer to the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series than to any of the movies in the saga (from that context, I am OK with it).

I bet that without looking into the web NONE of you could remember the names of all the main characters.

You'd go: -"Well, there's Jen, and K2-something, and the Han Solo kinda guy, the Donnie Yen blind guy with the other guy, Forrest Whitaker guest appearance.... and the other... and the Director was the bad guy."

...and Vader, and Leia, and C-Threepio and R2, and Walrus face and AT-STs and Tie Fighters, The Death Star and... (you get the idea).

Characters that are bored to be in a war. With the only motivation to fight and die - Death Star is bad.

In comparison to ANH - Luke wanted adventure, to go to the academy, then he saw Leia's Hologram and wanted to know more, which took him to Obi-Wan, his family dies, meet Han Solo - character arcs.

The movie brings nothing of its own. It's a Fan film. A good fan film at that, but I cannot come to compare it to Empire Strikes Back. Yes, ESB was dark-er than ANH, but at least that one brought its own thing. Moved the SW universe forward.

I'm willing to bet that even if you did not like it as much, you had a better picture of the characters in the Force Awakens. Enough to know what you liked and did not like about them. In Rogue One they are cardboard archetypes, and generic at that.

Sure, it is "dark" and "gritty"....and in Star Wars, if you like Brown Spicy mustard, and your choices are French Yellow mustard and Hellmann's mayo, you are going to go with the yellow mustard... which means, even if it is not a movie that can stand on it's own merits, the fact that it is dark, automatically makes it your favorite.

Lastly - this story has been made in the old SW EU and in games in the past. A few of those were more interesting, and made more sense in the continuity of the story than Rogue One.

Fascinating post Bib and I agree with quite a bit of it.

I'm wondering if we should ask to get this thread and the thread in CH combined. I posted in the CH thread mostly because it warned of spoilers in the title so I felt more comfortable discussing it openly in that one..

IMHO, No, too much negativity in the CH lately to bring down to our little unnoticed forum.

Here's an interview with some of the editors about difference scenes, and a little about the reshoot footage. Spoiler alert!:

https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/rogue-ones-e...-110124381.html

Just back from the cinema. I thought it was great.I will definitely be seeing it again once released to DVD etc.

I guess I was rooting for the bad guys because I just absolutely loved that scene at the end where Vader went all medieval on the Rebel soldiers.

In the end credits I saw Alan Tudyk and thought 'I didn't see him'? I guessed then he might have been the voice for K2-SO. Had to get home and google it.

I have to be honest,I didn't expect to see a or a right at the end but boy was that fantastic

Just back from seeing this with two of my grand kids, they both loved it and said it was the best SW film yet and totally eclipsed Force Awakens.
However they did both say one thing I agreed with in that...



I really quite enjoyed it, apart from the discomfort mentioned above, I have mentioned before that we have intermissions about 1hr into the film here and that disrupts your immersion into the film and they always seem to pick a spot where there is no natural break, they just chop a scene and leave you for 10 minutes and by that time you are out of the action.

It was our annual pilgrimage to the cinema with the grand kids, today there were 8 of us, the young ones went with my wife and sister in law to see: Sing, Ghost Rockers, and Trolls, while I took the older two to see Rogue One.

The advances with CGI in "bringing back" deceased actors has most definitely started a heated debate in the industry now. I think though for the most part the actors unions are fine with it as long as prior permission is given by the estate or relatives of the deceased actor. Oh, and financial compensation given to the estate/relatives of course.

It was kind of funny to see all those "revived" actors, I don't have problem with it, just that it was almost but not quite right, had me looking to see what was wrong rather than enjoying the performance.

I remember how this issue first came to the forefront with the death of Oliver Reed during the shooting of "Gladiator". The producers ended up using a CGI face on the body of another actor for a couple of shots in the final act of the movie.

I enjoyed the film. My only reservations are the CGI for dead actors and all the goods guys get killed off at the end. The only other Hiccup in the movie was the supposed Love interest of the main characters.

