When Darth Vader first appears in Rogue One, the Star Wars spinoff that became the highest-grossing movie of 2016, he offers a word of advice to the movie’s primary villain, Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic: “Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director.” That line is a pun; Vader has just been using the Force to crush Krennic’s windpipe, and he’s putting the insolent Empire functionary in his place. But you could also read that line as a piece of Disney corporate wisdom. When it comes to Star Wars, Disney is not interested in indulging the aspirations of any ambitious directors.
Ever since Disney got into the Star Wars business with 2015’s massive hit The Force Awakens, the company has had a director problem. Josh Trank, Colin Trevorrow, and the team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller have all been attached to various Star Wars movies, and they have all been removed from those projects. Every so often, Disney will announce that another big-deal director has signed on for further Star Wars movies, and it never seems especially likely that those movies will end up getting made. In a lot of ways, 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker, the most recent Star Wars film, feels like Disney apologizing to pissed-off fans for the decisions that director Rian Johnson made on The Last Jedi, its predecessor, and attempting to erase those decisions. Disney is simply not willing to spend hundreds of millions to indulge a director’s whims when there’s Star Wars money on the line. When those hired directors fall in love with their own aspirations, Disney chokes them right out.
By most accounts, that’s what happened on Rogue One. For its first film that’s not part of the main Star Wars story arc, Disney brought in the British director Gareth Edwards, a former visual-effects guy who’d directed one small movie, Monsters, and one big movie, Godzilla. Disney went through a ton of different scripts for the film, and when the company wasn’t sure about the end result, they hired another ringer. With Edwards still on board, star screenwriter and Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy came in, rewrote the film, and reshot a huge chunk of it. Edwards kept his sole-director credit, while Gilroy was named one of the film’s two writers. If Rogue One had a proper auteur, it was probably Disney’s appointed Star Wars overseer Kathleen Kennedy. Or maybe it was Bob Iger, the person in charge of Disney itself. It definitely wasn’t a mere director.
Watching Rogue One, you can clearly see that it’s the result of a messy, slightly incoherent creative process. Certain characters make decisions that don’t really make sense. (Forest Whitaker’s insurrectionist firebrand Saw Gerrera decides to die in an exploding city rather than escape because… he’s tired?) The things that an individual director might make sure to include, the human moments that build plot-catalyst types into fully realized characters, generally just aren’t there. Most of the footage from the first Rogue One teaser trailer isn’t even in the movie; Disney clearly reworked the final product extensively on the fly. But with all that said, Rogue One remains a blast—probably the most deeply satisfying Star Wars feature that Disney has made since the company dropped a few billion on acquiring Lucasfilm.
Maybe the initial idea was just so good that corporate meddling couldn’t ruin it. Before Disney even bought Lucasfilm, John Knoll, a visual-effects supervisor who’d worked on George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, pitched an idea that basically amounted to a film adaptation of the opening crawl from the original 1977 Star Wars—three vague and sensationalistic paragraphs, fleshed out to more than two hours of movie time. Rather than spending time with the prospective Jedi knights of the Skywalker clan, Rogue One would tell a war story about the expendable soldiers who died to make Luke’s triumph possible in the first place. That fucking rules. That’s hard to mess up.
Disney made smart hiring decisions, too. Edwards didn’t have a ton of experience as a director, and he didn’t exactly have a gift for vivid and memorable human characters, but he could do sheer awe-inspiring scale better than any of his peers. When AT-AT walkers stomp into the frame during the climactic battle of Rogue One, they finally make sense as weapons. They are theatrical monsters, forces of intimidation, things that should not be. Edwards also conveys the mass of the Death Star as it hovers serenely in the sky, preparing to obliterate an idyllic landscape. Where they weren’t satisfied with Edwards’ work, the Disney people brought in Gilroy, one of the most revered writers and plot mechanics in Hollywood, and Edwards said all the right things to the press about the process. Everyone involved clearly wanted Rogue One to succeed, even if they had different ideas about how that might be made to happen.
The cast is great, too. It’s a little weird that Disney followed The Force Awakens with another Star Wars story built around a tiny, young white British lady. But Felicity Jones, the star of Rogue One, had already been nominated for an Oscar, and she possesses the gravity and toughness that the traumatized war-orphan character demanded. Rogue One surrounds Jones with some impressive actors from across the global cinematic landscape: Mendelsohn, Whitaker, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, Jiang Wen. These are all interesting actors with great, expressive faces. All of them have presence, and all of them make the most of their limited screen time.
For my money, the best member of that supporting cast is also the best straight-up movie star on the planet. Donnie Yen doesn’t get a ton of screen time in Rogue One, but he manages to show both his warm, graceful charm and his near-impossible physical fluidity. It’s wild that Yen, one of the biggest names in Hong Kong cinema, has never really gotten a shot in Hollywood. Yen grew up partly in America and speaks fluent English, and Rogue One remains his only strong star turn in a Hollywood movie. Yen only gets a couple of chances to go all Ip Man on Stormtroopers in Rogue One, but those moments are glorious.
The technical people involved in Rogue One all do amazing work, too. Rather than filming the entire thing on soundstages, Gareth Edwards shot as much of Rogue One as possible in stunning natural locations like Iceland, Jordan, and the Maldives. Where The Force Awakens presented a series of planets that looked just like previously established Star Wars worlds, Rogue One has entire new environments: a ringed rocky wasteland, a beachfront paradise, a Blade Runner-in-the-desert sacred city. Rogue One functions fully within the long-established Star Wars visual scheme, and it includes constant references to the aesthetics of the 1977 original. But it has fun coloring in those lines. Even as it digs into the nostalgic spectacle of the X-wing dogfight, it makes sure that happens in a landscape where we haven’t already seen all this go down before.
Rogue One also presents the oddly satisfying spectacle of familiar characters and types doing things we haven’t seen before. The final scene of Darth Vader physically mowing through rebel troops like a juggernaut is the most obvious holy-shit moment in the movie, but there are others. I love the idea that the Death Star’s weak spot isn’t just a design flaw; it’s a tiny piece of sabotage from an Oppenheimer-type scientist trying to get his quiet revenge on the murderous regime that’s conscripted him, and I love the idea that most of the Rebellion leaders are bickering do-nothings worried to confront the evil that’s right in front of them—galactic versions of centrist Democrats. I don’t love seeing the reanimated CGI face of Peter Cushing, an actor who died in 1994; it gives the weird sense that Disney considers the actual death of a human actor to be an inconvenience to be brushed aside. But I do love the idea that all the Empire leaders are like corporate suits jockeying for power and taking credit for each other’s ideas.
Rogue One didn’t have to exist; it’s a side story in a greater narrative, a digressive little chapter. The nods to other Star Wars movies are fun, but they’re not necessary. Ultimately, Rogue One has to function on its own—as its own story, with its own heroes and villains and stakes, and it succeeds on those levels. The characters never become anything more than types, but in that, Rogue One exists within a grand war-movie tradition: We meet the colorful ragtag members of the team, we get to like them without knowing them too well, and then we watch most of them die heroically. It’s the Dirty Dozen model, and there’s a reason why this particular set of clichés works so well.
The only real character arc in Rogue One belongs to Jones’ Jyn Erso, an embittered survivor who has to learn the worthiness of sacrifice. Jones does her best with it, but the character itself is hollow and one-note, and the film never earns its brief big-speech moment. But the movie does function as an ensemble piece, with all the different characters finding their own reasons to sacrifice themselves. Luna’s Cassian Andor, for instance, is a spy who’s rationalized his way into becoming a liar and a murderer, doing Battle Of Algiers shit for the greater good. Ahmed’s Imperial-defector pilot Bodhi Rook has fallen under the spell of a charismatic moralist, and he wants to make up for the bad things that he’s done. Yen’s Chirrut Îmwe is a religious-fanatic true believer, while his friend, Wen’s Baze Malbus, is a hardened cynic, but they’ve got a battlefield bond that clearly goes back a long way. All these pieces matter.
There’s not a ton of comic relief in Rogue One, but the movie does have Alan Tudyk as the reprogrammed Imperial droid K-2SO, a strange combination of C-3PO and the T-800 from Terminator 2. K-2SO is prim and socially maladjusted, but he’ll also smash someone on the head if the moment calls for it. K-2SO doesn’t want to kill and hack one of his own kind, but he’s ready to do it. When K-2SO suddenly turns into Kane in an early-’00s Royal Rumble, chokeslamming stormtroopers all over the place, it’s a primally thrilling moment. When he dies in battle, it actually stings.
Ultimately, everyone dies in the battle, a storytelling decision that seemed audacious at the time. Movies about heroic sacrifice are nothing new, but over the past decade and a half, Disney franchise storytelling has conditioned us to expect each movie to build to the next. Rogue One doesn’t play that. These characters are pawns in a bigger game, and they all lay down their lives to do something important. When Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are consumed in a pillar of light, it’s an impressive sight.
Of course, in blockbuster films, no one ever really dies. Right now, Diego Luna is filming a Disney+ series about Cassian Andor. In real life, though, people die, and one death gave Rogue One an unintended emotional punch. The film’s final shot is an uncanny CGI recreation of the face of teenage Carrie Fisher, as we remember her from the beginning of Star Wars. Fisher died 11 days after Rogue One opened, and for anyone who saw the film after Fisher’s death, the image of Princess Leia getting ready to carry out a revolution was oddly moving.
Rogue One seemed like a movie that didn’t need a sequel, one that wrapped up all its loose ends by the time the credits rolled. That’s not how franchises function, though. Nobody really needs to know anything about Cassian Andor’s life pre-Rogue One, but nobody really needed Rogue One, either, and Disney still found a way to make it happen. Maybe the corporate interference helped Rogue One click, or maybe it just turned a potentially great movie into a merely good one. But the Disney corporate machine was absolutely humming in 2016. Rogue One didn’t tower over all the other movies at that year’s box office, as The Force Awakens did the year before. But the only movies that came close to Rogue One’s totals—Finding Dory and Captain America: Civil War—were Disney properties, too. That company knows what people want.
These days, Rogue One lives on as a clear inspiration for all the extra Star Wars stuff that Disney continues to crank out. Over the past two years, The Mandalorian has shown, once again, that the whole Star Wars milieu can serve as a great setting for mass-appeal stories that only occasionally overlap with the whole Skywalker saga. As the movies have fallen messily apart, that storytelling style looks like the way forward for Star Wars—and maybe for huge and dominant franchises in general. We’ll see.
The contender: Zootopia, another Disney product, is one more piece of mainstream entertainment that’s smarter and more entertaining than it had to be. The idea of a city full of anthropomorphic animals is fun enough; Disney competitors Illumination did something similar with The Secret Life Of Pets, an even bigger 2016 hit. But Zootopia uses that setting for a noir detective story with a ton of slick little twists and a rich sense of visual imagination. I don’t know what I expected Zootopia to be, but I didn’t expect that.
Next time: Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi pushes against the nostalgia of The Force Awakens, which makes for a cool and unpredictable movie and which then causes a whole conglomerate to grovel for forgiveness.
535 Comments
I absolutely love this one.Everything from the doomed mission to the battle over Scarrif, this movie just works.Even Tarkin has never bothered me.It’s a movie which delivers absolutely beautiful visuals – the Death Star arriving above both Jeddah and Scarrif, the landscape of the latter etc.
It had the best trailer. The spooky shot of the star destroyers in the shadow of the Death Star as they inserted the laser dish. The first shot of the AT-At on Scariff taking a shot from a bazooka and then the tie fighter in Jyn Erso’s face that wasn’t actually in the movie.I still want to know what the two handles coming out of whatever was strapped to her back at the end. I was getting Storm Shadow vibes from those things.
Those are signal lights – the sort waved by people on runways and aircraft carriers to indicated where to land and all that.
Those were actual signal lights they just strapped to her back for no reason? Maybe we would have seen her signal and direct the tie fighter they teased us with in the trailer?
It’s been a few years since I watched it but my memory was that it was the uniform of someone from the ground where the ship they came in landed at.
Weren’t they just part of the uniform she stole in order to sneak in?
Those were actual signal lights they just strapped to her back for no reason?
As someone else said, I think the idea was that she swiped the uniform of the Empire equivalent to these guys.
Yup. That’s all they were. We saw the guy using them who was the owner of the uniform she stole.
In-Universe, I believe those sticks were stun baton weapons. Though I may be conflating them with similar backpacks used in other franchises.
Useless Beauty pointed out that Jyn got her Imperial disguise from the landing signal officer who guided their stolen shuttle onto the pad at Scarrif.
I mean, they openly stated that the TIE Fighter staring her down was done exclusively to look menacing in the trailer. They had no intention of ever having that scene in the movie.
Even in the movie it was kinda dumb that the TIE fighter was the one blowing the shit out of the tower. There’s no way that pilot had any idea who she was or what she was up to, so he was just blasting his own base for no reason.
It would’ve been more fitting for the movie if it were an X-Wing blasting away because they didn’t know better.
By this point they knew what the Rebels were doing, and Krennic went up to the dish controls to stop them. Presumably someone communicated that to the pilots in the air.
I suppose, but it’s still weird that a TIE fighter went after some woman on a catwalk when there were people shooting on the ground and it was in the middle of a dogfight.
A random person in a non-Imperial uniform doing unauthorized shit during a massive attack is someone you should probably shoot.
They should have made a scene for it. It was SUCH a great clip. Would have been easy to do….TIE fighter stares down Jyn. She marches towards it. Snaps the kyber crystal off her neck, jams it into the barrel of her gun. Fires!A MASSIVE laser blasts forward, knocking her back and tearing the TIE to shreds.
I really liked Rogue One and need to revisit soon.
Tarkin bothered me. It was the main thing that did. The movie itself was the best that cash grab Disney has done with Star Wars, but resurrecting long dead actors is just icky. How about the tried and true recast the part?
I’m not into Star Wars and really only started seeing the movies theatrically out a sense of pop cultural obligation*, but Rogue One really hit for me. I remember watching Darth Vader fuck people up and being on the edge of my seat before thinking “Wait, I know what’s gonna happen…” I looked around and my friends plus the stranger next to me were all leaning forward, also perched on the edge of their seats. And you’re right; it has beautiful visuals, which modern blockbusters in general and Star Wars sequels in particular are sorely missing.*This started with Revenge of the Sith, which I saw on a date with a guy who wasn’t into science fiction at all; as the end credits rolled and I was marvelling at how bad the movie had been, he turned to me and said “So… you like this stuff?”
The ‘Vader murders everyone in the hallway’ scene is literally what I was waiting for the entire prequel trilogy. The fact that we never got a single scene of Vader wrecking shit with 21st century filmmaking techniques was a war crime on George Lucas’s part.
It felt like a huge prank that the prequels were all leading up to that moment of him in the suit, and all we get is NOOOOOOOO
The sequels definitely have uninspired planets. All of the planets are dull and uninspired besides Ach-To and Crait. The prequels despite their excesses had great visuals as to how planets looked. JJ can do good action and dialogue scenes but can’t do creative backgrounds. It’s the opposite of Lucas’ problem of having creative designs and flat/boring camera positions.Rogue One delivered on both, which makes up a bit for the generic characters
When Vader shows up to massacre the rebels, I’m always on the edge of my seat.
It’s the best scene in the movie! It’s so short, but paced ~perfectly~.
The director used movies with battle scenes, Saving Private Ryan, etc. as his inspiration for the jungle scenes when they land on Scarif. What I love, other than that they came together and sacrificed, was the quick cameo of Jimmy Smits, and that this was not cartoony like the other Star Wars, it had funny moments, but it was just a great story. And didn’t it come out Dec 16 of 2016. I mean, what better time for a movie about fighting evil. “Rebellions are built on hope”.
First time round I was getting big Apocalypse Now helicopter attack vibes from the battle in Scarif until someone pointed out that Star Wars has always proudly worn its WW2 movie heritage on its sleeve (for better or worse in the case of the Last Jedi) and the tropical coral atoll setting is definitely more in keeping with the war in the Pacific.
One of the things I love the most about the movie is that they make the Death Star look absolutely terrifying!
Not just the Death Star, but the Empire as a whole. It’s the only Star Wars property that’s managed to do that specifically because the characters are all expendable. It was mentioned in the review but I’ll reiterate, it makes the AT-ST and AT-AT walkers make sense. They aren’t weapons of war, they’re weapons of shit-your-pants intimidation. Sure, you’ve got Saw’s guys blowing up a tank, but when that AT-ST starts clamoring over it’s time to run for your fucking life.
And it totally, viscerally worked. Whenever a walker showed up you felt it in your gut, “Ohhhhh, shit.”
I don’t think it gets enough credit for the environments. The little Erso farm in the beginning looks alien as fuck (because Iceland is basically an alien planet already), and making Scariff a tropical paradise was a little slice of brilliance.
It’s nice that it wasn’t just another desert planet.
FOR ONCE!
I love how it isn’t about some orphan Jedi who discovers their powers and that they have some sort of destiny, and everyone wants them either dead or to join them. Literally every other Star War is about that. Even the Mandalorian had to go there. I’m gonna shit a brick if Bad Batch goes there with Omega. This one (and Solo) just had a normal orphan rebel/scoundrel.
So we get 3 Star Wars movies each year in a row and then,………sad trombone.
Well, we got five from TFA in 2015 to RoS in 2019. But given the apathy to Solo and the fan drubbing of RoS, a break to decide what the franchise could/should be seems fair. (Selfishly, as I have a six year old son who loves Star Wars, I’d be happy with one a year. But hopefully the new ones will be worth the wait)
“the fan drubbing of TLJ and RoS”There. I corrected it for you.
At least TLJ has its fans. There’s an equal amount who absolutely love it as there are who absolutely hate it (and often for the same reasons). The highest praise I’ve ever heard for RoS is “it’s not as bad as they say”. But yeah, the divisive reaction to TLJ is definitely another reason the brakes were put on their one a year approach while they recalibrated (a recalibration that likely played a huge part in how tepidly bland Solo ended up being and definitely in how boringly uninspired RoS was).
TLJ made the films irrelevant. As outlined in WSJ, the film had a four-week monopoly on the major screening rooms and had a dreadful multiplier (in contrast, TFA had two weeks).I honestly felt sorry for the kids in the theatre. People were excited to go into the theatre … and then tumbleweeds. The franchise belongs to families, not entitled fanboys like Rian Johnson and the creepy Alamo Drafthouse crew.It honestly makes me nauseous to know that the likes of those had their dirty fingers over this series.Terrible people. Terrible film.
