Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

[rowe]

This installment takes place between episodes III and IV, but closer to IV in the Star Wars timeline.

"Following the foundation of the Galactic Empire, a wayward band of Rebel fighters come together to carry out a desperate mission: to steal the plans for the Death Star before it can be used to enforce the Emperor's rule."

Release date is on December 16, 2016.

 

[rowe]

Here's the most recent trailer, which was released pretty recently.

Oh, who's right at the very end of it?

 

[Linnaete]

Preliminary thoughts (after first viewing) - THERE WILL BE SPOILERS

Pros

+ The last act of the film is easily its strongest, presenting perhaps the strongest display of space battles with a concurrent aerial battle taking place on the surface of Scarif. The tactic of a hammerhead ship slamming into one Star Destroyer and having it plough into another one in order to act as a battering ram to break open the shield surrounding the planet is easily one of the most creative tactics I've seen employed in the whole franchise. If nothing else, the film excels at what I felt was rather lacklustre in The Force Awakens. The latter pulls off a novel stratosphere battle, but it simply lacks the same degree of visceral spectacle and creativity as Rogue One.

+ I am very satisfied with how Darth Vader is handled in this one. The common criticism from fans is that Vader's total screen time is abysmal and he could have taken CG Tarkin's place on the Death Star as the man who consistently rains on Krennic's parade. Honestly, I applaud the decision to limit his appearance. When he finally does make his grand appearance, even if it's only roughly two sequences, it carries weight. There is gravity to the situation that warrants his presence on screen without any adverse diluting. It's like when the Lightsabers in the original trilogy were only sparingly used; you understood how serious the encroaching situation was when a Lightsaber was switched on, whereas the prequels diluted the impact of the weapon by having everyone and their mother switch one on at the sight of burnt toast. And the final ten minutes with Vader's brief assault on a rebel cruiser is just magnificent carnage. It's practically everything I wanted. For a brief moment, it was like Alien in the accentuated horror aspect; rebels screaming for help as the jammed door refuses to open while out of the darkness, this unstoppable assailant walks in, his presence only made known at first by the echoed breathing and the red Lightsaber that illuminates the room.

+ "Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director", warns Vader as he uses Force Choke on Krennic. Not the most subtle of executed puns, but a wonderful line very much in tune with what Vader would say and do.

+ Some much needed nuance for the Rebel Alliance is welcome. Up until now, the rebels have been this monolithic group of brave and selfless souls dedicated to the cause and to the leadership. They're noble individuals prepared to die if they must. The rebels in this film are a more diverse group, touching on very morally grey areas. Captain Cassian Andor for example, is not above shooting an informant dead in an alley to help facilitate his escape from Stormtroopers in pursuit, or to assassinate Jyn's father. He has allies in the rebels prepared to undertake dubious tactics in order to achieve the desired ends. Other more upstanding members of the rebels are seen to be dithering, reluctant to take up a cause for action with no collective unanimity with regards to whether Jyn can be believed. There is one moment when rebels indiscriminately bomb a facility which in an interesting twist, is what actually kills Galen Erso. Then there's Forest Whittaker's character, who is perhaps the most radical of the lot, who isn't above grotesque methods of torture and kidnapping.

+ To follow from the point above, I love how everything comes together to create this gritty package. It's more of a war film, with the fantasy aspects limited only to Donnie Yen's blind monk character. It depicts on the big screen a particular focus on the more brutal side of war, featuring a cast of characters that makes you dread the rest of the battle as it occurs, knowing that they could easily be picked off one by one. These aren't recurring faces like in the mainline films, so when you realise that these guys may go the way of Porkins and other doomed rebel pilots from A New Hope, it really punctuates the sense of loss that you otherwise may dismiss as the deaths of simple cannon fodder in other films. And the visuals help present this, with locations that look and feel lived-in and scarred, with characters bearing physical imperfections and dirt, which all go a long way to inject humanity and grit into this war film.

+ The sense of scale is done expertly. The low camera angles from the rebels' point of view panning up to the AT-ATs are excellent in this regard. Another noticeable sequence was of the retreating rebel ships activating Hyperspace only to crash into Vader's own Star Destroyer that unceremoniously enters the picture.

+ K2-SO injects much needed humour into what is otherwise a glum and joyless film. He's very much a less homicidal HK-47 (he does kill, but he doesn't excitedly bleat on about how much he enjoys murdering meatbags), packing enough dry wit, sass and sarcasm to make him the soul of the group...which is a little ironic considering he's the only non-living character of the Rogue One group.