I was OK with it. I was hugely distracted at first, but also amazed. To me, it was so convincing that after a few minutes I assumed they had simply found some actor who looked exactly like him :/

I think many of the complaints about "obvious CGI" come about when what you're seeing can only be CGI it's in the same vein as "I can always tell a fake dinosaur" everyone I know who don't really know who is didn't see a thing out of place.

The only issue I had with the Peter Cushing CGI was in some close ups his lips appeared a bit "off" while speaking. Otherwise it was very, very good.


Princess Leia at the end however just looked really "off" altogether.

Ah, but my grand kids didn't know who the actor was and they still brought it up as looking odd, on the drive from the cinema to the restaurant the grand daughter was the one that first commented on it and she is not that big a star wars fan either.

The thing I don't get is that they could have easily roto'ed her image in from some footage in the OT. I guess it was all to make her say a single word of dialogue...

I wonder if they had two "teams" working on the graphics. I don't know how one could be pretty good and one character so un-professional looking. Broke my suspension of belief.

PC looked ok when he was looking directly at the camera, but when the head turned away the facial image stretched and lost the shape of PC's head, that caught my attention and then that made me look so much closer to the image and thinking "Was it CGI or did they find an actor that looked a little like PC in only one direction"

With 8 of us going to the movies I bought a 10 use 100 day card for �84, card gives you 10 tickets that can be used over 100 days, the normal cost of entrance is �10.50 so for 8 of us it was going to be �84 any way and now I still have 2 tickets left to use over the next 3 months. Kids and adults pay the same, and if the film is 3D then it is another �3 on top, there was no 3D of Rogue One at the time we wanted to go.

That's because as a people you all suffer from tiny bladders and severe leg clotting and MUST be forced to get up every hour. It's for the public health, you know.



The Jedi Master

I'm pretty sure that in the US the use of intermissions for films died out by the mid 70's. The most recent film I have on dvd that used an intermission is "Tora, Tora, Tora" which came out in 1970.

The Hateful Eight had an intermission. But, I guess that's Tarantino :/

Yeah that's a rare exception. Tarantino loves to add a retro-feel to his films.

And here was me thinking it was because of the short attention... Look Squirrel ... now where was I?

You'd think Leia would look good.
Remember a few years back Lucas had the main members of the original cast (or more?) scanned in so he could use their likenesses in movies in the future.
Obviously Cushing was long departed, so he would've been done "free hand" or something. Maybe that was easier than de-aging Carrie?

Despite all that fan service in the film, we still don't know how Vader was able to track the Tantive IV to Tatooine after it had escaped into Hyperspace.

For all he knew - which wasn't all that much: he still assumed that the plans were transmitted directly to the Corvette, not to that Mon Calamari Cruiser and then taken by hand by the very same people he kept force pushing/choking around a hacking to pieces with his lightsaber(TM) - that ship would have flown directly to Alderaan to deliver the plans, not taking a detour to Tatooine to pick up Obi-Wan. Obviously Vader had no clue that Obi-Wan was alive on Tatooine, or he would have paid him a visit. So how did he anticipate Leia going to Tatooine?

Especially since the original trilogy kept making the point that once you have entered Hyperspace, all is well as you have escaped your pursuers. Or is that assumption only valid for the Millennium Falcon or the Ghost?

Instead of badly animating Leia's wax sculpture from Madame Tussaud's they should have invested some of that CGI budget into Vader force-throwing a magnetic tracking device onto the Tantive's hull.

Great post Jayhawk!

Ah, plot holes. Movies will never get rid of them entirely.

In this case an easily avoidable plot hole. Someone just needed to have watched the first five minutes of ANH and listen to what Vader said about the whole "transmitting of plans" affair.

Since Vader mentioned that "several transmissions were beamed to the ship by Rebel spies", they could simply have shown how the Empire was able to somehow triangulate their position (maybe the Corvette also transmitted confirmation of having received the transmission or something). An Imperial officer informing Vader that the ship had been located near Tatooine would have been quite enough:"My Lord, we've got them!".

So, basically: Erso sends plans to damaged Mon Calamari Cruiser -> Cruiser can't escape, therefore sends "several transmissions" to Tantive IV which is already en route to Tatooine -> Empire intercepts signals and manages to locate Tantive IV and plot its course -> Vader's Star Destroyer intercepts Tantive IV over Tatooine.

I guess no one from Disney's marketing department was available to review the draft of their script marketing concept.

Remember in ESB Vader had them plot possible destinations based on the Falcon's last observed trajectory before it went into hyperspace (or so they thought).
In the chaos of that attack, it's quite possible Leia's ship jumped away but never altered its course, allowing Vader's crew to figure out where it went.

As for Cushing, they made a mold of his head for his small but memorable scene in Top Secret! They found it and laser scanned it for this film.



The Jedi Master

That would have been quite an oversight by the late Captain Antilles, considering his ship was carrying the most important data card in the Galaxy.

Maybe Vader only choked him for the sake of interrogation, but killed him for being stupid.

I don't know where Scarif is in relation to Tatooine (Outer Rim) and Alderaan (Core World), but I doubt Tatooine was right along the way**. I also would think they would have made several shorter jumps to throw off any pursuer, if pursuing another ship through hyperspace is even possible without a tracking device: from what official EU material I have read and can remember, it's apparently not possible. In any case, Rogue One also showed that it's apparently possible to change course while in hyperspace, which makes it even weirder that the Devastator could track the Tantive IV. Also, Vader would first have had to go back aboard the Devastator before it could start its pursuit.

Is an ISD "faster" than a Corellian Corvette? Could the Devastator gain on the Tantive while in hyperspace?

I maintain that they could have explained the whole thing with a sentence or two.

Maybe it was all a coincidence? During initial interrogation on board that MC cruiser, some Rebel gave the standard "We're on Dantooine" reply to being asked where the Rebel base is. Vader misheard that as Tatooine, thought about how he always had wanted to visit his old home world again anyway (maybe stop by the Lars Homestead for some blue milk), and thought: "why not?!"


**Edit: just found a Star Wars Galaxy Map that shows Scarif being very close to Tatooine. So it would have been a short jump. Still, Alderaan is in quite another direction.

I hate to be pedantic, but it's suspension of disbelief.

I'm not going to go out of my way to defend a film, but for stuff like that, because it's all made up technology, I'm not going to worry about a lot of the details. The Tantive IV was docked somewhat inside of the Calamari cruiser, so maybe Vader's reference was just because they were connected when the transmission was received or something.

As for finding them at Tatooine, we were never shown what happened in between, so who knows? Maybe a transmission was sent that was traced, maybe the Empire just started checking near-by systems and found them, maybe there was an Imperial spy on board, maybe Vader used The Force, or any one of a number of possibilities. Because there are so many things that could have happened, I'm not getting too wrapped up in finding out exactly what it was.

Most Star Wars plot holes, in my opinion, came from RotJ and the prequels. Take out Anakin being from Tatooine, and Luke and Leia being siblings, and a lot of things flow better. I think it would have made more sense, and been more interesting, if Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru moved to Tatooine to help care for Luke in secret, and were maybe a bit bitter about giving up their lives to do it.

There are no prequels, there are no prequels, there are no prequels.... [/Jedi mind trick]

Just saying that if they are going to stuff all the "things we know" fan service into it, they could have also added a line or two to explain what happened.

Before Rogue One, I always assumed that it happened like in the text crawl and what Vader told Leia: during the Rebel's first battle victory, Rebel spies manage to steal the Death Star plans and transmit them to Leia. The Empire apparently was able to monitor that and managed to intercept the ship above Tatooine. Hence Leia's and Antilles' defense of the Tantive IV being a Consular vessel on a diplomatic mission and this is all a mistake, don't choke me bro, etc.

A rather weak excuse when you have just been spotted escaping from a Rebel cruiser that was being boarded by the Empire right after a major space battle.

The only reason why we didn't merely get the "several transmissions" is that Disney marketing wanted to have a cool Vader action sequence where he messes up some ambassador guards. This is the only reason there even is a plot hole.

They could have fixed that easily by having James Earl Jones do a quick voice-over in post, saying "Commander, track that ship!" instead of having Vader stare silently at the escaping ship.

Vader must have known that the ship was carrying something significant, or he wouldn't have bothered slaughtering the guards all by himself. If you take over an enemy ship, naturally your main target would be the bridge, not the hangar bay.

I guess the go-to explanation is, as usual, Force Magic (tm).

Sure, they could have had a voice over or something, but to me that's just a minor detail. How does Darth Vader's suit help him breathe, exactly? How are his legs attached? Why hasn't someone just destroyed the suit when he's not in it and have him die? How much of his strength comes from his mechanical parts vs. The Force? I'm sure there are reasons and explanations we could come up with that make sense, but it's not worth the screen time to explain. I put this in kind of the same category.

It could be that Antilles' and Leia's consular ship talk was a weak attempt when all else failed. Vader clearly says "you weren't on any mercy mission this time," so it seems he'd need some kind of info to even say that. With them wanting to keep things secret from the Senate (like in Rogue One when they want to keep the Death Star a secret, and in ANH when Leia says that the Imperial senate will not sit still for this and Vader hides the fact that they destroyed the ship), it sounds like there is still some pull the senate has, so implying they were on government business might help their cause if they can get someone to listen.

But again, to me it's not important enough to know how they were tracked, because clearly the Empire caught up with them, and clearly they know they were involved with some rebel activity, so what happened in Rogue One seems as reasonable as anything else to me.

You could as well argue then that it isn't important how exactly the Rebels came by the Death Star plans. For 40 years, the text crawl has been sufficient.

Will they also make a movie about the Bothan spies that gave the Rebellion the plans for the second Death Star?

How Vader's suit works is not important for the plot. How Vader proceeds from the end of Rogue One to the beginning of ANH kinda is, for me, because the final events of Rogue One almost contradict the beginning of ANH.

My point is that final scene unnecessarily created a plot hole, which would not be there had the script followed the original film a little closer.

My perception is that the production team wanted to be extra clever in bridging the gap to ANH and got a little sidetracked.

Regarding the whole Ambassador thing: my point is that since Vader could now produce clear evidence of the Tantive IV fleeing from a capital ship that was involved in a major assault on a key Imperial facility, the whole diplomatic immunity defense was moot, so there would have been no need to cover up the boarding of the Tantive IV in the first place. Quite the opposite: Princess Leia was caught red-handed during a major Rebel assault, branding her a Rebel and therefore a traitor.

Before Rogue One, all he had as evidence were alleged transmissions, which would have made it much harder to prove before the Senate (or a Senate committee) that Leia was involved. So in that context it made much more sense to cover up the whole Tantive IV incident (which according to the EU he did).

I see what you're saying, but my point about the suit was a bit of hyperbole, to show that there's lots of stuff that happens that doesn't have to be explained. How did the Millennium Falcon get to Bespin without hyperdrive? Why could the stormtroopers be accurate when attacking the Sand Crawler, but not hit anything else? Why did C3PO say that there would be no escape for the princess this time, but then not recognize her in R2D2's hologram? There's lots of stuff like that, and I think the missing info in Rogue One is fairly minor overall.

In ANH, it sounded like Leia's ship being under attack was the reason she went to Tatooine, and it wasn't part of the plan, so clearly something was already going on. In the opening of ANH, they were already shooting at the Tantive IV, so I figure they must have had pretty solid evidence they had done something to be doing that, so the whole ambassador mission thing seems to have been moot already. I guess to me Rogue One didn't make it any more moot.

But if it didn't work for you, then I can see how it would reduce your enjoyment of the movie.

The answer is they found them because the plot required them to find them. Don't get all "what was the combination to the safe in your quarters" on them.

As for Tattooine, remember they MEANT to go there. Organa told Mothma he was going to contact Obi Wan, and told Leia to do it. So yeah, they were headed straight there. With the finishing of the Death Star, the rebellion against the Empire had come to a head. Organa knew his daughter was the offspring of a Jedi, that Obi Wan had been watching her brother, and it was time to act and they knew they would need Obi Wan.




The Jedi Master

+1 Jedi

That's exactly how I see it as well.


You really can drive yourself crazy by over-analyzing movies. No matter how great a script may be, there will always be some holes found if you look closely enough.

The funny part is according to the comments I've read and heard from most writers and directors, those holes did not exist originally.
Sometimes they are created during the script refinement process, sometimes during shooting, and sometimes during editing.

In short, a film with no plot holes would generally wind up being overly long and flow poorly so that all these extra lines of dialogue and additional scenes can be placed in. You'll hear of early cuts of a film running 3.5 hours before they're cut down to 2. Bet that 3.5 hr version had no plot holes! Also it dragged in numerous places, seemed to have long stretches were little happened with bursts of activity that ended too soon, and was continually ruining or failing to find the emotion in scenes.

The plot holes are created and accepted during the making of the film to make it a better film overall. Few films have been ruined by plot holes, many have been ruined by bad editing or emotional inconsistency.



The Jedi Master

Myself I don't really believe in the idea of "plot holes". IMO not absolutely everything needs to be spelled out.

One of my favourite movies is Once Upon A Time In America, that entire movie orbits around a "plot hole" like a black hole, and is all the better for it IMO. Reservoir Dogs used the same device almost.

Agreed. Like with every other art form though, each person is different in what they want from a film. Some people like to have everything explained and presented in a neat little box during a film and others like to have some mystery and some things left to personal interpretation.

I think you need to walk a balance. You can't have the main character trapped in a burning building by the villain and then suddenly come to the rescue elsewhere without any explanation as to how they got out, but then you also don't need to see all the training that character may have had to be able to find a way out, just establish that they are generally well trained and leave it at that.

Pretty much. If you shout at the screen "no WAY they could do that!" then the film has failed. If on the other hand you're forced to watch the character exit a building, get in their car, turn on their GPS to find their destination, drive there, dealing with traffic and a missed turn, park, then walk up to the next building and open the door every time it gets old fast.

One example is Goldeneye. The opening sequence starts with a gate on the dam opening and Bond running out onto it. There was a deleted scene that showed him distracting the guards in order to get into their shack and activate the control that opened the gate first...but it was completely unnecessary. What mattered was him jumping off the dam to get to the base entrance below, not how he was able to get past a couple of TV-watching guards to open a powered gate.
You saw he had to do some amazing things to get past security and into the Russian base, but you didn't see EVERYTHING he had to do.



The Jedi Master

What bothers me the most about Star Wars is the technology. Why does a whole droid model line get wiped out with each movie? The only model that survives is C3-PO and R2-D2. No more BT-1, C2-B5, or K-2SO (Maybe it's a Black thing)


BLACK DROIDS MATTER!

One word: MERCHANDIZE.

The SW universe must also have some super crazy AI technology in order to give some of these droids very human-like emotions and motivations.

So... Leia's ship was about to be boarded by Vader.... which explains totally why both Rebels and Imperials were shooting to kill the second the door blew in A New Hope. And sure, the diplomatic excuse is tossed as irrelevant.

Buuuuut... then that all makes another scene... a virtual deal-breaker:


"Escape pod!! Lets shoot it!"

" No, save yer ammo, there's no LIFE FORMS onboard..."

(Or words to that effect!)

Makes even less sense now...

- they were looking to recover or destroy plans... not humans


- Vader was not in a careful restrained mood, he'd expect his artillerymen to blastsuch "squirters", escapees.

But we forgive and forget, because "Star Warz!1!"

I think if you're looking for logical, consistent and water-tight storytelling - then Star Wars is not where you should look for it

It's Star Wars.

I stopped investing anything like emotion into it a long time ago (ROTJ in fact) and now just enjoy it for three reasons:
Nostalgia
Design
Special effects

Excellent points DM.

Just look at "The Phantom Menace" for example. One of the most laughable weird things has to be how the government of Naboo is set up.


So they have a QUEEN as their head of state but she was elected by the people? Queen is by definition a monarchist term and hence it implies that it is a hereditary title.


If you are going to have elections, then Lucas should have just made Padme a minister, president, chancellor, etc.

Well, that part is not without real-world precedent In England a loooong time ago, kings were indeed elected. Then the Normans invaded and it's been foreign family members ever since

They were elected by the nobles though, not the general population.

True but that seems only a matter of granularity

But did they have term lengths and term limits?