You should tell my kids that, who genuinely loved TLJ. They were also under the age of ten.
“The franchise belongs to families” – this maybe the silliest thing I’ve ever read in my life. Better tell anyone without a family they shouldn’t be watching Star Wars.
Exactly – the film with the porgs and scenes like BB-8 driving an AT-ST was only aimed at serious adults and the films with mass genocide, psychological family dramas and regular amputations were only aimed at families? It couldn’t possibly be that one of the biggest film franchises in the history of entertainment is enjoyed by a wide range of people for a wide range of reasons?
Colin Trevorrow: So that’s it, so long and good luck?Disney: I don’t recall saying good luck.
Are you doing a bit?
Seriously, the one thread he started was enough, now whenever I see a reply from Andrew, I move along to the next thread
Same. My eyes glaze over when I see that sad sack’s name.
>The franchise belongs to families, not entitled fanboys like Rian Johnson and the creepy Alamo Drafthouse crew.I feel like this is the best description of TLJ I’ve ever read. I love some of Rian Johnson’s other movies but honestly don’t think he understood the appeal of Star Wars. If he wanted to make a cynical film deconstructing Star Wars for the aged fanboys of the original series that’s not a terrible decision but it should have been in a stand alone film like Rogue One and not as the 2nd entry in a trilogy where the first film was a nostalgic love letter to the original. I’m still surprised how badly he missed the mark when being given the task of writing part 2 in a trilogy.
“As outlined in the Wall Street Journal” hasn’t been a strong argument since News Corp bought it. Kind of ironic that the people making this desperate argument are calling others “entitled fanboys.”
Said it elsewhere, but it’s genuinely impressive how TRoS managed to fully unite TLJ haters and defenders.
That and the Mandalorian, everyone was finally on board again at how good that was (and how bad RoS was, it was something nobody wanted)
I rewatched the end half of RoS and it wasn’t as bad as the beginning setup, with all the fakeout deaths and whatnot. But it’s still very uninspired and just bothers me as the “finale” to the entire saga (of course it’s not but it might be the last go around for John Williams, McDiarmid, Anthony Daniels and Hamill)
I’ve been watching a YouTube channel reviewing the James Bond movies and the best ones almost always come from an extended break.
In Rogue One, Rebel spirit and corporate control collided to make Disney’s best Star Wars**after The Last Jedi
No.
Ok, Putin.
Nyet.
If we bring up Putin, can we also bring up Rian Johnson’s supporters Devin Faraci and Tim League? You know, the sexual offender and the one who covered up for his abuse?
Sure! “A New Hope is bad because Devin Faraci likes it!”
No, Tim League and Devin Faraci are notorious supporters of Rian Johnson and Johnson has strong links with the company going back years. Johnson used to do events with Harry Knowles and Johnson has organised programmes and performed in advertisements for The Alamo Drafthouse. Hell, there’s pics of Faraci and Kid Blue making fun of a drunk person. This all occurred before and after notorious reports of racism and sexism at the company and is absolutely the reason why Rian Johnson performed a mass delete of his social media profile.Toxicity and trolling is wrong. You either call that out or you don’t, but please don’t be so ignorant as to say there is no connection between League and Johnson.
Ok, so Tim League and Devin Faraci supporting things is bad.Tim League and Devin Faraci supporting Rian Johnson means The Last Jedi is bad.Therefore A New Hope is bad because it’s supported by Tim League and Devin Faraci.
No, FAILING TO SPEAK OUT about a company’s well-documented racism and sexual issues is bad.Rian Johnson has failed to challenge a notorious company on their practices and abuses.Instead he chose to be their poster boy.This occurred after Devin Faraci was found to a sexual assaulter, League lied about rehiring him and reports had come out about the chain distortionately targeting minorities for punishment. And then another report came out after this video stating that League’s denials were meaningless and that the same practices were occurring.Why isn’t Johnson talking about this? Cowardice: he chose to do a mass delete in 2018. And no Russians were involved in any of these issues.Sure, though: continue your bootlicking. I get why Johnson is one: why are you?
Right, so George Lucas failed to challenge a notorious company on their practices and abuses, ergo A New Hope is bad.
No, it would make George Lucas a scumbag.Failing to challenge your cohorts makes you a scumbag. Repeating someone else’s talking points make YOU an idiot.
So for those playing at home, it took Andrew 4 posts to admit his whole argument was a non-sequitur
I’m glad you at least got something out of it because I still don’t know what the fuck he’s going on about
Jesus Christ, there is little more irritating in the world of pop culture ‘fandom’ than nerd opinion entitlement. You people can’t simply not like a film, can you? It has to be somehow objectively, provably bad, and everyone who says they like it is a terrible person and/or part of some nefarious conspiracy.
In this case apparently the reason liking the Last Jedi, which I do, makes me a terrible person is (follows red string around the pinboard) it means that I have failed to condemn its director for having been approved of by people who have been photographed ‘making fun of a drunk person’, and who worked at a company where bad things are rumoured to have happened.
I mean, we can have legitimate conversations about separating the art from the artist over, like, Ezra Pound or Wagner or something. This, however, is just sad.
I don’t expect anything of you.Matthew called another user a Russian for not liking the film. I made the point that Rian Johnson is directly connected with an awful company and that both Johnson has failed to challenge his cohorts on the abuses that occurred.Have we not learned ANYTHING about the culture of silence and cowardice that allows abuse to occur?To make very clear the chronology of these abuses and Johnson’s failure to speak honestly about Tim League, here is a breakdown.In 2016, it was announced that Faraci would leave after a sexual assault allegation came to light. League reached out to the survivor, Caroline, and told her that he had removed Faraci from the company.In 2017, it was revealed League secretly rehired Faraci anyway … or maybe Faraci never left. As Caroline put it, “so, I was lied to and brought into what was essentially a PR scheme … since I never asked for devin to be fired to begin with, or demanded an apology or boycott, I’m just EXASPERATED at how sloppy this is”. League apologised for letting women down.In 2018, a report from Splinter found that Alamo Drafthouse had allegedly minimized sexual assault and harassment made towards both patrons and employees. Rian Johnson performed a mass deletion of his Tweets.In 2019, Johnson performed marketing for the Alamo Drafthouse, recording this advertisement and crafting a programme for them.In 2020, a further expose (this time from The Pitch) alleged abuses perpetrated by both the management at the chain’s Kansas City locations and corporate brass across the business. These include sexual harassment and abuse, racist profiling of customers, unsafe (and often illegal) work environments and even financial irregularities involving ticket sales. “The Pitch reports that despite promises from co-founder Tim League, who embarked on a listening tour of various locations in the wake of the 2017 allegations, little has changed within the company.”Cowardice is cowardice. I am not going to pretend otherwise because you liked a film.
Two joke responses, and you are now your on your third multi-paragraph response, the essential tenor of which is that (again, follows red string about the place) that everyone who has done any kind of work for a company can be assumed to approve of every past and future action of its founder unless they explicitly say otherwise in public (does this apply to the dude they get in to fix the photocopiers?).
And also, apparently, that anyone who deletes old tweets at any point within a year of them doing said work can legitimately be suspected of having done so as part of a cover-up of their approval of sexual harrassment (as opposed to, say, an entirely reasonable response to the discovery that if your work on a light entertainment franchise fails to tell the story a certain subset of its viewers had decided on in advance, that subset have a habit of combing through your every public utterance and passing association to find evidence that you are a bad person and therefore all your films are bad and liking them is bad).
Honestly, what is it you are imagining you are achieving by all this? Who is being helped?
“everyone who has done any kind of work for a company can be assumed to approve of every past and future action of its founder”All he needs to do is speak out about it. And all that requires is courage. I’m sorry if this is too much to ask.“cover-up of their approval of sexual harrassment”No, he just failed to speak out against it.All you have proved is that we have learned nothing. There have been a number of allegations across a decade and nothing has changed.If you bothered to read any of the reports, you’ll find that Tim League apologised … and then nothing happened. An offender was rehired and the same practices occurred, as outlined in 2020.https://www.thepitchkc.com/drafthouse-abuse-kansas-city-mainstreet/These include sexual harassment and abuse, racist attitudes toward customers, unsafe (and often illegal) work environments, and even stories about ticket sales being shorted to add to Drafthouse’s own coffers.And this is something you’ve failed to grasp: he doesn’t work for them. He has chosen to partner with them to market his films.He could easily speak out. That would require courage.I’ll switch your question around: Who benefits from the cowardice to keep silent? A bunch of rich people who scratch each other’s backs and absolutely none of the employees or customers.
He is under no more meaningful moral obligation to express a public opinion about the actions of the founder of a company he has become commercially involved with than the person who cleans their toilets – or, indeed, the person who runs the company that contracts with them to clean their toilets.
Nobody’s lives would be materially improved by him doing so, nor does his failure to do so constitute an endorsement of those actions or make them any more or less likely to happen anywhere else.
And it remains the case that none of this has anything to do with whether or not the Last Jedi or any of his other films are any good, or indeed whether or not people who get angry about it online are Russian troll farm mischief-makers or just honest home-grown wierdos (honestly it’s probably a combination of both, with the latter piling on when they realised the former were going it at).
Your position gives off strong “let’s see how the liberals like it when I use cancel culture AGAINST THEM!” vibes.
I didn’t say I didn’t like it – I just disagreed that it was better than Rogue One.
You’re like the Nancy comic who assumes anyone who disagrees with her must be a bot. Rogue One was better than Last Jedi. At minimum, it didn’t have the lousy foundation of The Force Awakens.
Ok, Putin.
The entire planet has been replaced by Putin clones. Have you looked in a mirror recently?
What the hell? Why am I shirtless?
I’m delighted you were able to come full circle with this.
DURING
What is whe wearing on her back? She looks ready to through down some close combat on some stormtroopers. They looked so badass.
As someone said earlier. The Star Wars version of these.So not badass and harder to play table tennis with.
Actually, Space Table Tennis works very differently, and these are the perfect implements to play it with.
I wouldn’t say that the director issues are a Disney problem as much as they are a Star Wars one.
Disney also owns Marvel, and the MCU does have a much better track record of allowing directors more creative freedom within the existing template. Thor Ragnarok is most definitely a Taika Waititi movie for example. GOTG are James Gunn all down the line.
Kevine Feige is defintely better than his job than Kathleen Kennedy. Her head should roll after The Rise of Skywalker and all the other nonsense about other directors getting a movie or a trilogy or whatever.
LOL even as a woman in Hollywood I think Kathleen Kennedy has proven herself and then some, so her head isn’t gonna roll for one or even two or three shit movies…at this stage she’s more likely to be quietly retired and/or granted emeritus status where she gives her opinion and then it is ignored.
I think that a lot of people have the attention spans of puppies, and have a difficult time incorporating time periods beyond the last couple of years into their viewpoints.I say this as someone who doesn’t really like* most of the recent SW movies, but a quick perusal of Kennedy’s career shows that there are a lot of hits. That’s a really good ratio for movies that she’s got her name on. I don’t know how much influence that she had over any particular one in that list, but I’d bet there aren’t many in the movie business that would be able to look at that CV and not be a bit envious.
*I liked Rogue One a lot and thought Solo was a fun SF heist film that suffered from making the sum total of Han Solo’s known pre-OT information into the results of one crazy week. TFA was fun enough while watching it even though it was clearly “Here’s all the stuff you liked from the first movie! That’s cool, right?” and while I can appreciate how TLJ was more of a swing for the fences, it was a swing and a miss for me that added up to less than the sum of its parts. Between that and the overall sentiment for TRoS, I haven’t seen that one and have no particular desire to.
Yeah, pretty much anything huge Lucas or Spielberg made that was a HUGE success has her name on it.
The MCU is Feige’s baby and didn’t have 30+ years of ultra obsessive fans poring over every decision he made, whereas KK almost “inherited” SW.Maybe she feels more beholden to doing things in a certain way because of the legacy of the whole thing. Personally I’ve never been a massive SW fan so wouldn’t mind a bit of upheaval to make it more interesting in general.
Lol if you think that *Marvel Comics* doesn’t have obsessive fans.The difference is that Feige made good movies. That’s it. Make a good movie and people will like it. Make a bad movie and people shit down your neck for it. “Trying something different” does not in and of itself a good movie make. Too many people adapting beloved works these days fail to recognize that.
This is really the big difference. The MCU has had its share of corporate vs directors (Edgar Wright comes to mind, as others have mentioned). But Feige and his team seem to have a master plan/vision, and as long as the directors work in support of that plan, they can have some artistic freedom. But Kennedy doesn’t seem to have a plan, or if she does, it hasn’t panned out well.
Now that Dave Filoni is largely filling that Kevin Feige role for Star Wars, I think we’ll see a lot fewer total whiffs.
He’s not really, though, is he?
Filoni in that role makes me so happy, I’ve been a SW fan for a long time but the past decade or so has been brutal, so much back-and-forth of good stuff mixed with trash. Kennedy just spectacularly fucked up, but I don’t doubt that 20 cooks in the kitchen was part of it
Iger was the one who insisted on bringing back JJ Abrams for TROS over KK’s objections, because he wanted to retire after the third sequel. She wanted to wait for Rian Johnson’s schedule to free up again.
It is super bizarre that the exact same parent company can be so permissive with their directors doing weird shit in one franchise and so conservative in another (especially because “doing weird shit” is exactly why we all fell in love with Star Wars in the first damn place!).
I thought maybe it was because they paid less for Marvel than Lucasfilm, but the Googles tells me Disney paid $4 bil for both
Yeah, what did Star Wars ever do that was weird, ever, besides including Muppets?
Apparently you never heard of the Christmas Special from the 70s.
Holiday special. In universe it was Life Day. In our reality it was released in November, so it’s technically a Thanksgiving special, not a Christmas one.
In case you’re not being sarcastic (it’s hard to tell online, especially in a Star Wars thread), I have to point out that:They made the villains a fictionalised US, in the middle of the goddamn Cold War. They parodied the Vietnam War with koalas. They made a sequel that wasn’t a Jaws 2-style rehash, and ended with the heroes on the back foot. I’m not sure that there were a lot of big genre mashups before Star Wars, either (but don’t quote me on that).They gave every random background character names, backstories and merchandise. They licensed out a transmedia universe that grew so big and convoluted it needed a tier system for continuity.They made a prequel series that opened with a trade embargo, before retelling Hitler’s rise to power (and said Space-Hitler would become Space-Nixon). They had a cartoon miniseries lead into the climactic movie.Some of this is pretty normal now, because Star Wars blazed the trail; the rest is pretty wild even by today’s standards. That’s what made Abrams’ films so underwhelming: they didn’t swing for the fences the way the rest of the franchise did.
I agree with all those points except part of the first. The grey Imperial uniforms, the architecture and whole Triumph of the Will sense of grandeur – not to mention the fact that they have Stormtroopers – are all in keeping with portrayals of the Nazis in the movies of the post-war era*That said the Ewoks were a VC stand-in so, it can be two things I guess. *I’d have thought someone called Indy would have spotted that 😉
Lucas outright stated they were based on the Nixon administration, and there’s also the theme of WMDs.The Nazi aesthetic was popular for portraying villainous/dystopian institutions in general (although it could also be taken as comparing the US to Nazis).In other words, it is indeed two things 😛
It’s definitely two things. Comparing US imperialism to Nazism is pretty fucking bold for a kids movie.
Han shot first.
The prequels which were a fan failure. Disney wanted to avoid that outcome. They got an equally bad outcome in exchange.
It’s very easy to take SW for granted now, as it’s been with us for 45 years and has spawned the biggest empire of sequels and merch in history.But the first SW in particular is/was VERY fucking weird and the reason why it became the phenomenon that it did was because no one had seen anything like it before.
I think it’s because Marvel had proved it ability to make successful movies before they were totally acquired by Disney whereas with SW there hadnt been a good movie since 83.
Star Wars isn’t “…weird stuff…”, it’s SCIENCE FICTION weird stuff, which is vastly different from Superhero weird stuff (pedantic much? Yes!) Seriously though, Sci-Fi, except the obviously fantastical Sci-Fi, doesn’t have comic book vibes. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but for those of us who are Sci-Fi fans but really don’t get into Super Hero stuff, it’s a critical difference. Appealing to BOTH means you lose the hard-core fans of both.
You forget that Edgar Wright was kicked off Ant Man after being the guy who did all the ground work including generating fan support. You’re also ignoring the cluster fuck that Avengers: Age of Ultron was due to the corporate meddling. I’ve never been a Joss fanboy, but the guy did give them the billion $$ success of the first Avengers movie to wind up in the back seat for franchise tie-in set ups.
Edgar Wright is the exception that proves the rule. He’s an absolutely amazing artist, but he wanted to come into what was essentially episode 14 of a television show and ignore everything preceding and following that. Which I know is what makes him a True Artiste in the eyes of Marvel haters, but, well, that isn’t gonna fly.
Edward Wright is a somewhat competent technician.
I said they had a better track record, not a perfect one. Besides, one director moved on in how many movies now?
As much as JW battled the studio over Ultron (and in retrospect perhaps not all of those arguments were started by the suits) the film still feels Whedon.
From what I’ve read a lot of the most bizarre moments of Ultron were moments Whedon really fought for. At some point it’s all hearsay but this is one instance I wish the execs would’ve meddled a little more.
This is true, but it took them a bit to get there. Maybe the next set of Star Wars movies, which we know are inevitable, will see that same sort of slight relaxation of control.
The success of the Mandalorian may finally have brought it home to them that talented creative voices can do good work in their sandbox without kicking it over completely.
It’s very opaque, but it may be a function of how Disney operates more than how how Disney controls. If they set up separate units and give them a lot of autonomy, the strategy works if the section heads choices are all good and struggles if they give control to a bad head in one of the units.It’s an old issue in a lot of big industries, like the car business. You might see Ford, for example, have a strong pickup division and a weak passenger car group.
Sometimes it is due to a difference in the leadership of autonomous divisions. Other times it may point to political problems at the top. One unit may benefit from favoritism at the top and gets a lot of backing in fights with the marketing group, while another gets little leverage over marketing and is forced to let toy sales push major last second plot changes.It would be interesting to know what happened. Unfortunately, stories can be wrong — execs tend to like to shift blame down to division chiefs and frame problems as individual choices instead of institutional ones. I don’t know if anyone at Disney will ever open up.
It’s very specifically a Lucasfilm problem. In Disney’s current acquisition phase, the three big acquisitions have been Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. At their best, Pixar and Marvel operate in almost opposite ways—Pixar projects gestate a long time, often get delayed and have shakeups of their creative teams to get things just right, while Marvel’s driven an incredible TV-like production pipeline to put out a tremendous amount of product, mostly on schedule, with the downside that the results are often TV-like, just with giant budgets and big special effects. Lucasfilm feels like it couldn’t choose between those approaches, setting a Marvel-like production schedule while wanting to be Pixar-like hands on, swapping out creatives, but not taking on the kind of top-down control where they’d figure out what their big cinematic trilogy was supposed to be before handing it off to each movie’s writing and directing teams. It’s been a poisonous mixture. If you want to crank out movies at a Marvel-like pace, it’s going to take some top-down showrunning of the overall operation, just to keep the simultaneous productions running. If you’re doing a creative committee approach where you’re still trying to break the story after production has started, that requires time and the willingness to put off a project that isn’t ready (and we’ve seen Pixar’s quality take a dip under Disney’s demands for more product on a more predictable schedule).
Yeah, what you’re saying is that it’s a Kathleen Kennedy problem, and for all her purported quality control, firing people mid-production and all that, she controlled Star Wars straight into the toilet. I can’t think of another beyond-well respected filmmaker who has shit the bed as hard as KK.
I guess they learned something after dumping Edgar Wright during Ant Man.
I loved Rogue One and hopefully, this and The Last Jedi will pave the way for the direction of the post-Skywalker Star Wars stories. Hopefully between Rian Johnson/Filoni/Favreau and even Waititi…we’ll get a new take on what Star Wars can be.
The Last Jedi was a steaming dog turd.
Here we go…
Wrong answer! Thanks for playing!
Well, I am pretty sure it wasn’t, in any regards, a steaming dog turd. TRS won that classification, TFA is the “acceptable intro to a trilogy but mostly forgettable” entry, and TLJ is the “here’s a shitton of great ideas that were mostly half-baked, and at least it looks pretty!” entry.
You’re right, it’s not a steaming dog turd. As a dog owner, I pick up a steaming dog turd every day, and the sensation, while unpleasant, is way better than wasting 3 hour of my life to TLJ. TRS is terrible, but that doesn’t make TLJ any better. Every single scene of that movie is a fail, it’s just terrible on every level.Rogue One, for what it’s worth, at least has a plot line you can say in a single sentence and characters with clear motivations (though, except krennic and tarkin, none of them seem particularly interested in their own motivations). TLJ works as if 10 teenage girls sat down to write a fanfic and then an old bearded director was assigned of removing the steamy parts between Supergirl and Young Snape.
Nope. Both movies are steaming dog turds. Rian Johnson needs shooting for the utterly ridiculous snails-pace bomber mission on the star destroyer and the equally slow-motion bonkers fleet chase (and resulting hyperspace kamikaze sequence). All I could think of in that sequence was Sideshow Bob escaping on the Wright brothers Flyer
Sounds like you don’t have a great grasp on taste.
Dog turds taste quite distinctive and that movie definitely tasted like dog turd!
You tasting dog turds is somehow not as nasty as your TLJ hot take.
I was worried for a bit when the side-stories got cancelled after Solo, but it looks like the TV side is filling that niche for now. Hopefully the response to TROS and the success of the Mandalorian will give Disney a bit more confidence in Star Wars as a more offbeat franchise once again.
It’s a good movie – if Star Wars didn’t exist, it would be a good movie. Why doesn’t Disney grasp this?
I honestly can’t fathom this response.If Star Wars never existed, no one would have liked this film. The actors are charisma-free, the story lurches from one clumsy and barely connected scene to the next and the filmmakers never have a firm grasp on who the characters are supposed to be.Sometimes Mendelsohn is dumb and sometimes he’s smart. A decent script could make that a throughline of the character. This “script” feels like a different person wrote each line.And the lead characters were BORING.This is a soldiers-on-a-mission film that absolutely pales in comparison to the best films in this genre because those films tended to involve, you know, actually distinct personalities and real drama. The Dirty Dozen were all distinct personalities peppered with amusing dialogue. These guys? Boring.I am not going to lower my expectations of a soldiers-on-a-mission film because it has spaceships and Darth Vader twirling his laser sword and Tarkin.
All this nonsense that “STAR WARS MUST BE DARK” is why this film is neither Arthur or Martha. It’s totally unrelatable to me why anyone would look at this mechanical monster and think this was daring or interesting or an interesting war film.
You are technically right in that this movie wouldn’t have existed without the original Star Wars, but I don’t get the idea that the characters of Rogue One are “boring” or “uncharismatic”. They are more interesting and likeable than the ones in the mainstream Disney trilogy — Jyn is a much more compelling protagonist than is Rey, and Tudyk’s K2SO is probably the wittiest droid in the entire Star Wars universe, even beating C3PO, and certainly more interesting than the lame R2D2 ripoff BB8. If I could fault the movie, I would have liked to see more of Saw Gerrera, because I like the idea that rebels aren’t 100% good — one of my favorite movies is the 1969 French film Army of Shadows which reminds us that the French Resistance weren’t clean cut good guys — they were basically terrorists, just terrorists with a cause that was justified.
I’ve seen Army of Shadows, too.So what? The comparison is laughable.The above poster made the point that the film was good and would have been well-received regardless of the branding.Rubbish.All you’ve done is describe why the characters are distinct within the Star Wars universe. You haven’t explained why they’re interesting or entertaining characters by themselves.Jones’ performance is one-note. And it’s a boring one. She seemed totally interchangeable with any other actress in the role with her wan line readings and permanent pout. There was no heart or spunk in her performance. She wasn’t helped by the committee-level script. All the characters were so bland it was hard to care about them. They are a walking box of archetypes. Theres the stereotypical Asian mystical guy, Baze’s character feature is he has a cool gun, the pilot is just a pilot.Yours is a fanboy argument. Just because something is grimdark doesn’t make it interesting.
Dude, you have to understand: Star Wars is shit. The whole universe was a tossed-off fantasy and everyone treats it like gospel. (I’ve used that analogy before but has it ever been more true???) There are no great Star Wars movies, and it’s precisely because the universe is very, very flawed. Nearly everything about Star Wars doesn’t hold to reason. Light saber handles hurt your hand. Stormtroopers shouldn’t be knocked out by tripping them (see Chirrut video above). B-wings are ridiculous. The Force is and does whatever the scene demands. I used to gaze at sci-fi novel covers too, but you can’t build an ecosystem that functions and makes sense just from cool spaceship drawings. Star Wars is rotten at its core.I believe the franchise needs to die. I’m sick of it. But in the meanwhile, Rogue One is the only movie with the balls to do SOMETHING that resembles reality. You call it “grimdark” but what other Star Wars movie delivers on the promise of this universe that Lucas laid out in the first 60 minutes of Ep IV? I’d call all the others “pussylight”. And fuck Empire too: fifteen minutes of a great movie, then a pretty decent TV Miniseries. I’m not crossing myself every time I think of it, like some people.
I’m not a fanboy. And I liked it. Why don’t you list some films YOU like so I can mock them? Or am I going to get an easy list of Kane, Umbrellas and other pre 1970 art films?You sound incredibly pretentious. When you’ve removed your so edgy need to attack the Star Wars franchise let me know. I’ll be watching “The Amazing Mr. No Legs” which I enjoy as well.
“neither Arthur nor Martha”?
Why did you say those names!?
100% this. No one would have seen or liked this movie if it didn’t have Vader murdering a room full of rebel soldiers or shots of iconic Star Wars imagery peppered throughout (ie., the Death Star looming in the background during the climactic battle).It’s a mediocre war movie with bland characters and boring action sequences that no one would remember if it wasn’t wrapped in a warm blanket of Star Wars nostalgia.
the soldiers in The Dirty Dozen were chosen months in advance of their mission and had time to train. Thus, the movie is essentially a basic training movie with an action scene tucked on at the end. the heroes of Rogue One, beginning with Jyn, don’t know they are a suicide mission until they have mere days to execute until they join the mission.
John Knoll is also part of inventing Photoshop. Impressive. Most impressive.
Plus a few Oscars.
You know everybody has a favourite Star War, mine is TESB.But not everyone has to write an article about it. Just make a list in the A.V. Club office and post that.
I don’t know if you get the point of this column.
You’re right. I thought the column was about the highest grossing film for the year, not which is the best Star Wars.
This column is about the most successful box office movies of each year. The reason it’s covering so much Star Wars content is because those movies made a fuckton of money.
Oh I understand what the column is about. Just not sure why it is discussing why Rogue One is the best Star Wars rather than just focusing on why it was the most successful film of the year. Anyway I was trying to make a bit of a joke, sometimes they don’t work…
I will say this about the Tarkin CGI. Bringing people back from the dead so to speak does have some heavy moral implications. But this one isn’t bad. Peter Cushings constantly said he wish he could have done more Star Wars films, he loved it. Also his secretary who has his estate since he had no children approved it and thought it was tasteful. If you want something thats… less tasteful, there’s a Galexy Chocolate commercial where Audrey Hepburn was brought back via CGI. Now making a beloved icon sell a product she never was associated with… that I deeply object to. Not just because Audrey was a goddamn saint, but that’s certainly doesn’t help! Yes lets take this woman who helped the poor and starving and make her sell okayish chocolate from beyond the grave. Fuck. Off.
Audrey Hepburn loves the new Peloton to get her sweat on, now here’s Charlie Chaplin enjoying the new iPhone
Chaplin wouldn’t have a career if he was starting today he would have gotten cancelled so fast.
I thought Kanye using a holographic Audrey Hepburn at Coachella was pretty great
I wasn’t bothered by Tarkin (in general bad or noticeable CGI doesn’t bother me at all), but I thought they should have just cast Charles Dance in the role rather than bothering with the CGI.
At least they got Tarkin’s mannerisms down pretty well.
Jedi Luke in the Mandalorian finale was rather flat and expressionless.
Ugh, deepfake Luke was the WOOOOOORST. I wanted to see that sly grin!
I imagine the director telling Hamill “now we need you stand very, very still because we don’t have the budget for your head to move at all”
I didn’t have a problem with it either, but I do think they could have done it by having them talk over the communication “holograms” used in every movie and it wouldn’t been quite as jarring.
Holy hell Charles Dance would have been perfect.
I’m usually not bothered by CGI either, but seeing this on IMAX definitely made Tarkin stick out as uncanny valley material for me. Oddly, Leia at the end didn’t (despite obviously being CGI), but I suppose that’s probably because she only had a few seconds and one line while Tarkin had multiple speaking scenes. It certainly didn’t detract from the movie overall, though, which I absolutely love.
What’s weird about Carrie Fisher (and Luke in The Mandalorian) isn’t that the CGI fake looked wrong, it’s that their expressions were wrong. In Rogue One, Leia has that little smile at the end, but Carrie Fisher didn’t smile like that. Likewise, the way Luke’s face moved isn’t the way Mark Hamill’s face moves.
And CGI Tarkin moved too much. Peter Cushing was a very still, subtle actor who used his hands a lot, but fake-Tarkin moved his head around all the time. They probably could’ve pulled it off better by being a little sneaky (he’s introduced with his back turned, with just a reflection showing his face, after all) but the problem with CGI is that you don’t know what it’s going to look like until long after the rest of the movie is in the can, so to speak. So, if you realize, “hmm, shit, this isn’t as perfect as we were led to believe” it’s a mammoth undertaking to go back and fix it.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Also, as others have pointed out, Tarkin could easily have been recast (Leia perhaps less so) and that would have worked just fine – which is especially weird since this film used the same recast actress for Mon Mothma who had done a scene in RotS, and she worked perfectly.
Somewhere in Australia, Wayne Pygram sits by his phone, quietly weeping.
Imagine if they cast Ben Browder doing his best Scorpius impression before casting Pygram.
You, sir or madam or other as the case may be, are precisely my kind of chaotic good maniac.
I will agree it wasn’t necessary and its not aging particularly well. Hell there were other roles that were recast, General Dedonna, the Rebel leader giving the breakdown of the Death Star plans, is now played by the guy who played Ser Barristan on Game of Thrones. Yeah its not consistent.
Agh! This is a total post-it note idea. An idea so good and so obvious that no one thought of it. man, that would have been amazing. CD is great.
If they did that and hired the make-up crew from The Crown, he’d have been indistinguishable!
I feel like this idea of CGI replacing dead actors is almost kind of babying the audience, as if we can’t wrap our minds around the idea that this character is now being played by a new actor. But it happens all the time and people roll with it; Don Cheadle took over as War Machine, Maggie Gyllenhaal stepped in as Rachael Dawes. We know Peter Cushing’s dead, so even though Charles Dance doesn’t look 100% the same, I think audiences will buy it because he’d be fucking awesome.
I think a simpler explanation is that it’s a “cool” thing that you can use to promote your movie. You can get a lot more marketing mileage with “we recreated Peter Cushing as CGI” than with “we recast the role with Charles Dance.” Not that I’m approving of that logic, mind you, but I don’t think it has anything to do with “the audience won’t be able to handle another actor in the role.”
Good call!
Wayne Pygram played Tarkin once before, just bring him back.
Or the ghost of Fred Astaire hawking Dirt Devil vacuums.
Needs more popping and locking* and dope beatz* to be hip for the kids. Let my man G-Boy Kelly give you da 411 on gettin jiggy.
Word up.*Not really
*Not this, either
I always liked this spot, though more in concept than execution. The CGI face-mapping is pretty terrible because the tech just wasn’t there at the time, but the dancing is great and the Mint Royale remix is fun.
When will this madness end!?
I get the impulse that led to the CGI Peter Cushing. Making a story about the building of the Death Star without that character would have been weird and recasting him when they’re trying to make a seamless transition into A New Hope also would have been a problem. The problem is just that the technology wasn’t there and the effect was an uncanny valley nightmare. What they should have done was just have the character show up in the form of one of those blue hologram things we saw through the original trilogy.
I’ll forgive uncanny valley Tarkin, if only for the fact that it gave us the storyline of the World’s Shittiest Boss. He’s the manager who shits all over your passion project until you finally succeed, then says, “Thanks, Greg, I’ll take over from here,” and presents it to the CEO as his big achievement.
Storyline-wise Tarkin’s subplot was great, but, as said upthread, it if had been Tarkin played by Charles Dance it would have been flawless.
As far as recasting, Dance would’ve been good, but I’d still hold out for Wayne Pygram (Scorpius from Farscape) who very briefly played Tarkin in Revenge of the Sith under a mountain of prosthetics (which he didn’t really need, considering that he looks a lot like a less-gaunt Peter Cushing).
Right?!!! He’s right there and it’s not like Disney doesn’t have his phone number!
It’s hard to think of a better example of CGI aging poorly than Uncanny Valley Tarkin. In 2016, this was the best that Disney could do by pouring literally millions of dollars into it. In 2021 basically any kid with a laptop could, if they wanted to, make a deepfake Peter Cushing that was 100X more convincing.I’m generally leery of the urge to re-do FX shots a la the Special Editions, but in this case if Disney wanted to quietly re-release Rogue One with a Grand Moff Tarkin who looked a lot less like he was made out of animated plasticine, I think I’d be all for it.
The hologram would have been a fantastic idea…
On the flipside, I know multiple people who saw Rogue One and did not know Tarkin was CGI until someone told them. One person’s “uncanny valley nightmare” is another person’s “wow, I can’t believe they found an actor who looks so much like Peter Cushing!”
God, I haven’t seen that advert in years. What an abomination.
While it didn’t “bother” me, as such (though I’ll admit there are potential implications for the future that are… bothersome) I do feel like it still would have been better if he’d only been seen, and heard, from behind, with his face simply reflected in the window. The longer he’s onscreen the more the movie dips into the uncanny valley (despite the obviously excellent work done to make him appear alive/real) and going a little more subtle with it a) might have felt more like a tribute to Cushing, rather than them replacing him with his digital, non-union equivalent, and b) might actually have been more impactful too. Less is more, and all that.
“The longer he’s onscreen the more the movie dips into the uncanny valley”It reminds me of the youngitization of Robert DeNiro in The Irishman. A minute would have been fine, but so much of it made me feel something was off in a way that casting DeNiro for the young Vito Corleone never did.
My memory of CGI Cushing from when I saw the movie was “Wow, very smart to keep him in shadows or in reflections for pretty brief appearances; this is a good, pretty clever use of the technology” …and then there’s the scene where he’s just out in the open and it all IMMEDIATELY fell apart.
It’s still terrible, a turd in the punchbowl of an otherwise excellent movie. They should have just given another actor a shot at being Tarkin. We all know we’re watching a movie, a recasting would have been fine.
Moral implications aside, the CGI looked like ass. It was a distractingly bad special effect that made an already terrible film look even worse. But over the years, the CGI Peter Cushing has looked worse and worse, especially after they refused to do the same thing with Carrie Fisher (which was probably the right decision). It makes you ask why Disney thought they needed to respect Fisher, but they could ghoulishly resurrect Cushing. If you’re being generous, you could interpret that decision as Disney admitting that the ugly CGI zombie in Rogue One was a terrible idea.
I hated the CGI Cushing as much or more than the next person. But let’s not pretend that being ghoulishly resurrected doesn’t fit his career much more than Fisher’s. From what I’ve read about him, I think he would have been amused by the idea.
It is possible he would have been amused by the idea considering his history in genre films. But from a strictly ethical standpoint, I think it would be easier to defend giving Carrie Fisher the CGI treatment than Cushing. She lived in an era where the technology for this sort or resurrection existed, and she had family around who could okay it. Of course, I doubt Disney cared about whether or not bringing an actor from the dead is ethical. It was really about the fact that Fisher had died recently and she was a bigger star. Cushing died many years earlier and most Americans barely know who he is. I doubt there was much more thought than that.
Hell yeah. Also I’ll add that not only does the character of Dracula have form when it comes to ghoulish resurrections, but Cushing is also not the first Dracula actor to be ghoulishly resurrected himself – Bela Lugosi’s famous posthumous performance in Plan 9 From Outer Space springs to mind.
I think the fact that Cushing died over 20 years before Rogue One was released, whereas Fisher died in the middle of filming the sequel trilogy, probably had an effect on the decision to use CGI to “resurrect” her. There’s definitely an added level of tastelessness when you recreate a CGI visage of someone who has just recently passed away, without alotting some time to process the grief of the passing.
I find CGI Peter Cushing one of the most delightful parts of the movie – in 20 years, that’s the part of the movie people will look at and say, “Wow, they showed this in a movie theater in 2016?” The CGI model looks good, even if it never looks like a real person – it’s very Star Wars to put an animated character (or Muppet) at the center of a bunch of crucial scenes. What’s really fascinating about it, though, is how the CGI compares to the actual Peter Cushing performance it’s modeled on. It isn’t a flashy performance, but Cushing was an old pro. His Tarkin is often very still, even relaxed, and conveys menace through small vocal inflections and subtle facial movements. CGI Tarkin has a very good vocal performance, but the animation is restless. The technology can’t quite manage a character standing (or sitting) still.
I really rather enjoy the Tarkin role in Rogue One. He’s written well and I don’t find the CGI off-putting. However, I always cringe a little at the reveal of Leia’s face at the end. It’s too porcelain-flat and expressionless for my tastes. They could have done something much subtler with an over-the-shoulder shot and a slight turn of her head to hint at her profile when she says ‘Hope.’ or something like that. The voice actor they used for her was spot-on, and there’d have been no mistaking who she was (not to mention her iconic outfit giving her identity awa).
Much as the CGI is definitely a walk through uncanny valley of death, it doesn’t bother me much. I think that’s because Cushing himself, with those sunken eyes and crazy cheek bones, always looked like an evil wizard who walked out the pages of a comic book. He’s a cold, unfeeling, weird looking character, so seeing him as something not quite human actually fits. Not speaking to the ethics, just my enjoyment.
Agree with you on this. If you’re going to bring back a person for something like this, don’t… but if you must, at least find an actor to portray them instead of CGI.
Yeah I think it depends on what the actor’s wishes were. I even feel weird when I see KFC cast people as the Colonel when he was a real person, and someone who grew to hate the corporation that took over for him.
Proofread, please.“Disney is simply willing to spend hundreds of millions…”There should be a “not” in there, or some negative.
It’s weird because Rogue One contains a lot of small things that I’ve always wanted to see in a Star Wars movie, as well as some big things I never knew I wanted to see. The pieces are there, the setup is aces, and even the tone is pitched at a lower, grittier level – it’s not afraid to try something different.So why, if I want to fall asleep within four minutes, is this the Star Wars movie I instantly put on?
Because the only character worth watching is the droid.
Well, I also liked Mendelsohn’s bad guy.
The fact that you said “Mendelsohn’s bad guy” and not the character name says it all IMO.
Oh I knew it was Krennic.
Mendelsohn’s bad guy is the only character with any heart. It doesn’t hurt there’s a great actor behind him, but imho all the other characters except possibly tarkin are written so terribly blandly. They’re all acting like they couldn’t be bothered. Jyn Erso has 2 moments in the movie when she meets first her surrogate father and then her father, and there’s absolutely no emotion there and the movie never lets those moments breathe. Very hard to get invested.
The thing that marks the film as a real failure for me is that the death of the villain feels more impactful than those of any of the heroes. The shot of a wounded Crennic watching as the weapon he designed is now going to wipe him from existence packed such a wallop of cosmic irony, even if he was a monster. In contrast the heroes died and I barely felt a thing.
It’s a shame, really. Rogue One has a great plot but crappy characters. The mainline films had great characters but crappy plots.
Because it’s fucking boring as shit, not having any of the stuff that makes movies feel human.
Maybe you just have to be in the right mood for it? Or maybe the characters aren’t hooking you.
I enjoyed Rogue One the first time, but watching it again recently I realized that there isn’t a whole lot connecting the fun CGI fighting. The story zips along well enough, but it doesn’t actually have much plot – the gang goes from one planet to another (to another… and another) while interacting with familiar faces/vehicles from the Original Trilogy, and then there’s a big explosion.
I felt like parts of the movie were cringey (especially the dialogue) and I hate whenever some piece of IP is created around explaining something from a previous piece of IP that doesn’t need to be explained but I still really enjoyed this movie. It works as an action film and it feels like it exists in the Star Wars universe as opposed to the other Disney Star Wars which felt like a carbon copy of a carbon copy of the Star Wars universe. I still feel like the movie could easily have been about something not involving the Death Star as every other Star Wars movie was about the Death Star. It’s really okay that there’s never an explanation about the Death Star’s one fatal flaw.
It’s really okay that there’s never an explanation about the Death Star’s one fatal flaw. I agree with that, but I think that in this case the decision worked. Rogue One did a great job of fleshing out corners of the Empire that we haven’t seen, like the brilliant scientist who’s conscripted into creating a super-weapon, or the “villain” who’s just a vainglorious middle-manager looking for his big shot to impress the bossman. Krennic doesn’t give a shit that he’s creating a planet-destroying super-weapon, he just wants an attaboy from the Emperor. And he’s so myopic in that desire that he went to Darth Vader’s fucking house to try to get his credit. It’s such a bad idea, but that’s why it’s awesome.
On their own those scenes are fine. But it’s telling that the Imperial Officer is more compelling in his role as Middle Manager of Evil rather than his role Main Villain of Jyn Urso’s Life. And the movie completely absolves Mads Mikkelsen of moral responsibility for building the Death Star, which boils the conflict between Cassian and Jyn down to a misunderstanding. There are the bones of a great story in the idea that Jyn’s quest to destroy the Death Star is a quest to destroy the legacy of her own father, but the movie makes a hard turn away from that territory.
If this movie isn’t about the Death Star…there’s no movie. It’s the whole point of the movie. The fact that the one fatal flaw was not a coincidence makes it so much better.I also loved Solo. I’m guessing we can’t be friends.
The story zips along well enough, but it doesn’t actually have much plot – the gang goes from one planet to another (to another… and another) while interacting with familiar faces/vehiclesI’m curious what you would want to see differently? Because The Gang Zips From Planet To Planet And Then There Is An Explosion is kinda the entire Star Wars model starting with A New Hope…
You could argue that A New Hope is contrived, but it’s fairly tightly plotted. Each time the movie adds a character, the next section of the narrative is shaped by that character – meeting Luke gets the droids to Obi Wan, meeting Obi Wan gets the droids and Luke to Han and Chewbacca. Meeting Han and Chewbacca gets them all to Leia. Meeting Leia gets the entire group to Dantooine for the big battle. Each new character leads to a new part of the story, which gives each character something to do. Rogue One has a video game plot. The characters go to a place to get a thing, and once they have that thing they go to the next place for the next thing. Most of the characters don’t have much impact beyond delivering a bit of exposition, a one-liner, or a big action moment. Meanwhile Jyn and Cassian hop from one place to another, until they get Scarif and have to flip a bunch of switches.
yes, this is a good take that makes sense! I guess, for me, for Star Wars or any other Big Action Franchise I’m…fine with video game plotting? Especially if it’s a frequently retread IP?
The story zips along well enough, but it doesn’t actually have much plotSee, to me, I think it’s the opposite where it tries to do too much too fast, so nothing has much of a chance to really land.
The intro “flashback” is solid, but then we get just enough to establish Jyn in the present is in jail, then we zip away to Cassian meeting his contact and shooting him, then we zip away to the pilot on Jedha being treated unkindly by Saw’s guys, then we zip to Cassian “rescuing” Jyn, and then we’re at Yavin 4 where they’re trying to convince Jyn to give an introduction to Saw. It’s a lot to establish.
Things slow down a bit when Cassian and Jyn get to Jedha, but there’s so much that needs to be done on-the-fly, with Jyn and Saw’s entire relationship and backstory relegated to a few lines of dialogue.
Personally I still think it works, but just barely.
The middle act to go rescue/kill Jalen Erso doesn’t work for me, because it’s trying to create conflict that shouldn’t really be there, (the whole, “oh, the Death Star is operational, oh well, kill the guy who built it, anyway.”) Plus, putting Jyn in the position of giving the big inspirational speech is a bit of a stretch, (there’s a bit of, “who the fuck is this kid?” going on), though I really liked that the “Rebellion” at that level were mostly just squabbling, well-dressed politicians under the delusion that the Empire could be negotiated with.
Because it has great ideas but poor execution.
I know this isn’t really your point, but I am going to share anyway…When I put on a movie I want to nap through, it needs to have specific criteria. It can’t be a movie I have no interest in, because then I will be annoyed by it and not fall asleep. I don’t want to put on something I have never seen but want to, because then I will get annoyed when I fall asleep because I missed something. I need something that entertains me just the right amount, preferably something I have seen before. Marvel and Star Wars movies are perfect for napping. I’ve seen them all a million times, watch the big opening, doze off, wake up for the big finale.
It looks like they pulled a 180 on the main character’s personality, which kind of left her without one. Is she the jaded badass criminal troublemaker the teaser…um, teases? Or is she someone whose will to fight has been broken (where and when we’re never told), and who’s mainly defined by her daddy issues, but is somehow a badass with a long criminal record anyway. She’s the weak center of the movie, surrounded by better (if sometimes self-contradictory) characters.The movie’s very rewatchable for all the good stuff. But repeat watches just underline how much of a cypher the main character is. Also, you fall asleep early because the movie has a very slow start, focused on the main character. Hopefully, you wake up by the time they get to Scarif.
The problem with Jyn is that her big character moment comes right in the middle of a bunch of other stuff (for plot reasons) so it’s rushed.
It makes sense in the broad strokes. She feels abandoned by Saw and by her father, who to her knowledge is a willing stooge of the Empire. She grew up as part of Saw’s resistance, but when he cut her loose (for good reason, because others were starting to suspect she was Erso’s daughter and these were “scary terrorist resistance” guys rather than “heroic Star Wars Rebel Alliance” guys) she was disillusioned and angry. So, she’s the jaded badass criminal troublemaker. She considers herself an orphan who doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything.
The message from her father flipped that on its head. He hadn’t truly abandoned her, he wasn’t a willing accomplice to the Empire, he was, in his way, just as much of a hero of the Rebel Alliance as anyone could be. His idealism and drive fuel hers and give her a sense of purpose that drives the rest of the movie.
Now, that’s an absolute shit-ton of character development to be crammed into about 6 minutes of screentime that also includes a prison-break and the damn Death Star blowing the shit out of a city and Forrest Whitaker acting unhinged-as-fuck. But it’s there, and it does make sense. It’s just easy to miss.
It makes sense in the broad strokes.I get that. I understand that was the character portrait the filmmakers wanted me to see. But it just didn’t connect with me, because while there are enough hooks in the story to hang that plot on, the portrayal of Jyn that wound up on screen doesn’t support them well enough. As a writer and editor I admire the work of constructing a whole different movie out of reshoots and existing footage, but it seems to result in movies that touch all the bases needed to have a complete story in a technical sense, but the sum of the parts doesn’t quite add up to that plot. Whedon’s Justice League was similar.
Because it’s comfort food for sleeping. You know what’s going to happen so you aren’t on the edge of your seat, and it relaxes you. The American President does the same for me. I’ve turned it on so many times when I can’t sleep and I’m out in five minutes. Let me tell you after multiple, multiple viewings, boy do I have some notes for Sorkin. I don’t care if she is sleeping with the President, Sydney doesn’t get to just come in the White House and start rooting around the residence looking for her sweater. What kind of security clearance did he give her?
Because it’s all texture and no substance. Which seems to be pretty much what Star Wars fans in general want from their Star Wars.
Because the first hour and forty minutes of the film is a generally lousy and unoriginal rehash of various heist movies with paper thin characters and mediocre plot, and it’s not at all surprising you fall asleep to that part routinely.Then the Rebel fleet shows up and the movie actually has about 25 minutes of a halfway decent action adventure that on its own is ok, but with the direct prequel-to-ANH aspect had people rush to defend it as the best of the sequels from release onwards. Except for the first time I rewatched it, the hyperspace jump has been my starting point ever since.To me, it’s actually kind of an interesting study for filmmakers on how the majority of audience perception of a film really does depend on nailing the ending rather than how you got there, presuming you’re make it long enough to still be awake when the credits role.
So why, if I want to fall asleep within four minutes, is this the Star Wars movie I instantly put on?
I almost fell asleep in the theater watching The Force Awakens because it was that boring. It’s not like I hadn’t seen the original and far superior version a thousand times since 1977.
This film does create a slightly odd retroactive effect with Star Wars IV with the assumption that Princess Leia’s ship quietly motoring along when the Empire pounced on them due to some detective work instead now being a variation of: Did you steal the chocolate cake? – No I didn’t! – Yes you did, we were right there when you did it and we saw you (and this is the exact same ship we saw you flee in) plus your face is covered in chocolate! (All metaphorically speaking.)
I feel like that makes Leia look like even more of a bad-ass (at a time when we all very much needed to have fond feelings about Carrie Fisher).“You are part of the Rebel Alliance!”“Fuck you talking about? This is a diplomatic mission!”“Are you serious?! You literally just escaped from Scarif! We saw your ship! Less than an hour ago!”“No idea what you’re talking about. Bring on the torture droid, pig!”
I do like the idea of Leia straight-up gaslighting Lord Vader.
Jokes still on her for kissing her brother about two hours later
Teenage daughter is gonna teenage daughter.
Ah, the Intergalactic Shaggy Defense.
I feel like that makes Leia look like even more of a bad-ass (at a time when we all very much needed to have fond feelings about Carrie Fisher).Yup, Vader getting pissed and raising his voice (for the only time in the movie, I might add) and almost yelling, “YOU ARE PART OF THE REBEL ALLIANCE, AND A TRAITOR!!” makes so much sense when he just saw the ship go off into hyperspace.
Enh. Makes Leia look like a total idiot to me. But then, she’s 17, she’s allowed to be a total idiot. But it also made Vader look a total idiot to me, for beating up a bunch of extras instead of blowing up the ship that was going to emit the plans to the death star to the whole universe…. Which makes me think the rebels are right idiots, because they caught a wireless transmission to make a single copy on a single hard drive and hide it in a droid on a ship the Empire saw leave the battle. Just emit that everywhere and make MILLIONS of copies, people! Like, in 1983 the wireless and the Internet weren’t what they are now, so watching a movie from that time makes you go OK, maybe the rebels had no choice. But now you see the wireless option in Rogue One and… Yeah, why?? What I’m saying is, rogue one introduced a LOT of plot holes.
“Maybe it was a different princess?”
I enjoy the vagaries of digital technology in the Star Wars universe. The Death Star plans are a digital file, but they function in the universe like a big crate of schematics that can’t be reproduced or transferred over long distances.
A lot of us have a story, first or second-hand, of their workplace having someone drive somewhere with a harddisk to save hours of uploading/downloading.Many more have memories of waiting hours for a game to download and wishing they’d bought the disk.
Actually it makes perfect sense that a society capable of light-speed travel would produce auto-CAD files that are hundreds of exabytes. Sort of like how we’ve used the power of wireless internet to produce streaming ads that are larger than older computer games.
It makes sense that the Death Star plans would be very big, because the Death Star was very big.
I would say that computers capable of plotting a trans-galactic light-speed flight within a few minutes should be able to compress data efficiently, but who am I kidding – the Falcon’s computer was the size of the cockpit and not necessarily solid-state given the steam and sparks.
I think navigation was implied to have dedicated hardware too, wasn’t it?Also there’s nothing to say the data was compressed in the first place, or that it wasn’t still huge after compression (wherein efficiency is more to do with the algorithm than the hardware).We’re probably putting way more thought into this than the writers did, of course 😛
A lot of us have a story, first or second-hand, of their workplace having someone drive somewhere with a harddisk to save hours of uploading/downloading.Yup, I work in education technology, and I was dealing with a school district that, due to being near a military base, couldn’t have a proper network (because it would involve crossing federal property) so they had a weird wireless system. If I had to transfer more than 128 MG of data from one school to another it took less time to drive than to try to use their network.
they function in the universe like a big crate of schematics that can’t be reproduced or transferred over long distances. My headcanon of this (never actively discussed but it’s what I choose to believe) is that in the Star Wars universe it’s become so easy to intercept “beaming” digital files that the only way to securely transmit them is via analogue means like data chips and droids.
Well, the nice thing about the Star Wars universe is that it is its own universe. It’s not a future version of us, it’s a completely different society with completely different rules and completely different technology, so it doesn’t matter if Star Wars tech and our tech doesn’t line up right.
It’s the difference between C-3PO and Commander Data. Data is this insanely complex, borderline indestructible super-android, but doesn’t have feelings and for some reason can’t use contractions. C-3P0, on the other hand, has plenty of personality and feelings, but will lose an arm or a leg or something if someone looks at him sideways.
Yeah but the internet wasn’t invented until 2004 whereas Star Wars happened a long time ago…
The fact that the plans were a digital file in 1977 is some fairly impressive forethought on Lucas’ part.It’s not hard too hard to swallow that it might be difficult to beam a signal to just any old planet, necessitating them sending the plans to one of the rebel ships in orbit (as opposed to the rebel base.) Especially since the base’s location was kept secret and they wouldn’t want to point an arrow at it.
Indeed. I remember the dialog in Star Wars as implying that the plans had been knocking around through spy circles for at least a little while before they passed to Leia, but I chalk it up to attention spans and current ideas of pacing. I was similarly annoyed by the way the actual trip to meet Luke at the end of The Force Awakens took under 30 seconds — a fade or two to imply a significant passage of time would hardly have been out of the question. The trip from Tatooine to Alderaan in the original at least took long enough for a game of chess.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: JJ Abrams has no sense of scale, and doesn’t know how big space is.
He makes the same dumbass mistakes in all his space movies.How the fuck could people see Starkiller’s lasers in the sky on another fucking planet billions of miles away?
Abrams cannot or will not deal with time or distance. See also his Star Trek, where transporters now allow instant travel over unlimited distances, or Rise of Skywalker where he treats hyperspace as teleportation.
Yeah, or the hyperspace death-beam that destroys the Republic Planet That Isn’t Coruscant but everyone can see it at the same time across numerous systems.
In JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, Earth to Vulcan was like ten seconds, which was ridiculous.
In JJ Trek, they also apparently don’t have sensors, so they warp to the Klingon home world completely blind to what they’ll find when they drop out of warp.Holy fucking shit, why did anyone hire this guy for ST/SW???
And a supernova threatens to destroy the entire galaxy on Romulus. Was- was Lost even that good? Why did he get so much clout?!
Not to defend TFA (ugh), but did the trip really take 30 seconds? I mean, we wouldn’t expect them to show the journey in real time, right?
But, on the other hand, by the time we get to TLJ, the Resistance hasn’t really gotten very far along in their evacuation and Rey has already gotten there.
I don’t have it handy to time it, but there were definitely no fades or cuts or any other directorial conventions to show passage of time.
Then of course she had to run back and pick up the droids.
Yeahhh, they went out of their way to solve minor plotholes only to create a major one where Vader literally sees the ship fleeing the battle with the plans. Maybe Leia was just pleading the 5th there.
“…but nobody really needed Rogue One…” I highly disagree. I grew up on Star Wars, saw Empire in the cinema with family when I was only six. The initial opening crawl giving background in New Hope was something that was always a question in the back of my mind. Rogue One was a movie that we may not have needed, but we wanted. When it was on Netflix, I’m pretty sure I watched it at least once a week for a solid year.
I’m what you would call an original Star Wars fan in that I was born in the ‘80s and raised on the movies. My crayon journals as a kid were filled with Star Wars (and Ninja Turtles), and I was lucky enough that an older kid was Toy Story 3 enough to give me all of his original Star Wars toys. I never got why anyone would keep them in mint condition. I wore every one of those things down to a nub.
So, it was sad for me to honestly have no interest whatsoever in being dragged by my brothers to watch this movie aside from spending time with them at the holidays. I had just reached the point where Star Wars did nothing for me, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Anyway, I loved it. It was just dark enough to work, and gave a sense of menace and mobility to the Death Star that wasn’t there before. The ethics of CGI cameos in this movie have been better discussed in other comments, but for me seeing Grand Moff Tarkin just worked with the momentum toward the movie’s conclusion, and Princess Leia’s final scene sealed it.
We talked about it the whole ride ride home, and when I immediately came onto this site to read about it, the first headline was that Carrie Fisher had just died. This obviously doesn’t make it a personal moment for me in the context of a real person’s death, but it was very interesting to have those two moments a 20-minute drive in the rain apart from each other.
“It was just dark enough to work, and gave a sense of menace and mobility to the Death Star that wasn’t there before.”It made the destruction of a single city feel bigger than that of entire planets in the other films.
Plus Krennic’s amazing line delivery – “oh, it’s beautiful.”
And the dread building up to it too
With this post, I am reminded of James Gunn’s recent comments about superhero films needing to graft on other genres to stay relevant reminded me of this film, among others.It was exciting when “The Winter Soldier” copied “Three Days of the Condor”, but this is starting to get out of hand.“Captain Marvel” = “Robocop”“Joker” = “The King of Comedy”“The Batman” = “Se7en”“Loki” = “Doctor Who”“Eternals” = Terence MallickAnd it’s not just the superhero genre.
“War of the Planet of the Apes” = “The Bridge on the River Kwai”“The Force Awakens” = “A New Hope”“The Last Jedi” = “Battlestar Galactica”“Knives Out” = “Woman of Straw”“Ad Astra” = “Apocalypse Now”
I liked the earlier films. Let them be. It feels lazy to simply use them as a template to differentiate other films within the superhero genre. Gunn himself is idiosyncratic and distinct enough to infuse his material with a specific tone (ditto Taika Waititi), but I am not interested in watered-down versions of earlier great films. It also hurts the structure of the film when it takes from one template and then shoves the Generic Superhero Ending onto the third act (aka “Black Widows” which copies from “The Americans” only to cop out with that “Winter Soldier” third act).
And I am not advocating for filmmakers not to be inspired by other films, either. “X-Men: First Class” has a James Bond vibe while being very, very different to that series of films. Christopher Nolan was inspired by “The Man Who Would Be King”, “Heat” and “Prince of the City” for his Batman trilogy. Filmmakers can make it work, but simply appropriating earlier films is not the answer.But people who praise “Rogue One”? I don’t know what to tell you. I guess it is grimdark Star Wars, if that what interests you, but it absolutely pales in comparison to the best films in soldiers-on-a-mission sub-genre. No engaging characters, incoherent and poor storytelling and laughable drama (that Whitaker scene went on FOREVER). Is this really what people want? For franchise films to be “unique” by appropriating other genres with no finnese or wit?
I don’t know what to tell you.But you are going to keep trying anyway. Many of us liked it, you didn’t, it’s all fine.
No problem with someone liking a film that I don’t. To pretend that this was anything other than a branding exercise (“LOOK HOW DARK STAR WARS IS”) is just delusional. It’s a bad soldiers-on-a-mission film by any fair standard: clumsy plotting, poor characterisations, risible dialogue. Yet people claim it is fresh and new. Spare me the delusions.
It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
Cool
“No problem with someone liking a film that I don’t.”That’s fair. But to follow it with“To pretend that this was anything other than a branding exercise (“LOOK HOW DARK STAR WARS IS”) is just delusional”…*is* kind of saying “But if you did like it you’re an idiot”
think you need a time out from the internet Andrew!
Hey looks it’s “nothing is original anymore!” guy.
I asked “Is this really what people want? For franchise films to be “unique” by appropriating other genres with no finnese or wit?”The fact that you believe that “Rogue One” was groundbreaking because it appropriated another genre strikes me as part of the problem.I cited other examples of this working successfully because those other filmmakers were writing in dialogue with that genre. It’s the difference between having a deep understanding of the genre and how to successfully integrate it into your story and simply throwing a coat of paint onto the franchise.This is grimdark Star Wars. So boring.
I remember in my one sentence post where I said “Rogue One” was groundbreaking. It was entertaining, this series is called “The Popcorn Champs,” not “Groundbreaking Films.” It was perfectly fine.
Genres are descriptive, not prescriptive. A film cannot “appropriate other genres”, only use elements that genre labels might describe.Also, Captain Marvel didn’t resemble Robocop in anything but the shallowest reading, Loki was more like Rick and Morty than Doctor Who, and The Batman isn’t even out yet. Your take has no substance to it.
Rogue One is groundbreaking because it killed the main characters. Otherwise it’s just purely a great movie.
Our heroes dying makes this movie all the more impactful.
LOL
Meh. I’ve seen “nothing is original anymore guy”’s type before.
My favorite “nothing is original” post was a friend of mine on Facebook bitching about the Twelve Monkeys TV show before it came out. “Why does everything have to be remade?” he said, “Why can’t they just leave the original alone? Aren’t there any new ideas anymore?” He didn’t even acknowledge me when I told him that Twelve Monkeys was itself a remake.
Yeah, but calling 12 Monkeys (the film) a ‘remake’ is really stretching the word. La Jetee is fascinating and it’s obviously where 12 Monkeys came from, but it’s more an inspiration than a remake (to me).
Meanwhile, 12 Monkeys the show was fantastic. It launched from the same basic idea as the film but reversed the time-travel rules and, once it found its legs, was really, really good. They dove deep into the logical problems with time travel and came up with some novel solutions, including the crazy death cult who would immolate themselves after traveling back in time to prevent remnants and paradoxes.
I haven’t seen La Jetee or the Twelve Monkeys show. I just found it funny that my friend was complaining about how nothing is original anymore, yet the thing he was using as an example of the supposed originality that used to exist in Hollywood was (loosely) based on something else.
I’ve always found the “Hollywood used to be original, dammit!” argument to be pretty suspect. I mean, this is the same Hollywood that gave us three Maltese Falcon remakes in ten years. And the third one is the good one. I guess if at first you don’t succeed . . .
And aside from the fact that there were three versions of it in ten years, it’s based on a book! In fact, it seems like most of the Hollywood classics were based on books. Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, The Grapes of Wrath, most of the Universal monsters, a lot of the old gangster movies. And then you have all the ones that were based on plays (Gaslight, The Man Who Came to Dinner, You Can’t Take it With You, Arsenic and Old Lace) and the ones that were based on real life to some extent. And sequels! People act like sequels weren’t a thing until James Bond, but how many Andy Hardy movies were there? Or Topper? Ma and Pa Kettle? OK, so maybe big budget sequels weren’t much of a thing until James Bond, but still, we’re talking about some pretty lucrative film series. There were 28 Blondie movies! More often than not, that’s the kind of thing that was playing at the local movie house, not Casablanca (which was based on an unproduced play.)
You’ve also got The Thin Man, based off of one Hammett novel. Then they made five more movie sequels. Which doesn’t even make sense because “The Thin Man” refers to the dead guy in the novel and first movie.
Sadly, Twelve Monkeys was not the remake of ‘Twelve Angry Men’ that I was hoping for.
“We’ve been locked in this room deliberating for hours, and we’re no closer to reaching a verdict. On the plus side, we have managed to write “Hamlet.”
It’s always dimly entertaining when the college freshman who just got a C in their arts course logs on
Not that I agree with his post but coming from tarted up MegaTron Guy…
How dare you taint a cult classic like ‘Robocop’ by comparing it to ‘Captain Marvel’.Honestly, I don’t even get where that comparison is coming from. I mean, if you’re simply drawing from the parts where she begins recalling repressed childhood memories of who she was before she was infused with Kree blood and trained as a galactic warrior, it’s a terribly loose connection at best.
“it’s a terribly loose connection at best.”- CookingWithCranston“What is exciting to us about RoboCop was this idea of a character who’s finding himself and finding his past. And even though it’s a dark movie it’s also extremely emotional in that way. If you remember that scene of him walking into his own home and remembering those moments from his past life, remembering who he was… I mean that’s big. That was one of the first things we talked to Marvel about in terms of this character. The idea that self-discovery and reconnecting and rediscovering your humanity and who you were. It’s a huge part of this film.”- Anna BodenAnna Boden co-directed “Captain Marvel”, in case you’re not aware (which is possible).
Except Captain Marvel was neither dark nor emotional and Carol Danvers was the same character by the end of the movie as she was in the beginning.
If Captain Marvel was truly inspired by Robocop, non of it was conveyed in the final product.
“If Captain Marvel was truly inspired by Robocop”Jesus.Boden said it was. Just because you didn’t like a film doesn’t mean it wasn’t inspired by a film you did like.
It is the VERY loosest of comparisons. To say that Captain Marvel is just a re-skinned Robocop shows how fast and loose the guy is playing with the idea of movies aping others. Ostensibly they are movies where a main character undergoes trauma, loses memories, becomes superpowered in some way, and has to learn to become “human” again.But that’s such a ridiculously broad premise that to say that Captain Marvel is literally a copy of Robocop is seriously grasping at straws. It’s like saying JAWS = Alien because they’re both about a hard to find monster terrorizing people while corporate greed overshadows the efforts of regular folks to stop the beast.
It makes more sense than Ad Astra = Apocalypse Now.
Yeah that was a true WTF comparison. I’d say, like, Field of Dreams before I got to Apocalypse Now.
The Apocalypse Now comparison isn’t completely invalid, both are about male protagonists going on protracted journey’s through somewhat uncharted colonized territories on a mission to deal with people from their own societies who have “gone rogue.” But given that Apocalypse Now is itself an adaptation of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness it’s kind of a dumb thing to bring up in a post about how “nothing is original anymore.”
In a very very broad sense that might be true but only like 00.0001% of people would watch Ad Astra and think “Fuck me what an Apocalypse Now ripoff that was.”
I did not get that comparison either. Like, at all. I’m sat here trying to fathom it out and just…no.While I’m here;Robocop is the greatest movie ever made.
I’d say a lot of your examples (Captain Marvel, Ad Astra, Knives Out, PotA, Eternals – which no one has even seen yet) are either reaching (Captain Marvel /Robocop especially and the Loki / Doctor Who similarity lasted for about one episode before the show showed it wasn’t going down that route for its wider story) or about as connected as The Dark Knight / Heat. But the end point of your post is damming a Star Wars film for “appropriating” another genre yet your list of bad examples of this is a Star Wars film appropriating… another Star Wars film? As you yourself say, I don’t know what to tell you.
You have not seen “Woman of Straw”. Don’t lie.As you haven’t seen it, I should explain that the plot to “Knives Out” was basically Basil Dearden’s film with the addition of 5000 annoying supporting characters, a non-chronological structure, the most asinine social commentary possible and “ironic” racism.In both films, the young male relative (Sean Connery/Chris Evans) of an ageing Machiavellian (Ralph Richardson/Christopher Plummer) tries to frame an immigrant nurse (Gina Lollobrigida/Ana de Armas) for the millionaire’s murder. At the midpoint, both the nurse and relative are working together and there is a potential for romance only for the male to be later revealed as a murderer as well as a misogynist. In both films, his crimes are partially uncovered by a member of the house staff and his final breakdown occurs after an interrogation with the cops and the nurse in the house.Why didn’t anyone mention it? Because, to be fair, no one has seen “Woman of Straw” in 50 years and Johnson’s careful to play down his major influences. “The Last Jedi” steals wholesale from “Battlestar Galactica” and critics simply ignored the obvious lift because Johnson said SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS five million times.I am not going to bother with the other examples because it would be wasted on someone intent on pretending to have seen films they haven’t.
Thanks but, having gone through a Connery phase a few years back, I know the film plenty. And the similarities – again – are about as much as Heat and The Dark Knight. Johnson’s been very open about doing a classic whodunnit that draws on the classics. I suspect with your lists there’s a clear divide between whether the filmmakers were inspired or ripping things off based on your personal tastes for the films themselves rather than the process being the filmmaking. And hey, as this is the internet and anyone can call someone a liar with zero knowledge of that person, I’ll go ahead and say you’ve never seen Woman of Straw and all your points were pulled off a Reddit post you once stumbled across so you could sound intelligent when you dissed a film you don’t like.
“Woman of Straw and all your points were pulled off a Reddit post you once stumbled across so you could sound intelligent when you dissed a film you don’t like.”LOL.If you are going to lie, make it a credible one. As if anyone on Reddit is talking about that film.And if you have seen the film, I apologise. You clearly just didn’t understand it.
Cool.
Wow I thought Johnson was stealing from Avatar the Last Airbender for The Last Jedi. Maybe these movies have more than one point of reference though.
My favourite scene in Heat is when McAuley escapes surveillance from Hanna’s team by firing a tethered balloon into the air and being scooped up by a passing C-130 Hercules.
But…“Robocop” = Frankenstein“Se7en” = The Abominable Dr. Phibes
“Doctor Who” = The Time Machine“The Bridge on the River Kwai” = Grand Illusion
“A New Hope” = The Hidden Fortress “Battlestar Galactica” = Star Trek “Woman of Straw” = The collected works of Agatha Christie “Apocalypse Now” = Heart of Darkness
Frankenstein was about someone who was programmed into being a fascist warrior by a cruel society and must regain their memories in order to turn the tables on her tormentors.Huh? Interesting.
Captain Marvel is a hyper-violent satire of capitalism gone haywire in which a company sells an obviously immoral product as a solution for social ills that they themselves created? Wild?
He’s just arguing to argue at this point. Let him die on his hill.Why, did you know that The Magnificent Seven has ties to The Seven Samurai? You think you do, but you don’t understand it the way I do – OP
I don’t think this guy’s seen Robocop. Or if he’s seen it, he certainly hasn’t *watched* it.
‘“Se7en” = The Abominable Dr. Phibes’Holy shit
Every older film you named there was, in turn, influenced by something that came before. And how the hell does The Last Jedi = Battlestar Galactica? One or two similar ideas doesn’t make something a rip-off.
Given how many bad movies there are, a film that knows how to borrow from the best is relatively good. War for the Planet of the Apes isn’t, but it’s also not that similar to Bridge on the River Kwai (Ad Astra is definitely is a far lesser knockoff of Apocalypse Now).
My praise for Rogue One is pretty simple: It’s a simple movie that delivers space battles on a grand scale, which is exactly what the original trilogy did. Do all of the characters make sense? Nope. Is it a little choppy? Yep.Despite everyone dying at the end, it was still a fun spectacle with a pretty simple plot and didn’t get too caught up in Star Wars mythology. It also fixed one of the things that pissed me off about the Force Awakens: When Yayan Ruhian and Iko Uwais from the Raid show up, I was thinking “hell yeah. it’s getting ready to go down!”. Then they get killed or whatever after running around. Letting Donnie Yen do his thing was awesome.If I want a great soldiers on a mission story, I’ll watch the Dirty Dozen. If I want a giant space battle well done, I’m heading to Rogue One.
So you want wholly original stories that pay no homage to any stories that came before them? You…may be shit out of luck, buddy.
Not sure I’m seeing the Captain Marvel/Robocop parallels.
Before seeing Rogue One, I thought the idea of a Star Wars film modeled after The Dirty Dozen sounded brilliant. And I still think it would be a cool idea if someone actually made it work. Rogue One didn’t make that concept work in the least. One of the problems with grafting other genres into big franchises is that they almost always blink and refuse to include the most interest elements of those genres. They still want to hold onto the four quadrant blockbuster template. The best men on a mission films are ensemble pieces about how these disparate personalities do and do not function as a unit. But instead of that, we get yet another film about the main character with daddy issues. Once again, Disney blinks and makes the film far less interesting than its genre inspiration. I like most of the actors in the film. But every character is forgettable. You wouldn’t say that about The Dirty Dozen. And instead of developing an ensemble, they decide to reposition Felicity Jones’s character as the main character. Unfortunately, Felicity Jones is a terrible actress. She’s one of those English actors who convinces dumb Americans that they’re talented through the sheer force of her accent. That hope speech is embarrassing. In her defense, it’s not justified by anything in the actual film.
I am going to zero in on a small part of your answer and complain about internet commenters calling people “terrible actors.” Sometimes it’s an earned distinction, but 1) it’s subjective, and 2) if you really think Jones is terrible then I think you’re in a small minority. Like, she’s not my favorite, and I don’t know anything about “the craft” (let the pretension drip off of that one), but she seems perfectly competent and capable of her chosen line of work.
You’re really reaching with a lot of those comparisons. By your logic, no one should have ever made another “rag tag group of misfits assembles to fight bad guys” movie after Seven Samurai. It’s one thing to object to stolen plots or overused tropes, but you seem to be objecting to entire genres.
I really don’t understand your problem with this, since the whole superhero genre itself was sort of the evolution of pulp adventure novels and detective stories. Martian Manhunter started out as a hard boiled detective. Batman got his inspiration from Zorro. Jack Kirby even based his New Gods from Greek myths and tragedies. You can find more variety of stories in Asian and European comics. Star Wars ‘appropriated’ The Hidden Fortress and other Japanese jidaigeki films. Nobody says that you can’t adopt other genres to different audiences, especially to those who normally wouldn’t be exposed to it in the first place. Is this what people want? It is literally what people always do.
Graft it with sports!
I’ve never seen that before and it is SO awesome
I think there are two different reasons for this.Comic book movies are fundamentally uninteresting and they have been mass producing them for 30 years (at least). How do you make the product that aren’t selling that well, you cut them with something. This is also partially why everything seems to be proclaimed political at the moment, when they are usually not or in a very slight way. I don’t think it helps that the comics that they are fundamentally based off are basically now nostalgia products of the Cold War.-Secondly I think comic are really made for children and what does a child like more then mash together something they have vaguely hear of (thrillers, current events, the events in their history class at class) into their entertainment. It makes them feel smart as well, while also being familiar.
I think you mean The Last Jedi = The Empire Strikes Back
Yeah, this guy absolutely has no clue what Robocop is.There may be secondary or tertiary themes in common, but they’re not told in remotely similar ways, nor are they similar on their face.And those themes aren’t uncommon.
Might as well say Captain Marvel was inspired by Dark City where our protagonist wakes up with no memories of their past, is lead on a mystery to discover strange happenings, slowly begins to piece jumbled memories back together and then finally discovers their true power and takes down an entire alien force.
Captain Marvel is clearly a remake of Memento. 🙂
In reverse….oooh, what a twist!
I actually largely agree with your overall point, but think Rogue One was pretty great.
Rouge One is a fantastic movie.
It’s called the Anxiety of Influence, you can’t create art that’s entirely “new” because every artist is informed by what has come before. I agree with you that things have gotten insane with reboots basically being nothing more than retreads (Fart Awakens, Jurassic Turd).
Sure, but I feel that you don’t quite grasp on how creativity inspiration works. Creative work builds off each other in a dialogue.
You know you’re no fun right?
Fuck Rogue One.
Star Wars riffing on a bunch of older movies? Why, I never!
The snooty condescending attitude you’ve had to everyone replying to this is hilarious when your original post is so woefully ignorant. Winter Soldier only remade ‘Three Days of the Condor’ in as much as Marvel’s marketing department kept telling us it did (largely due to the casting of Robert Redford.) to distinguish it from every single other ‘secret agent betrayed by his organisation and forced to go on the run a la Bourne, Mission Impossible etc.
You then start throwing in a list of ‘original films’ that are incredibly derivative themselves:
Apocalypse Now is an adaptation of Heart of Darkness that also heavily mines the ancient trope of The Epic Quest. (Seen previously in everything from The Lord of The Rings to Homer’s Odyssey)Battlestar Galactica only existed because the box office success of Star Wars meant that every studio was chasing that sweet sci-fi money so Glen A Larson decided to mine Mediterranean mythology and combine the story of the Jews fleeing Egypt with Greek and Roman Mythology but set it in space and add robots and disco.I’m also surprised that you didn’t have a go at Ronald Moore’s 00’s remake of BSG for ripping off the original, like you did with A Force Awakens and New Hope.Somebody’s already mentioned Frankenstein as being one of the base influences for Robocop. You can also throw 2000AD’s Judge Dredd in there along with the Iron Man comics, The Terminator and Blade Runner. Terrence Malick is a person not a film. I’m not sure how ‘Eternals’ is a remake of him. Is this some kind of ‘Being John Malkovich’ situation? I haven’t seen the trailer. ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ is a POW drama based on the real life horrors of the Thailand-Burma railway. War of the Planet of the Apes is an adventure story with armed monkeys. Again, pointing out the influences of popular things isn’t necessarily a bad thing but to start acting like a brash, patronising know-it-all when your list of examples betrays your own lack of knowledge is truly the Dunning-Kruger effect in action!
“‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ is a POW drama based on the real life horrors of the Thailand-Burma railway. War of the Planet of the Apes is an adventure story with armed monkeys.”Funnily enough, both the original Planet of the Apes and Bridge on the River Kwai were based on books written by Pierre Boulle.
“Andrew” = “Old Man Yells at Cloud”Your “analysis” is more boring and unoriginal than anything you’ve pointed out here. Yes, inspiration is a thing. Everything is a remix. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I agree with you but for pretty different reasons. I’m not going to relitigate episodes 1-3 or 7-9 because I feel like everyone’s mind is already made up on those, but for this one all the reasons Tom listed as it’s strengths are why this is one of the worst Star Wars movies ever. It’s an utter mess for 2/3 of the movie, with bad dialoge, stupid motivation, and absolutely zero chemistry between it’s leads (Donny Yen is great tho), but then it ends pretty spectacularly with a couple good emotional gut punches. The fact that you can see traces of a really good movie in there make it’s flaws that much more painful.It is also guilty of the Star Wars leading man with absolutely no charisma or personality that has plagued everything from the disney era except the new sequel series (imo no matter what you think about the movies themselves, the core trio are great actors that brought those characters to life)
Well, the original Star Wars itself ripped off Flash Gordon among other works. It’s something movies have done since the beginning of movies
CGI Tarkin never bothered me.
He’s been ringing my doorbell in the middle of the night. Now that the creepiness has worn off, it’s just annoying.
It’s a little weird that Disney followed The Force Awakens with another Star Wars story built around a tiny, young white British lady.
I’m not sure it’s really that relevant tbh. I say that as a tubby, middle aged black British guy.
They do have a “type” for female leads. Leia, Padme, Rey, Jyn, Qi’ra, all thin, white brunettes.
Hm. Well, we have Rosario Dawson playing live-action Ahsoka now, so I guess that’s a break from the norm.
There is somewhat a backlash to women of color always being under heavy makeup or losing their identity (Princess and the Frog, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, etc)
And so they cast Lupita Nyong’o, one of the most stunning women on the planet, and make her an orange CGI frog person with absolutely no function in the narrative. Fucking morons.
Such a good actress and they waste her talents. We never even get an explanation as to how she finds the lightsaber. And this is right after Rey happens to find the Falcon on her planet.
Exactly. When I heard of Jones’s casting, my first thought was “Well, they certainly have a type.”
They want to be seen as spunky/forward thinking without doing so TOO much. Like, Rey never forms a romance with Finn despite the slight implications of it in TFA, or even with Poe whom she seems attracted to at the end of TLJ. And then by RoS they pair Finn with the only black lady in the galaxy who also might be Lando’s daughter and we get a half second of two inoffensive middle aged ladies kissing. Rey gets to kiss the redeemed bad guy who mindraped her earlier. Disney.
I absolutely adore Rogue One. The characters might be slightly underwritten but they all get great moments, their motivations are clear and all the actors are great.The visuals are amazing as well. If you were to do a list of the ten best shots in Star Wars history, Rogue One would account for about half of them.This was covered more in the Age of Heroes column but it’s worth saying again how remarkably well Civil War worked out in the context of the absolute nightmares of BvS and Apocalypse. Possibly my favourite MCU film.
The Last Jedi is my second-favourite SW film, and I take a certain perverse pleasure that the complaints of all the dick-heads led to the horror that is tRoS.
I see you haven’t met “Andrew” yet. They will be by soon, I’m sure, to tell you why you aren’t allowed to like TLJ. It’s a whole thing.
I HAVE SO MANY THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE THE LAST JEDI!!! RELEASE ME FROM THE GREYS!!!
I agree with you, Penis Van Lesbian.
Except that last part – making RoS as a sop to a bunch of fucking incels made me very sad indeed.
I’m nearly 60. I was 14 when the first SW came out, so:
a) I’ll take my pleasures – bitter and melancholy as they may be – where I can find them.
b) Whoever this ‘Andrew’ is, I outrank him as someone who saw SW on its first release.
I like how TLJ pisses incels off, but I also have my own issues with it. It didn’t subvert nearly enough. I was ready for there to not be a single lightsaber battle and instead leave it with Rey and Kylo running off together, Poe be exiled, and Luke then deciding to intervene for the third film, setting up an emotional climax for that one when he inevitably dies to help the young’ns.But instead we end with Kylo losing again, Rey not having that much to overcome, and knowing that a dead actress’ character is the only major human from the OT left besides a completely ignored Lando. It made for a decent standalone but a bad middle chapter. But still leagues better than RoS
TLJ is a standalone, since the movies on either side of it are trash.
Donne Yen putting his faith to the test and running through laser fire to the control panel while chanting his mantra “I am one with the Force the and the Force is with me” is pure fucking cinema.
His character is the one from this movie that I would definitely like to see fleshed out in a prequel.
I would throw my money at that if you included Jiang Wen, and let him direct. Yes, I know that would never happen, but a girl can dream.
Were it Marvel, I would bet folding money on that actually happening. But, as Tom said, for some reasons Disney chooses to snuff out interesting directors in the Star Wars universe.
Yeah, you would think with the way studios want to court the Chinese market that one of the streaming shows would feature Yen. Then again, I don’t know if streaming is a feasible market strategy over there. They have a lot of internet restriction.
Get your comments in now, next time it’ll just be three people agreeing that Last Jedi was a fun night out at the flicks but not worth further discussion.
In the spirit of the discussion about Peter Cushing, can we all appreciate one of the greatest Onion headlines of all time: ‘No, God, No!’ Screams Agonized James Dean Disappearing From Heaven As Filmmakers Finish Constructing CGIhttps://www.theonion.com/no-god-no-screams-agonized-james-dean-disappearing-1839700927
Darkly funny because there is a film coming out that’s going to STAR a CGI James Dean.
to confront the evil that’s right in front of them—galactic versions of centrist Democrats.Fuck you and your bullshit.
whyareyoubooingi’mright dot gif
Really the Centrist Democrats are maybe Mon Mothma and Bail Organa? They were a bit hesitant to fight and have mostly benefited from the Empire as senators despite having good intentions, nor could they stop the Empire forming in the first place.
The centrist democrats aren’t the evil in that sentence, they’re the ones who are afraid to confront evil. You want to take issue with the idea that centrist dems are “bickering do-nothings,” feel free.
I prefer to think this movie is just an expansion of the Phineas & Ferb Star Wars episode. Dr. Doofenshmirtz designed the Death Star with a self destruct button.
rogue one is clearly the best of the disney star wars movies. quite likeable cast of characters, great action sequences, real stakes. i won’t deny that it likely benefits from where it sits in terms of the overall star wars timeline (seeing original trilogy vehicles and design hits the sweet nostalgia part of the brain), but it just seemed to hit all the right beats, unlike the newest trilogy.i think my only gripe is with the CGI tarkin/leia, i would’ve settled for side/back/distant angle shots without the full view of their faces. tarkin was relatively passable, but leia’s face was distracting.that vader sequence at the end—what i wouldn’t give for a proper vehicle showing vader ruthlessly hunt someone down across the galaxy in his dark side prime. anyways, rogue one and mando are great. new trilogy, i’m sure disney has plans to retcon at some point once everyone has collectively washed the bad taste out of their mouths.
My biggest gripe is that the last scene isn’t the one on the beach. Everyone who’s seen A New Hope doesn’t need to see the remainder.
From a cultural standpoint, in December 2016, everyone needed to see the remainder, and it wasn’t about Star Wars.
I didn’t need to see that. I’d already seen A New Hope.
Yeah, wasn’t wild about this one. When watched absent of context (i.e., as YouTube clips), the action scenes feel fresh and great. As I watched the clips here, I felt excited and wanted to re-evaluate the movie. But then I remembered all that was wrong with it.
The movie is mediocre, and has some good action sequences that don’t make up for the fact that there is not a single character in the movie other than the droid and MAYBE Mendelsohn. Felicity Jones gives an astonishingly boring performance as the lead (though the script doesn’t help her – two father figures who we don’t care about who die?! Really?! Boring and dumb). The Cassian Andor of the first five minutes is an incredibly interesting character. The Cassian Andor of the next 2 hours is one of the most boring, do-nothing, characters in Star Wars history. You can’t have a character be the “morally gray, have to win at all costs character” and then have him only do one thing about it! Having Riz Ahmed in this movie is a complete waste of talent – do you remember his character’s name? I don’t! Forest Whitaker gives an astonishingly bizarre performance, and again – he is supposed to be morally gray too, but only does like one or two bad things! Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen are fine, but I don’t understand their characters’ motivation at all.
When no one remembers the names of any of these characters that should be a clue that your movie wasn’t as good as you thought.
Counterpoint: this movie sucked ass and you’re all corporate shills for trying to force it down our throats.
Rogue One isn’t just Disney’s best Arar Wars film, it’s their only good one.
I would agree with you, except that I haven’t seen Solo or Rise of Skywalker, so I can’t say for certain.
Solo was decent; but I also liked TLJ, so YMMV.
Solo is definitely worth your time. A fun space adventure film, barely hampered by some awkward compression of Solo lore.
It’s a little weird that Disney followed The Force Awakens with another Star Wars story built around a tiny, young white British lady.The only weird thing about it is that no-one at Mouse HQ realised that, by casting this particular “tiny British lady”, they’d just further exposed how the other “tiny British lady” they’d hired – you know, the one who had to carry an entire trilogy – couldn’t actually act.
Counterpoint: Daisy Ridley is terrific.
And since when is “acting” the thing that carries a Star Wars trilogy? Mark Hammill certainly aged into a beloved actor, but that was looong after Return of the Jedi.
How anyone can complain about the acting of ANYONE in that trilogy after enduring 4 hours of Hayden Christiensen is beyond me.
Hayden’s firmly in his lane as overdetermined Hamlet…the characterizations in the sequel trilogy are far blander.
Daisey Ridley was particularly charming in TFA.
Daisy Ridley is the only reason why TFA works even a little. She’s good. The movie ain’t.
Wait, are you suggesting that Felicity Jones is a better actor than Daisy Ridley? That’s insane. Jones is one of the worst, most overrated actors working. As truly terrible as that “hope speech” is at the end of Rogue One, Jones actually made it worse. It’s just embarrassing. Ridley at least managed to come out of The Rise of Skywalker relatively unscathed, even if the film around her was absolute trash.
Ridley’s performance in Rise of Skywalker is actually good. The script isn’t her fault, she did everything she could with what they gave her. I’m not sure that actually makes her a very good actress, but she was able to hold center stage in three big tentpole films.
Counterpoint: neither of them could act but at least Daisy Ridley could smile.
Jones had better material and better guidance than Ridley had. Ridley is a fine actor. At least as good as Mark Hamil was in Star Wars.
She was great in Toast of London. Despite only having about one line.
I don’t know how good those actresses are in other things, but Rey is far more interesting to watch than Jyn Erso and it isn’t particularly close.
She can, her character just isn’t given much to do.
The correct ranking of the live-action Star Wars movies:1) The Empire Strikes Back2) A New Hope3) Return Of The Jedi4) The Last Jedi5) Rogue One6) Revenge Of The Sith
7) Solo8) The Rise Of Skywalker9) Attack Of The Clones10) The Phantom MenaceNote: I only put AOTC ahead of TPM because it has mercifully less Jar Jar Binks.
For me it’s1). Empire2). New Hope3). Rogue One4). Last Jedi5). Sith6). Return7). Solo8). Phantom9). Clones10). Last Jedi11). Clone Wars movieTPM has lower lows than AotC but also higher highs. The climactic fight, the podrace, literally everything Liam Neeson does. And yet I still like them both better than Last Jedi, which I still haven’t watched since I saw it in theaters (I still reflexively hate listing Clone Wars last, given how good the subsequent animated TV universe has gotten, but it is what it is).
How did both of you manage to leave out The Force Awakens? I’m guessing from your explanation that you meant it to be #4 there, and at least you got the correct number of movies overall. 🙂
Dangit! Slot Force Awakens at 6th for me, between III & VI.
This is why I prefer to rank in tiers rather than full at this point. So, in order to contribute rather than just snipe:
Tier 1: GreatsThe Empire Strikes BackRogue OneThe Last Jedi
Tier 2: GoodsA New HopeThe Force AwakensReturn of the JediTier 3: Good EnoughSoloTier 4: WretchedPrequelsRise of Skywalker
My ranking of the Star Wars films:Empire ANHReturn of the JediThat’s it. Those are the only Star Wars movies that matter. I enjoyed aspects (and sometimes large chunks) of some others, but they’re irrelevant to that core series from the late 70s/early 80s. Despite all of those subsequent films being built firmly on top of that series, none* of them offered much to enrich the central story that was already told decades earlier.
there is no Star Wars movie called A New Hope Bob.
There’s no war called World War 1 either, but here we are.
VERY Close. But “Rise of Skywalker” is the absolute fucking worst and, smack me if you must, but I didn’t hate AOTC and would put it above Solo, which was just fucking boring as can be.
Obligatory Top 10 Highest Grossing Movies Of 2016 Post, Brought To By Disney: The Numbers1. Finding Dory, Disney, $486,295,561 2. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Disney, $424,987,707 3. Captain America: Civil War, Disney, $408,084,349 4. The Secret Life Of Pets, Universal, $368,384,330 5. The Jungle Book, Disney, $364,001,123 6. Deadpool, 20th Century Fox, $363,070,709 7. Zootopia, Disney, $341,268,248 8. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Warner Bros., $330,360,194 9. Suicide Squad, Warner Bros., $325,100,054 10. Doctor Strange, Disney, $230,107,790Wikipedia1. Captain America: Civil War, Disney, $1,153,304,4952. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Disney, $1,056,057,2733. Finding Dory, Disney, $1,029,570,8894. Zootopia, Disney, $1,023,784,1955. The Jungle Book, Disney, $966,550,6006. The Secret Life Of Pets, Universal, $875,457,9377. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Warner Bros., $873,634,9198. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, Warner Bros., $814,037,5759. Deadpool, 20th Century Fox, $783,112,97910. Suicide Squad, Warner Bros., $746,846,894
How is Rogue One the top movie if it doesn’t top either of these lists?
Domestic gross. I forgot that list. Will post later as I’m at work.
1 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Disney, $532,177,324 2 Finding Dory, Disney, $486,295,561 3 Captain America: Civil War, Disney, $408,084,349 4 The Secret Life of Pets, Universal, $368,384,330 5 The Jungle Book, Disney, $364,001,123 6 Deadpool, 20th Century Fox, $363,070,709 7 Zootopia, Disney, $341,268,248 8 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner Bros., $330,360,194 9 Suicide Squad, Warner Bros., $325,100,054 10 Sing, Universal, $270,395,425
Man, I don’t know why, but for a second I read “Suicide Squid” and I really want to see that movie, as long as it’s not a rip-off of Red Dwarf’s Despair Squid.
Obligatory Every Movie Featured In These Articles Ranked From Best To Worst Post:The Godfather (1972)2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)The Exorcist (1973)Jaws (1975)Saving Private Ryan (1998)The Dark Knight (2008)Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)Blazing Saddles (1974)Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)Rocky (1976)Jurassic Park (1993)The Graduate (1967)West Side Story (1961)The Avengers (2012)Toy Story 3 (2010)Beverly Hills Cop (1984)Back To The Future (1985)Batman (1989)Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King (2003)Spider-Man (2002)Toy Story (1995)Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi (1983)Spartacus (1960)Titanic (1997)Rain Man (1988)Kramer VS Kramer (1979)Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)Top Gun (1986)The Longest Day (1962)Aladdin (1992)Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)Independence Day (1996)The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)Three Men And A Baby (1987)Billy Jack (1971)My Fair Lady (1964)Cleopatra (1963)The Sound Of Music (1965)Avatar (2009)Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith (2005)Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)Spider-Man 3 (2007)Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)Forrest Gump (1994)American Sniper (2014)Home Alone (1990)Grease (1978)Shrek 2 (2004)The Bible: In The Beginning… (1966)Love Story (1970)How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
I just wanted to plug my favorite review of Rogue One, done by Kylo Ren.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUX5q0EUtsM
I’m not sure if it’s just me or it Kinja’s no longer allowing embedded videos or what. But it’s a funny eight minutes. “Jyn Erso, rebel scum. And her ragtag band of equally, if not more rebellious, scums.”
For all of the behind-the-scenes drama, the editing (also maybe cinematography) of this one just works. There’s a rhythm and momentum to the cuts that hits me deepdown, right from the first scene with Mikkelsen & Mendelsohn.I’m not sure who to credit for that – Edwards, Gilroy, or the actual editors? But as a film it’s got an urgency that the other disney SWs and the prequels lack (even if bits of the story are a little wonky).
Rogue One did two things I thought I’d never see in a Star Wars movie: It somehow made A New Hope better (by shutting the, as Family Guy put it, “Why don’t they just put some plywood over it?” plot hole of having a giant hole that you can use to blow up the Death Star), and finally, FINALLY showing the Rebellion getting its hands dirty in the fight against the Empire. I audibly gasped in the theater when Cassian shot that informant in the back so he could escape.
That’s not a plot hole, it’s a design flaw. Happens all the time.
Nah, the little sewer grate at the base of Helm’s Deep is a design flaw (particularly for a culture that had never dealt with explosives before). The hole in the Death Star that allows you to shoot a missile right into the reactor core is ridiculous, unless it was covertly put there on purpose (or, more accurately, because 1977 technology wouldn’t allow for showing X-Wings flying into the Death Star itself to blow it up, which is clearly what Lucas wanted to do and gave himself a mulligan to do in Return of the Jedi).
>The hole in the Death Star that allows you to shoot a missile right into the reactor core is ridiculousMaybe you missed the climax of the movie where it was shown to be impossible to target the hole with the available technology and Luke was only able to hit it with the guidance of a force ghost and using his newly found Jedi powers?
Thank God no one needs to be fired for that blunder anymore.
It’s only 2 meters! That’s impossible, even for a computer!
“The hole in the Death Star that allows you to shoot a missile right into the reactor core”TBF the missile needs to make a 90 degree turn which can only be done by a junior space wizard.
100% this. The central premise of Rogue One is itself dumb. The “plot hole” from A New Hope the sort of thing mouth-breathers on Youtube make ten minute videos about, but it’s the sort of thing you can explain away in a sentence: “The Death Star is fucking huge, and it’s not unreasonable for something that big to have a design flaw.” There, I just removed the need for Rogue One to even exist.
Why should a movie need to exist?Why would the reason a movie “needs” to exist be something in another movie?
I don’t think movies needs a reason to exist beyond a good story and characters, which Rogue One doesn’t have. This could have simply been a movie about stealing the Death Star plans. There was no reason to try and include dumb fan speculation about a “plot hole” that’s not really a plot hole.
The reason for Rogue One to exist is that the Rebellion was kind of underdeveloped and the Star Wars universe was ready for a story that didn’t focus on the Jedi. Turning the exhaust vent from a design flaw into an act of sabotage was okay, but it’s the kind of decisionmaking that brought us story changes in the special editions like Vader walking over to his ship rather than ordering it to be brought to him in Empire Strikes Back:I’m betting the guy who first proposed Rogue One knew this was one of Lucas’s pet peeves, and pitched his idea as “Here’s how we get rid of that plot hole that’s bothered you for over 20 years…” Still, unlike watching Vader walk to his shuttle, the change in Rogue One doesn’t wreck something that worked in the OT.
Well they still needed to steal the blueprints. Hard to find a 2 m hole on a moon visually.
It’s a good film. There’s its need to exist.
Kind of like the main action scene of Solo was covering for Lucas not knowing that a Parsec is a measure of distance and not time.
They even bring it up within A New Hope, like they literally talk about it! They say that the Empire doesn’t expect a bunch of tiny X-Wings to be able to make that trench run, and they almost don’t. It was all their hubris and the unexpected help of a ghost.
Especially since the DS was the first of its kind, built in a hugely hierarchical system where the engineer that points out a flaw that could potentially push back whatever hellish deadline they are working under would probably be force choked to death. That garbage compactor is probably littered with the bones of guys who said “Hey, maybe we should put up some safety railings.”
I haven’t read all the comments here but to me the big “plot hole” in this and Star Wars was always–was there NO other way to transmit those plans from A to B in a world where they have cool space ships that can fly at the speed of light? No one had email or even airdropping? Yes I’m sure the plans were quite large and complex but start the transmission, go get a drink or let it run overnight, and then check in tomorrow. I update my iOS like this all the time.
It makes the rebellion into an actual flesh-and-blood organization instead of just background noise as it was in most of the OT.
Another reason why Rogue One is thedopeshit: Wen & Yen are defintely Star Wars’ first gay couple, and it’s about as subtle as Xena & Gabrielle (ie. not very…) while still allowing for plausible deniability. ‘It’s canonical imho. Prove me wrong 😉
Counterpoint: Rogue One is a tremendous disappointment, a great idea squandered by corporate mandates and a chaotic production. The characters have no agency. They make stupid decisions only for plot reasons. Entire scenes happen, only to be forgotten immediately afterward. The central character is kind of worthless until it’s Big Speech Time, then suddenly she’s a beloved idealistic leader. The fan service is almost as heavy-handed as it was in the prequels. The Vader “choke” pun almost convinced me to walk out. What the movie does have going for it (a strong visual style, a pretty great space battle, and a refreshingly fatalistic view of “expendable” soldiers) was almost completely undone by studio meddling. I don’t know if the original cut would have been any better, but it almost certainly wouldn’t have been so dull (and almost certainly wouldn’t have forced so many “I remember that” fan service callbacks.)
“The Vader “choke” pun almost convinced me to walk out.”That sounds like a you problem.
Not wanting to hear Darth Vader spout off Schwarzenegger-ian zingers is hardly just a “me” problem.
You must have hated Empire then.
It’s far from a “Schwarzenegger-ian zinger.” It IS, however, completely consistent with the sarcasm Vader employs throughout the OT. Maybe you need a refresher.
“Apology accepted, Captain Needa.”
“Entire scenes happen, only to be forgotten immediately afterward.”I will never get over the bizarre inclusion of some brain scanning monster that’s meant to drive its victims insane, only for it to be used on a character who is perfectly fine and unchanged afterwards.
I usually agree with Tom’s assessment, but many he misses the mark on Rogue One, a film I would consider one of the three worst Star Wars films. (I can’t tell whether or not it’s worse than Attack of the Clones). I could sit here all day picking apart why the film doesn’t work, but others have that covered. My question is Rogue One, a film with such obvious flaws, liked by so many? I think there are two parts to it.First, the climax is a fun space battle. When we don’t have to pay attention to these stupid characters, it’s fun to see spaceships go “pew-pew.” It’s like stumbling on a piece of fan fiction on Youtube with surprisingly good production values. You admire the cool special effects, even if the story, acting, and everything else sucks. More than character, plot, tragedy, and pop philosophizing, people want space battles from their Star Wars movies. Second, the “grim” ending makes people feel like it’s Star Wars is for adults. “It’s a film about sacrifices,” you can say, even though the movie completely muddles this theme. My reaction to the end was that thank God we don’t have to spend any more time with these dumb character. But for a lot of people it was, “Yes. Yes. Now this is a serious Star Wars film.” Don’t get me wrong. I think blockbusters and family films can be complex and interesting. But they have to do the work. You can’t just tack on the death of some poorly drawn characters and call it a day. But I also think that people really want to see their childhood obsessions as “serious art,” and that’s what Rogue One gives so many people.
It’s also a movie with some very neat ideas that people can talk about while ignoring the poor manner in which those ideas were dramatized. Seriously, it’s a terribly made film, likely made worse because it was patched together by people other than the ones who shot/developed it (see also: Bohemian Rhapsody.)
“It’s also a movie with some very neat ideas that people can talk about while ignoring the poor manner in which those ideas were dramatized.”At first I didn’t know whether you were talking about Rogue One or the prequels.
Both, my friend. Both. Attack of the Clones in particular is a darned good outline for a potentially terrific movie. The result, unfortunately…
For all that the trade negotiation plotline of ‘Phantom Menace’ has been ridiculed since day one – and it deserves some mockery because the execution is dreadful – I maintain that the concept is kind of brilliant. The idea that a galaxy spanning war that brings down a democratic government and ushers in an age of tyranny is started by petty bureaucratic bickering is genuinely interesting, especially in a series that point out that the size of something is not equivalent to its importance time and time again. There’s a parallel universe where this film is a work of genius.
I think there are plenty of parallel universes where wildly different versions of that movie were works of genius. I’ve seen lots of EU stuff that took Lucas’s ideas and turned them into an actual, working plot. The Darth Plagueis novel, which I think is still in canon, probably does the best job of telling the other story of the Phantom Menace, spending a lot less time on podraces and Gungans and more on Palpatine’s master plan.Still, the execution of politics in the Prequels is so lazy and indistinct, I have a hard time imagining how the movie we actually got would be considered more than the failure it was.
Even Rise of Skywalker with a bit more detail and a bit less MacGuffin chase could’ve worked. But man oh man did it not
Second, the “grim” ending makes people feel like it’s Star Wars is for adults.There’s no need to be insulting, just because people like something you don’t. The main appeal is the movie’s final act, and for me, they could have just released that, with no other preamble other than a scroll, and I’d have been happy. The movie that precedes it isn’t great, and people tend to be divided on Rogue One based on how much they can tolerate the story treading water until we reach the fireworks factory. I tolerate it because I’m an optimistic sort who can appreciate the good (K2SO, Chirrut and Baze, Krennic, the internal politics of the Rebellion, the more interesting parts of Luna and Whittaker’s performances) and leave the bad (Jin’s story and character, Saw’s abrupt turn from scary semi-villain to kindly father figure). However, I can totally understand people who are less forgiving of the first two-thirds, because it doesn’t quite work as a complete story, and Jin is a void at its center.
I don’t know why people go on so much about the fact that everyone dies at the end of ‘Rogue One’, when ‘A New Hope’ got so much more out of just one death with the sacrifice of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I might have felt the impact if any of the characters in ‘Rogue One’ had any personality, but sadly they do not.
When the X-Wings dropped out of hyperspace over Scariff, I instantly became 10 years old again. I was grinning like an idiot. Then some genius found the unused footage of Red and Gold leaders and put that in there and I found myself tearing up. This was Star Wars, and I was in heaven. I don’t know who had the idea to use that footage, but I’d like to kiss them full on the mouth.
My reaction to seeing the unused Red Squadron footage was the exact opposite to seeing digital Tarkin & Leia. What an absolute blast of adrenaline.
I absolutely agree. That was utterly seamless and was pretty damn cool. I only wish there was unused Porkins footage they could have used.
Seemless – exactly the way special effects of gimmicks should be used if there are to be more than just gimmicks.
There was some, but it was badly stained with jam and chocolate.
Somewhere there’s five hours of him saying “Stay on target!”
It’s silly, but I did like seeing what happened to the *ahem* last Red 5.
Heh, I did wince when I heard that poor guy call himself Red 5. Might as well have had ‘Dead Meat’ as his call sign.
That was a silly callback/inside joke done right!
As Gareth Edwards tells it, he was touring the archives or something and some folks pointed to a bunch of film cans that had all of SW in it, so they went digging and, behold, found some usable, unused footage of the OG pilots.They also called up the Gold Leader actor and had him record some new dialogue. (Red Leader had sadly passed away earlier that year.)
As outdated as it looked at times, they used it just sparingly enough for it to be delightful. And the look of the film in general really flows into the OT
Donnie Yen’s character is not a Jedi for Reasons but is obviously more capable than any Jedi yet on screen.
It’s established that not everyone trained in the Force in the Jedi temple goes on to be a Jedi Knight. His character choosing to be a Temple guardian rather than a warrior may have just been the path that he chose.
I liked the whole idea that Disney seemed to be going with the idea that there are Force users other than Jedi and Sith. We had these Guardians, Knights of Ren, Snoke, time for the Jedi to end. There could have been some interesting stuff done with that. So many lost opportunities, particularly in the sequels.
I like that and really wished they kept going with the ‘Force not belonging to the Jedi’ theme that even the Last Jedi completely abandoned when they show Rey actually kept the books, and that Kylo is just an evil brat. And later on that Snoke was made by Palpatine?! And the Knights of Ren do fuckall
I think those Reasons are that with Jedi powers he would be flinging people about by the power of CGI rather than physically kicking butt which is what we all want to see Donnie Yen do. You don’t hire Donnie Yen to wave his arms or force choke people with his fingers. That would be pointless.
I agree, sounds to me like we should be making more movies with Donnie Yen and fewer Star Wars!
No. I enjoyed Yen in a couple of Ip Man movies, but more recently he’s pals with the Chinese Communist Party leadership, so fuck that.
I like Donnie Yen, but sadly he’s truly crap as my favorite character ever, Sun Wukong. I’ve given his Monkey King movie several tries, usually after I’ve liked him in something else, and is just does not work. He feels neither like the Donnie Yen we know nor like the Sun Wukong we know. In this case the whole is much less than either of the individual parts.
I will say, again, that Last Jedi got the shaft by short-sighted, stupid fans. The more time passes, the angrier I get. But back on topic: I liked Rogue One a lot. The acting was solid, it didn’t feel like it was catering to the fans, and even Tarkin sort of worked, although I was happier with Leia than Tarkin. It’s my second favorite of the Disney Star Wars movies.
I cannot unpack how satisfying it was as a Latin man to see Diego Luna starring in a big sci-fi blockbuster with his native accent. The whole subtext element of following ignored minority heroes in a very white universe was extraordinarily satisfying for me.
While there are narrative inconsistencies between the two directors on the project, I find this to be the Star Wars movie I come back to the most after the original three. Garth Edwards visual design is STUNNING. I love how it starts like a Ridley Scott Star Wars movie with repeated imagery of characters in the shadows next to the coming dawn to then go into full daylight with very classical Star Wars visual language for the final sequence.
Luna got to do the Spanish dub too. It’s a small thing I thought was cool.
My thoughts, for what they’re worth:* the story of a malignant Empire seemingly reaching its terrifying height of power under an evil master who demanded 100% obedience and loyalty while decent people considered just giving the fuck up and scrambled to find even a sliver of hope, uh, may have resonated particularly strongly in December 2016.* Agree that Rogue One is overall probably the best of the Disney-era movies so far, although I loved TFA/TLJ and liked Solo just fine. They all had flaws that R1 didn’t. If I’m being honest with myself, it might well be my favorite overall, period. Certainly if we rank them all by tiers, in my book this one goes in the same tier as ESB.
* the first scene with Vader is decent, and certainly thrilling to see him onscreen again. But I always thought it would have been WAY FUCKING BETTER to leave that scene out of the final cut and have our first glimpse of him in the movie occur when the lightsaber ignites in that dark corridor. How damn cool a moment would that have been, especially if they could have somehow kept it secret?* Perhaps weirdly, the novelization of Rogue One is really, really good. Check it out if you have a chance, as it gives some additional descriptions and internal processes for the characters, and the death scenes for each of them are incredible. Particularly Chirrut/Baze, who deeply loved one another and whose last thoughts were each of the other, and K2SO, whose death scene runs through its highly sped-up droid brain’s stream of consciousness during what we see as only a few seconds of real time onscreen. It’s honestly very moving.* Zootopia was a fine Disney movie, even good. But not all-time great, and it certainly shouldn’t have won Best Animated over their other animated feature released in 2016, which was an all-time great. Actual injustice there.
The novelization of Revenge of the Sith is also absolutely outstanding. Anakin comes across as such a fully-realized, tragic character. The scene where he reveals the truth of the Sith to Mace Windu is like night and day compared to the movie.
True – I read that one back in the day based on similar recommendations, and that’s spot-on. It’s far better than the movie.
That’s given me a fantastic idea – I want to watch the Clone Wars but I know it will be much better if I have all the plot in my head from the prequels. If the novelisations are good, that means I don’t have to watch those piece-of-shit movies again! Hope the audiobooks are decent!
Yeah, there were moments in that book where I actually teared up. It really enhanced a re-watch of RotS.
Starred solely for the point on how Vader should have been introduced with the saber lighting up. 😀
You’re correct. Vader should have just appeared and kicked ass. I guess they were trying to service the fans on all levels. Who didn’t want to see Vader’s house?
I mean, Vader’s Volcano Fortress was pretty cool, but definitely not necessary.
I get what you mean about how cool that would’ve been, but I fucking love that Krennic got mad about Tarkin stealing his thunder, so he goes to Darth Vader’s fucking house to whine about it. It’s just such an awful, awful idea, and it really tells us everything we need to know about how vainglorious and attention-seeking Krennic is.
Vader, choking Krennic: “This could have been an email!”
Well, technically, Krennic was “summoned” by Vader. The scene actually has very little narrative function, but it’s great to hear Jones as Vader again.
Vader built himself a castle on the same planet where (he believes) he murdered Padme and where Obi Wan dismembered him. Dude’s got some baggage.
Yes. Moana > Zootopia
YES< I have the novelization of Rogue One and I agree, it’s fantastic! Krennic’s dying moments--when he realizes the flaw in the design--is absolutely horrific.
How does he realize the flaw as he’s dying???
Jyn told him her father built a flaw into the Death Star.Of course, she didn’t tell him WHAT that flaw was, so who knows?
I agree that they should’ve saved Vader for the end, the dramatic effect would’ve been so much bigger. Also as sad as it is to say, James Earl Jones just sounded really old voicing him once again.
I would love to see the original script for Rogue One. Between the teaser trailer which had very little final footage in it to the first wave of toys that called Felicity Jones’ character “Sergeant” Jyn Erso, there was a lot changed in the reshoots and editing.
The full trailers too had lines completely left out of the film. Disney seems to do that alot, TLJ and TFA had lines in their trailers that made the film look completely different from what it ended up being.
Rogue One is a great third act without much else to support it, but man, it is one hell of a great third act.
I should have known it going into the theater, but I still remember how excited I got when I had the “a-ha!” moment about 2/3 of the way through the film when I realized “Oh shit! All of these people are going to die!”
I am so glad they stuck with that unlike Rebels. Or even Ahsoka, as much as I love her character she should be very dead by now
So after rewatching the Disney Star Wars movies shortly after TROS, I have to reluctantly admit that Rogue One is probably my favorite. Followed by Solo. It has it’s issues, the unwritten characters don’t really work, and as Mr. Breihan says they make some inexplicable decisions. But, that final battle is just awesome. Awe-inspiring, heart-racing, sheer fun. That is part of what makes Star Wars Star Wars. As for Zootopia, it’s a fine film, but the Godfather shrew(?) is such a lazy, uninspired and ancient gag. Kills the movie for me.
Why reluctantly? Did you like it less on the first watch, or were you just hoping TROS would be better?
Yes to both. I also think that the badness of TROS ruined the otherwise passable sequel trilogy. It made the whole thing pointless. Rogue One is at least self-contained and mostly entertaining despite it’s flaws. And I always feel like I am in the minority in this, but I hated and still pretty much hate the Vader horror movie slasher scene.
Ultimately, everyone dies in the battle, a storytelling decision that seemed audacious at the time. I think this was my most favorite AND least favorite thing about this movie. Least of course because after spending 2 hours getting you to care about these characters, it sucks when they all die (even though going in you kinda know that’s where it’s going, and it would have been lame if they had escaped at the end a la Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle). Most favorite because I remember saying to myself half-jokingly at the end after everyone died, “wow I wonder if the Disney executives know they just released a movie under their banner where everyone dies??”
Edwards … didn’t exactly have a gift for vivid and memorable human charactersIt shows. And since characters matter to me more than action, this is a movie that leaves me cold. I still think The Force Awakens is better. Not that Rogue One is bad- The beach scene is good and the Darth Vader part is awesome, but all of that is towards the end, so for most of the runtime, I’m just indifferent to a plot I don’t think really matters or keeps me engaged. There’s a short essay from Lessons of the Screenplay that analyzes the difference between Jyn Erso and Rey, where one is clearly a more interesting lead than the other.
The Last Jedi is more of a direct cut and paste/remix of The Empire Strikes Back.
On the other hand, it was after I saw Rogue One that I decided the Disney Star Wars wasn’t really worth caring about, so I stopped watching their new movies and have lived happily every since!
Nope. This one isn’t good either.Here’s a pretty solid blow-by-blow, breaking it down:
https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/12/21/rogue-one-film-crit-hulk-the-slippery-sloping-story-of-rogue-oneAnd the whole “design flaw” gripe will irritate me to no end till the day I die. It’s not a design flaw, it’s not a plot hole, it’s none of those things. A New Hope was perfect on this (and clear, too) but that has been lost to time against all the razzle-dazzle.
I love Rogue One. But I wish it had ended like this, the logical conclusion of leading straight into A New Hope:
Maybe, in retrospect, JJ Abrams came onboard for the sequel trilogy because this movie meshed much more effectively with the Beastie Boys than his work on Star Trek did:
Rogue One is awesome. For the fact alone that we FINALLY get to see Darth Vader being a badass makes the film worth it. I can still feel the goosebumps after seeing the hallway scene in the theater for the first time. But its so much more than just those scenes. I will always ride for Rogue One.
Counterpoint, the shaky plot, barely-there characterization, and general “we didn’t need this story to be told,” makes it the most forgettable Star Wars movie.
YES!!!!! I will fight anyone who disagrees :)I love this movie. At the end I was sobbing. I loved every character and it broke my heart.
I caught a lot of flak from my friends for stating that of the 11 SW movies, this one is firmly in the middle. Mostly, the movie offered a lot of cool stuff that it never really executed on, like the implication of the ideas they presented were cooler than what we actually got. A grittier, morally gray Star Wars about the boots on the ground and what they went through is interesting – but this film didn’t really give us that. A lot of that had to do with the characters; for a franchise so strongly driven by iconic characters, I did not know about any of these people or care about them. I forgot Riz Ahmed (who is great!) was even in this film until I read this post. That said the visuals and action were good, as was building some of the lore of the Empire as a shitty Fortune 500 company where everyone wants all the credit and none of the blame (an apt metaphor). It is easily better than TRoS, Solo and the PT.Also, unlike the author of this post, I *hated* that the Death Star flaw was planned. This just continues the “every thing has to be a thing” logic that permeates Star Wars. Give it 10 years, the broom that kid has at the end of TLJ will have a backstory and was owned by Anakin at one point. The idea that a massive, impossibly complicated battle station might have a flaw or two because the thousands of designers may not have all been on the same Slack thread was good enough.
I liked this movie a lot but it needed to tie into the Rebels tv show a lot more. That show spent multiple seasons sewing together a wide rebellion organization and then this big movie comes in and barely acknowledges that they exist.
Yeah, but we can all agree this is so much better than The Force Unleashed’s idea of the Rebellion being all organized by Vader and Palpatine to root out dissidents, but Vader’s secret apprentice (who can outduel both of them) sacrificed himself to save the leaders, on the Death Star itself and they used his family sigil at the Rebel’s insignia. Fun game, awful fanfic.
This is pretty high praise for a movie I fell asleep 15 minutes into the only time I tried to watch it.Maybe I should give it another try!Nah…
I found Rogue One insignificant and forgettable. In Disney’s promise to milk Star Wars every year, whether it was necessary or not, they pumped out the cinematic equivalent of a tv filler episode. All I remember is there wasn’t enough Donnie Yen.I really wish we could have talked about the far superior Zootopia. Love that movie
Consider the “can of worms” open when you dare take a side about a film or show dealing with the Star Wars mythos. Fanboys and girls can’t resist, but in the end it is all fun and games: “Are you not entertained?!”Rogue One is quickly becoming one of my favorites of the non-original trilogy. Rogue is gritty, dark and shows a face of the cinematic Star Wars canon only previously touched upon briefly in Empire and Phantom Menace. As the war story it should be, it results in the death of all of its protagonists and portrays the Empire as a much more sinister threat, deserving of the civil war that follows in episodes 4-6. Sure it isn’t perfect, but science fiction seldom if ever is. What it does do is provide a parable for human actions in its account of the inhumanity of war, trauma of psychological and physical suffering and redemption/salvation through sacrifice. Pretty good for an action film.
Not enough people talk about how Michael Giacchino had about three weeks to compose and record the entire soundtrack to the film. I think he did remarkably well, considering, but this is a series blessed by great soundtracks since the beginning. A lot of characterization and meaning that we associate with the action on screen (think Twin Sunset) is drawing its power from John Williams. Rogue One didn’t have that, because of production hell. It’s still a banger, IMO. But can you imagine what Giacchino could’ve done with two months? Three? How much better it would’ve been with more time spent on the emotive backdrop of the action on screen?
Man, I actually HATE that this movie changes the Death Star weakness to an intentional thing. Fatal flaws being overlooked due to overconfidence, hubris, or simple oversight happens all the time! Just because a bunch of uptight nerds think it’s a “plot hole” for some reason doesn’t mean you have to make an entire movie to retcon it for them.Anyway, I think this movie is just okay.
I also feel like the Death Star having a big gaping hole in it fits in thematically with the classic “The tighter you close your fist the more star systems will slip through your fingers” line. The Empire is so drunk on the idea of having this massive, ungainly superweapon that they don’t stop to check if it could be taken out by a single starfighter. You used the word hubris and that’s it exactly; the Empire is so used to winning at this point that they can’t even picture losing.
I enjoy Rogue One but I’m not sure I love it. Lots of cool moments and unique takes on both the Rebel Alliance and classic Star Wars settings (plus all of K-2SO), but the human characters always felt pretty interchangeable in terms of personality. Weird as it is, I think TFA and TLJ made its characters more distinct by comparison. Still, Rogue One definitely has one of the best climaxes in a Star Wars film, even without the Vader hallway scene.
We only have a few more months left before this column catches up with the present year. What’s next in this meta series, after violence, superheroes, and money makers? Science Fiction perhaps? A genre with roots in the early days of cinema.
Zootopia also gave us the Zootopia abortion comic, which in some circles is more important than any Star Wars film
um…what?
BOR GULLET!
I enjoy Rogue One but I’m not sure I love it.
Lots of cool moments and unique takes on both the Rebel Alliance
and classic Star Wars settings (plus all of K-2SO), but the human
characters always felt pretty interchangeable in terms of personality. Weird as
it is, I think TFA and TLJ made its characters more distinct by comparison.
Still, Rogue One definitely has one of the best climaxes in a Star Wars film,
even without the Vader hallway scene.
I like Rogue One. I greatly prefer The Last Jedi, but what I like about Rogue One is what I like about TLJ. It is willing to diverge and explore small corners of this incredible universe, and even when it flirts with Star Wars ‘77, it’s still compelling.What I don’t like about it is shit like that Darth Vader hallway scene, which people went nuts for and that I have never liked. It’s the kind of pandering nonsense that I hate. “What if this character you like did this, even if it didn’t really serve any larger function?” What? No, enough. And look, not everything in a film has to have profound intentionality, especially in a popcorn flick. But that scene has always bugged me so much.
That scene is the culmination of the movie’s themes. It is an integral part of the story, it’s not just there for the “kewl” factor. Watch the movie again.
I’ve seen the movie multiple times. We’ve already seen the exact thing it’s trying to accomplish with everything the main team is doing. It feels tacked on. Also, don’t talk to strangers like they automatically don’t know how to watch movies, or because they don’t like something you like it’s because “they don’t get it.” Come on, now.
This film has some of the best cinematography and visuals in all of Star Ward.
It’s also, narratively, dogshit – a confusing mess of a picture where character’s motivations change on a clock set to Scriptwriting 101 – this is the time in the act structure where X happens, so X happens regardless of whether or not it makes any sense for this to happen. The absolute nadir for this picture is when Jyn Erso gives a rousing speech to the Rebellion pilots about how important the Rebellion is – even though the Rebels just murdered her father and from a scriptural standpoint she has zero reason to like, trust, or give a shit about them. But this is the Rousing Speech place, so she gives a rousing speech. The film constantly informs the viewer of traits that never meaningfully have an existence in the story – Jyn is a troublemaker who never causes trouble and agrees to do everything she told to do the moment someone tells her to do in a loud enough voice. Cassian Andor is a morally grey rebel who shockingly kills a guy in the film’s opening moments and then instantly turns into a bog-standard good guy hero for the rest of the movie, never doing another ambiguous action again.
This is a prequel that isn’t a prequel – it’s final moments create a scenario that cannot possibly line of with the film it is meant to precede. The fan-wanking uber-badass Vader of Rogue One is in no shape or form the damaged, lumbering thug of A New Hope. Leia’s attempts to justify the Tantive IV’s mission in the opening of a New Hope are proven to be utterly idiotic, since her diplomatic ship… just went intoa n enormous battle with an imperial fleet who were there and saw her ship and were looking right at it who are you kidding Leia, what the fuck?
God I hate this movie. i despise this movie – and it kills me because I want to love it. Other than some truly horendous reshoots with terrible camera work, this film has incredible images that are seared into the brain – the fights are dynamic, the space-battle jaw-dropping, the sceneery and set design oozing with a oitch-perfect recreation of ANH’s late 70s aesthetic. It’s gorgeous, and there’s great actors giving great performances here.
BUT IT’S SHIT! IT’S A BADLY WRITTEN MOVIE I TELL YOU – THE SCRIPT IS GARBGE! GARBAGE! IT’S TRASH AND I- HEY GET- GET YOUR HANDS OFFmEHGJHGMMHGHMGHGMMHGHGMH
Rouge one is so cool I liked the bit where the Vader man did some samurai killing with his laser sword it was so badass. Woot. Pew pew pew.
The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi represents the 1-2-3 epic punches that revitalized Star Wars as sci-fi juggernaut that I always imagined it would be. They still held up really well to me as Star Wars fan.Of course, it all went downhill with strange cinematic decisions that didn’t pay off for Solo and The Rise of Skywalker. At least Lucasfilm and Disney might have found a new happy medium with Disney+ shows starting with The Mandalorian, so hopefully they can find the next string of successes.
It seems that Star Wars, like Star Trek is just better on TV now. I’m generally more excited about the TV content than any movies that are suggested
I mean, it’s the best battle sequence of the entire franchise, and it’s an efficiently told story…with again, some of the best Star Wars visuals of the franchise. I liked it! How could I not?
I’m inclined to agree with Red Letter Media’s assessment of this film, which is that it was basically Star Wars porn as written by a football player.
When it comes to Star Wars, Disney is not interested in indulging the aspirations of any ambitious directors.
Yet couldn’t seem to stop hiring them every goddamn time?The problem is that (strikingly unlike Disney’s other cash-cow movie universe) the people in charge of Star Wars had absolutely no idea or vision of what to do or where to go with the franchise beyond “more Skywalker saga!”….because that was such a winning formula with the prequels *eyeroll*So every executive reaction becomes an overreaction, things shift wildly from one movie to the next, and we only end up with a good movie like Rogue One basically in spite of their best effortsThank yeezus they seem to have finally gotten a clue with The Mandalorian
I love how desperate some people are to like this movie. They want to eat the slop so bad!
Rogue One was the only one of the new Star Wars films that I found myself still thinking about longer than the drive home from the theater. It’s a genuinely great movie.
But I liked them all. Really enjoyed Solo and have never understood what the kerfuffle over The Last Jedi is all about. I just didn’t see it as straying that far out of the general narrative. Rise of Skywalker is actually the one I enjoyed the least. I thought Rey had built her own hard-won identity over the course of the series, and it kind of felt like the big reveal of her “true” identity took something away from the character.
Yeah, TLJ still has Luke redeem himself and Kylo/Rey be on opposing sides as good and bad. Which I think was honestly not the right move. They should’ve subverted more and maybe setup Luke doing something in the next film, and show Rey actually tempted with some sort of anger or rift with the Resistance (TBF Luke also never wanted any real power he was just impatient)
Rogue One would tell a war story about the expendable soldiers who died to make Luke’s triumph possible in the first place. That fucking rules. That’s hard to mess up.In fact it’s so hard to mess up that Rogue One is technically the second time that they’ve done this story. The first time was the 1995 videogame “Dark Forces”, a Doom-era FPS in which you play Kyle Kataarn, a rebel pilot who personally steals the Death Star plans from a heavily guarded imperial outpost.
I said a few days ago regarding how much I love this movie and that I should revisit. And I did that last night. Not disappointed in the least. The casting was right on target…and more than okay seeing Peter Cushing as Gen Tarkin.Something i noticed that I hadn’t before. The rebels on the beach with the palm trees and the guys America appearing helmets, made me think of Viet Nam.
I would say, I like the characters better in the Force Awakens, but visually I think Rogue One’s visuals are far better then the TFA.
Things 1&2 are now 15, so they were 10 when this came out. We were just getting into the MCU, but they had been Star Wars fans since they were 3 or 4.I think this is one of the first movies that I splurged on opening night first showing tickets for. So, I had no idea that everyone was going to die. I still would have taken them, but I would have insisted on sitting between them, rather than on the end. I had 2 sobbing 10 year old boys and could only reach one to comfort him. The other one had a very alarmed looking 17 or 18 year old boy on his other side who I’m sure was wondering if he should try to do anything. He opted not to, which was fine. When Vader showed up and kicked all kinds of ass and we ended on Leia, they were ok again. But a few years later, at the end of GOG vol 2, Thing 1 grabbed my arm and very alarmed asked, “This isn’t gonna be like Rogue One where everybody dies, is it?”
“John Knoll, a visual-effects supervisor” should be changed to “John Knoll, a visual effects supervisor with several Academy Award wins”.
I feel it necessary to point out as, it is discussed in detail downthread, that people always, ALWAYS misunderstand the nature of the “flaw” that Galen Erso built into the Death Star.Galen did NOT create the exhaust port as the “design flaw.”The design flaw was in the reactor itself. He made the REACTOR unstable so that it would blow up the entire DS if it was damaged.
That doesn’t mean he had jack to do with the exhaust port.For all Galen knew, a perfectly viable rebel plan would be to infiltrate the DS in person and blow up the reactor from within.The specifics of how the reactor was to be destroyed weren’t his doing. He just made it possible.
I do wonder how it took this long for Star Wars to implement a blind Jedi. Or blind force-user. It just seems very in tune with the philosophy of the original (your eyes deceive you)