+ The close friendship between Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen (honestly, their actual character names still elude me, which is probably relevant to discuss in the cons section) is quite fascinating. There's a clear sense of co-dependence on each other, like they're an inseparable pair and share a relationship that almost seems to go beyond simple friendship. I really felt that when the latter decides to undertake one final, glorious kamikaze assault on the elite troopers moments after Donnie Yen dies a heroic death to flip a switch.

+ YEEEEEEEEES. Let's retire the (hilarious) old jokes about what kind of idiot engineer designed that glaring weakness on the Death Star. It turns out it was deliberately installed, as a final screw you gesture to the Empire for screwing with the guy's life like that. I like this explanation and it does go a long way to help me reassess A New Hope in this new light.

Somewhat neutral

> Krennic in general - he's certainly portrayed convincingly as a dedicated man who is simply having a bad day, with his glory robbed by Tarkin. He's a tyrant, but give the guy a break, because his bosses are being absolute douches to him. I think his best moment is when the explosives go off around the base on Scarif and he's just staring gobsmacked at what is happening, before furiously turning round to face the imperial team in that room with him and screaming: "are you all BLIND? Send in the garrisons!" That being said, I put him in the neutral section because...the guy isn't going to be a very memorable villain. If there's a pit where villains who exist in prequel films belong in because they are clearly disposable in the overarching narrative, Krennic is in it, and he doesn't manage to crawl out of it, because he clearly is a simple one-and-done character who is easily completely overshadowed by CG Tarkin and Vader.

> CG Tarkin. It's...distracting, because of the uncanny valley. I'm actually surprised at the copious amount of screen time he gets, all things considered. It doesn't necessarily detract from the film too much, but it puts an expiry date on it, because it's going to look very dated maybe twenty years down the line. If they really wanted to bring Peter Cushing back posthumously as CG, perhaps they should have stuck to how he was introduced: staring through a window with the reflection of his face just about visible, or cloak his face in copious shadows to help mask the CG.

> I can't put my finger on it, but something looks...off with Vader's suit. Is it the neck? Is it the visibly red eyes that make him look more like a Kamen Rider? I'm not sure.

> When Captain Andor and Jyn don disguises to infiltrate the Scaraf base, I thought based on the trailer that there would be plenty of hilarious subterfuge going on, with plentiful ways of it going horribly wrong and leading them to be discovered. I realised while watching the film that it would be an egregious tonal clash with everything else going on both around the base and in the planet's orbit, but aww shucks, that would have been potentially good material. Oh well, I'm still fine with what we got.

> Err....why is there a tentacle hentai monster scene?

Cons

- Jyn Erso's story. I do like her. Felicity Jones has excellent acting chops and brings the character to life, but Jyn has never left quite the same impact on me as Rey. In The Force Awakens, we see Rey alone, getting a good glimpse of her life before the First Order comes knocking, doing small but symbolic things such as putting on an old rebel starpilot helmet found amongst the wreckage. I don't get to know Jyn the same way, which is somewhat frustrating even though ultimately I do find her to be a competently portrayed character in the context of the film. Perhaps if the film's first act does more to establish her life and focus on her considerably more, it would have a stronger result. Perhaps a look at the life spent as the daughter of an imperial engineer in hiding as a moisture farmer. Without it, scenes such as her breaking down in tears at the sight of her father's hologram fall flat. We can understand why Jyn feels this way, having grown up to believe that her father died in an act of sacrifice, but we've never seen much of the relationship to have sufficient emotional investment in their relationship to care as much as we could. But Felicity Jones is a great actress and still did as much as she could to sell that scene convincingly.

- Saw Gerrera, aka Forest Whittaker, aka Mr Clunkyboots with the tentacle hentai monster. If I have to think about one particular part of the film that I feel meanders to its detriment, Forest Whittaker's character comes to mind. I get what they're seeking to do, painting this as the most radical of the rebels, pursuing inglorious methods that would make an imperial proud. But like Jyn's father, we're told that he has raised her since she was found in the bunker without seeing any of it, meaning her reunion with Gerrera feels utterly flat and insignificant. We as the audience aren't really clued in as to what the real deal is between these two. And then all of a sudden, Gerrera dies on the planet when the Death Star attacks. It's not even a noble sacrifice. He practically gives up, urging everyone else to fly while he remains, because for some inexplicable reason, he refuses to run any more??? Wouldn't he have been valuable to bring back alive seeing as he would know about the hologram with Jyn's father, have the hologram in his possession and would presumably be a bit more credible to the other rebels than what seems to be the daughter of an imperial engineer?