The Jedi Master

No, but I think that's fair game in a fantasy story with space elements, set a long timer ago in the future, with lasers that are visible and go "pew, pew" even in a vacuum, cuddly Ewok warriors, dysfunctional robots that show emotion and humor but can't talk, just beep (or gay robots that have no appreciable skills but talking), aerodynamic flight moves in the absence of an atmosphere, careers like that of General Binks, ... need I go on?

Not just General but Bombad General! That's like the equivalent of a Generaloberst in the Deutsche Heer!



edit: Oh and C3PO isn't gay. He's just very poncy English.

Right, droids are asexual. Whatever affectation they may have been programmed to have (which IMO says more about the creator of said droid...) is irrelevant because they don't actually care one way or another.



The Jedi Master

I looked for the Rogue One Thread where I commented about the Vietnam style helmets and flak jackets of the Rebels, but could not find it so will stick this here.

I didn't know the Rebels also had AR's

[img]https://ibb.co/jJYR8v[/img]

It's the Battlestar Galactica approach of making the military tech seem more basic and "Earth like".

Remember the original film used many WWII guns modified by the prop department to look a bit different in lieu of making all new plastic weapons themselves. They needed to follow the same approach or risk it looking out of place.



The Jedi MAster

And Bail Organa, a Republic Senator, was a Viceroy in Alderaan....married to the Queen...who made their adoptive daughter a Princess.

So yeah...Lucas political structures were very unorthodox.

Like the laser canons in ROTS that ejected a giant casing?

That was Lucas-era SW, not JJ Abrams/Disney era.

I was actually issued one in 1984, a Sterling?

On a related note:


The "smart gun" you see in Aliens and used by Drake and Vasquez was actually an MG-42 with of course extra prop stuff put on it.

The use of the steady cam harness to carry the gun was pure genius.

The set and prop design for Aliens was just so fricking incredible on every level. Hiring Syd Mead helped a lot of course.

Alien, Star Wars and Blade Runner prove you can't put too much money into design. All those 70's/early 80s movies hold water today.

Pretty neat edit:

https://vimeo.com/209263699 (This will be taken down pretty quick, I guess)

(Vimeo vids embeds don't seem to be working now. )

Neat video.
Still having trouble with the YouTube embedded videos but the embedded Vimeo video worked for me.


Wheels

I really liked the actor who played Krennic. I hope he gets more job offers in Hollywood.

I wish Donnie Yen's character had lived. He introduced an interesting new culture to the SW universe.

Like the rest of the cast, they had serious story issues working out how any of them could survive it.

There was an early draft where several lived, but the screenwriter said it was full of holes you could fly through that they never could resolve. It was only done because they felt Disney wouldn't allow them to go full dark. Once Disney said it was ok for this film to take that route, they happily threw away those pages and wrote the ending they wanted from the beginning.



The Jedi Master

What I find interesting is that while a lot of characters die in Rogue One, I didn't really find the overall film to be that dark. There was still plenty of humor and light hearted moments. I guess it's all relative though of course and Rogue One was indeed darker compared to the OTHER SW films except for ESB.

A lot? You mean "every single character that you don't see in the original trilogy".




The Jedi Master

You forgot about Mon Mothma!

Uh.... she appears in the original trilogy???



The Jedi Master

I think we are getting our semantics confused here. I've always referred to ANH, ESB and ROTJ as the "original trilogy" and TPM, AOTC and ROTS as " the prequels".

So was I. What do you think I was saying??
Mon Mothma was in ROTJ. She was cut from the prequels.
So she can't die in Rogue One because she has to be alive in ROTJ.

Name someone of note in Rogue One who lived that wasn't in a later (timeline wise) film? Jimmy Smits doesn't count because he carried over from the prequels and is understood to have died with Alderaan in the first film.



The Jedi Master

Ok I misread your original statement then. I thought you were saying that there was no one who lived in Rogue One which we then saw in the original trilogy.

I don't think the film gets really dark until the end, when they all die, but I think it does get pretty dark there. I found a video of just the battle sequences from Scarif (which has since been removed from Youtube), and even though it doesn't even show the main characters, you see a lot of Rebel death and destruction, and it struck me how much there was of it in the final act.

I think that flow works very well - you're not all depressed the whole way through (like, say, Brazil), but it showed what was at stake, what the Rebels were willing to do for freedom, and it segues well into "A New Hope," being as things weren't really going that well for the rebellion, and they could use a little hope.

Right.

It reminds me of when I saw Time Bandits as a kid. The film was a silly romp all the way, until the very end...when the triumphant kid is suddenly left alone with his parents dead or sent to some evil realm forever. It was the biggest downer of any film I had seen to that point. Frankly, it ruined the film for me.



The Jedi Master

The difference between being enlightened and watching the unenlightened do something that from your point of view is absolutely stupid. It's an Adam and Eve ending. They were fairly warned, but did it anyway.
But yes, weird movie and a sad ending.
Seems like the Zero Theorem had a dark ending too.

Saw Gerrera actually did not just give up and deny his tactical knowledge to the rebels... that would be silly.

He actually had a long passionate love affair with Bor Gullet (the mind reading octopus alien), and they had a death pact for whatever day they got attacked because, as you well know, octopi can not run very well.

So even when the final shot only shows us Saw's face when the cave collapsed, you should have seen the things Bor was doing to him in the background.

Saw died a happy man.

Did anyone else noticed that Krennic was promoted after capturing #%&*$# Erso from Six Cherry Jolly Ranchers (really?... that name is censored?).



to Six Cherry Jolly Ranchers and Six Hall's Mentho-Lyptus Ice Peppermint Drops , which is somehow the inverse candy rank as Tarkin?

It was a very short lived promotion....

The whole rank rectangle thing has always been a mystery to me, and I like to keep it that way, just like the Purina dog chow square the Rebels have.



I just watched this on Blu-Ray and it blew up pretty good, IMHO.

Lots of fan service!

Stilted dialog? Check.
Romance without chemistry? Check.
Pew Pew? Check.
Big explosions? Check.
Friggin' teenagers making adult stuff get destroyed? Check.
Droids telling the best jokes and being the most relateable people in the film? Check.
Random cameos of minor characters for no reason? Check. ("I'm wanted on twelve systems....").

At least they didn't do any little kid pandering. No fart jokes, for example (I'm looking at you Episode I). When they say loads of people lost their lives to get the plans, they weren't kidding.

Seriously, there's a lot I liked about this film, the largest being that the Rebellion isn't painted as a bunch of Lawful Good Paladin types who never do anything dark or underhanded. Nobody has clean hands. Dude straight up kills a trusted informant because he has a bum arm and can't climb away from the Storm Troopers....and he's the main hero! Well, the co-hero. The Jen chick is supposed to be the hero, I guess, but she's really just a tool that gets used again and again.

Luke is clueless about either the Empire or the Rebellion in Episode IV and V. He was, if we'll all remember, whining about not being able to join "the academy" to become a pilot. The only folks running flight academies one applied for as a student would be the Empire! And his exposure to the Rebellion was some old dude known for being a crazy hermit and a hot chick in a hologram...and then a filmy white dress under which she wore no underwear.

Han knows, but keeps it to himself. The Rebels are sufficiently questionable in actions that Chewie, who fought in the Clone Wars and helped Yoda escape, opted out to pal around with Han in smuggling stuff for Hutts and their ilk.

Oh, on CGI. Both CGI'd actors looked too thin in the face. But a passable attempt.

The CGI Peter Cushing was freakishly well done. What a huge improvement over that terrible young version of Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy.

I don't think the original stealing of the plans was supposed to be "death-free." Look at the text of the original opening crawl:

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet. Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….

Seems to me that if there was a battle, it would be surprising to have no deaths.

I'd accept it is vague enough to say for sure...however...

I'm sorry, I'm actually not sure what that clip is supposed to say about deaths - can you explain? I know that Vader says transmissions were beamed about this ship, and in Rogue One it was the larger ship, but I think they tried to address that by having Leia's ship docked inside of the larger ship, in essence making them one at the time of the transmission. Also, Leia says they're on a diplomatic mission, but I take that as just a cover story in case they can't be directly traced back to Scarif, and the opening crawl does say she was pursued, so the empire must have been after her for a reason. But even with that, I don't get anything from that clip that addresses lives lost or not, so I must be missing something.

Oh!...pardon...silly, silly me!

I meant to post this video instead.




Hope that clarifies what I was thinking!

Ohhhhkaaaaayy....

Wasn't about 15 years?

For Dart...

Neat.

Always look to the left on a senior officer to spot the ink pen; the Colonel will be pissed if you miss it!

I just watched Rogue One and Episode IV back to back, and it's pretty seamless. It explains why Leia had them go straight from the Death Star to Yavin - they already knew what was in the plans, just not the specifics - even though she knew they were being tracked. Therefore, no convincing of what needed to be done and they got right on it. The sense of urgency makes sense.

On Vader seeing the ship flee Data Farm Planet, catching it, and Leia pulling the lame "we're a diplomatic mission" stuff, well, what was she supposed to say? "Yep, you got us!" Might as well play the BS story to the hilt, especially since the Senate was still a thing.

On Luke and the naive picture of the Rebellion in the Orig Trig...it makes sense, as it's from Luke's perspective. Luke is a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed BS), to be sure, a single disposable tool to get Vader to turn on the Emperor. I just always thought the Rebellion was painted as too goody-goody in the movies. Again, because it's all from Luke's perspective and is limited to the things he does (including bailing on the Rebellion to do light gymnastics in a swamp).*

I also pegged why Tarkin looks weird in Rogue One; they made his face too expressive, with too much motion above the eyebrows in the CGI version. The actual actor only uses his eyebrows for emphasis on main points and rarely moves his forehead muscles. Indeed, he's an example of conservation of movement to give him a larger sense of authority. So they animated him in a too...animated...manner, making him a bobblehead by comparison.

All in all, Rogue One was a very good addition to the Star Wars saga, even if it ruins all the jokes about why the f**k they had an exhaust port that went straight down to the reactor. It wasn't a design flaw, it was a feature.

* I like the theory that what we're seeing in the movies is actually a retelling of the events by R2-D2 after the fact, which would explain the terrible dialog (he's filling in blanks for when he wasn't there and guessing what people say to romance each other), the inconsistencies, and why C3PO look so hapless and useless 99% of the time.

Yes, you are right. I guess my head was thinking strictly within the time frame of the movie.

I kind of always thought those were pens also. Didn't know they are "Data Cylinders" . So the bigger your USB thumb drive the more important you are. Just like in real life. lol

One design decision I'll never understand from the Star Wars universe are the colors of the lasers.


Imperial ships and fighters fire green lasers while Rebel ships and fighters fire red lasers even though for Jedi/Sith it is reversed. Green lightsabers are only used by Jedi while red lightsabers are only used by Sith.


The color red has pretty much always been associated with evil in movies.

I don't know, but I'm OK with arbitrary colours being used rather than "red = bad" etc
In the very fist movie, i.e. Ep IV, the light sabres for light side Sith are blue. I think green only happened when Luke made his own in Ep VI yes? (After losing his old one in Ep V.)

There's only one Sith in "A New Hope" and that is Vader who had a red lightsaber. Obi-Wan had a blue one and of course he was Jedi.


In the SW prequels there were several Jedi who had a green lightsaber.

Jedi, not "light side Sith", of course brainfart.

IIRC, the colour of the lightsaber "blade" is dependent on the type of "Kyber-Chrystal" used. For some reason I've already forgotten, Sith prefered chrystals that created a red blade. Also, according to the new Disney canon crap, apparently the ability to wield the lightsaber is dependent of the strenght of the force that the user is sending through the chrystal or some such nonsense. Or not. I've reached a point where I really don't care anymore. Well, at least there are no Midichlorians living inside those chrystals. I guess at least that's something.

Way too much overthinking went into the unnecessary little details, while at the same time retconning the, err, "Sith" out of whole franchise.

IMO, Star Wars stopped being Star Wars in 1983. Everything coming afterwards is just expensive fan fiction. (Lucas was his own biggest fan, so there! ). Of all the fan fiction since then, I much prefer the animated series "Rebels" to the rest of the material. Oh, and the novel "Lost Stars". Incidentally, both are geared towards a teenage audience, yet are - IMO - better than the big budget movies that have been produced between 1999 and now.