- The first act of the film is easily its weaker part. It jumps around too erratically, harming the pace and without letting these characters and scenario sink in quickly enough before it whisks us off to another location. As such, I often missed out on character names, meaning my notes are full of actor names substituted in instead. I've no real issue with the characters, but I just wish the film gives us a chance to get to know them. They're clearly doomed to die in the end, but it can be hard to care about them as much as we possibly can when the backgrounds of these characters aren't explored very well, if at all. Captain Andor has one outburst about how Jyn isn't the only one who suffered, and he's been fighting the good fight since he was six. That's all there is to it. The other characters don't even discuss their backstories. Defected pilot guy (whose name I still don't know at this point, lol) could have brought something interesting up about what led him to defect, but that never happens. It reminds me of FFXII's ensemble in a way.

- Ugh, we really did not need the cameos by R2-D2 and C3PO. You would think they would be on the Tantive IV, which I believe is the ship that escapes at the very end, setting the stage for A New Hope's opening.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Yes, it's largely very dour, but such is the nature of what they were going for. Has this experiment necessarily paid off? I think it's too soon to say. Rogue One is a brave tread, but it also hinges too much on famiiarity and fanservice to be the kind of bold leap forward I expect and hope these anthology films to be. But I certainly think it's a strong film in its own right that gets plenty of things right. I'm going to - for the time being at least - put this on the same level as The Force Awakens and Return of the Jedi, because I feel Rogue One does better in some aspects than the other two, but stumbling in other factors. Jyn and her crew are fine additions to the Star Wars canon, but if I have to choose, I think the chemistry between Rey, Poe and Fin is easily more entertaining.

Empire Strikes Back > A New Hope > Rogue One = The Force Awakens = Return of the Jedi >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Revenge of the Sith > The Phantom Menace >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> perpetual dysentery >>>>> Attack of the Clones

 

[Notorious]

Gonna spoil freely so if you haven't seen it yet, go see it!

I'm glad I'm not the only one having a problem remembering any of their names hahaha, I just seen it last night and all I remember is Jyn, Cassian?, Krennic and... That's about it. The droid K2-SO too of course but they didn't do a great job hammering in Donnie Yen's name or anyone else for that matter. I still felt connected to the characters though, even with minimal backstory or none at all for most of them. Other than Forrest Whittaker's character which pisses me off, they really dropped the ball there. Great actor, potentially great character buuut it seems like he got torn apart by the cutting room (in more ways than one, Forrest was fucked up!) and the first portion of the movie wasn't all that fantastic. Once everyone got together though the movie flowed pretty well. Did anyone else notice that the first part was super dark color wise too or was it just me? So dark to the point where I thought something was wrong with the projector at the theater, it was a struggle seeing anything until the third act really.

The ending was fucking brutal. I figured not many of them were going to make it out since they technically weren't in the OT anywhere and this was a suicide mission but damn, I'm glad they didn't give us a happy ending and stuck to their guns. Especially ending on that fucking Vader hallway scene... I just sat there completely mesmerized by that scene. I was convinced after all the death and hit after hit the film threw at us that Vader was just gonna be in his little lava palace and not show up for the rest of the film. When he did show up though it couldn't have been more perfect, complete darkness, that iconic breathing then everything goes red. Really shows how powerful the Jedi and Sith were compared to normal people properly for once.

Also, Leia and Tarkin gave me the creeps. Hope they update how they look later so they don't stand out as much haha.

 

[The Welsh Paddy]

CGI Tarkin was definitely distracting. I thought they did an awesome job with CGI Leia though. Another thing I absolutely loved was how they spliced in some of the original cut footage from A New Hope to bring some familiar faces in the rebel fleet during the last battle. Overall, they done an amazing job of fitting this into the Star Wars universe. The C3PO and R2 cameo was a bit stupid and it definitely would have worked better if they were glimpsed right at the end. I did like the cameo from Ponda Baba (Guy who gets his arm chopped off by Obi Wan in A New Hope) and that other guy though, it was amusing.

I pretty much enjoyed what everyone else did about the film. I think all the rebel characters were portrayed really well, but Saw was a bit of a disappointment. It was a really tough choice, but Chirrut and Baze (Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen) are probably my favourite characters. The scene were Chirrut takes out a squad of Storm Troopers on Jedha was sweet. K2 was awesome as well. Really though, I was devastated over the fate of all the main cast, but at the same time having those characters survive wouldn't have sat right in the overall continuity of the series.

The first half of the film was definitely the weaker part, but it was still thoroughly enjoyable I thought. It might have benefited from a bit less seemingly uneccessary planet-hopping for one thing. Overall though, this is probably my favourite Star Wars film out of the whole lot. And that scene with Vader at the end... even though I already knew the rebels were going to escape with the plans, that scene actually managed to make me think the whole plan was going to end in failure for a moment. :thinking: