by "Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
Published 04/19/2017 at 20:34
by "Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
Published 04/19/2017 at 20:34
No Tags
STARS: 7
"random001" (random001)
04/19/2017 at 20:35, STARS: 2
I am one with the Force, the Force is with me.
"Chuckles" (chucklesw37)
04/19/2017 at 20:46, STARS: 0
I’m not ready to say it’s my favorite, but it’s damn good.
"For Sweden" (rallybeetle)
04/19/2017 at 20:46, STARS: 2
Orson Krennic is the best character in all of the Star Wars
"GTRZILLAR32-Now saving for Godzilla and a condo" (jackolson)
04/19/2017 at 20:53, STARS: 1
I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending (before the actual ending). I seem to be in the minority when it comes to TFA but I absolutely loved that movie.
"Jonee" (Jonee)
04/19/2017 at 20:54, STARS: 0
Nah. It’s 5th best. Good action, but the characters barely exist.
"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
04/19/2017 at 20:58, STARS: 1
Like there’s character development in any of the other SE films?
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
04/19/2017 at 21:09, STARS: 2
The biggest repeated gripe I’ve seen is that the characters don’t spend a lot of time on empathy scenes and you can barely keep their names straight. Pardon me, but isn’t that extremely typical for a war movie? Which this was. Characters are identified by appearance, behavior and role - names are nearly superfluous: see the Dirty Dozen.
Plus which, the film did a much better job of capturing both the cinematic feel and the sense of logic of the Star Wars classic films than The Force Awakens. In TFA, you tend to see a scene ripped straight from the classic trilogy, but shot in a distinctly J J Abrams style and hammed up - whereas R1 shoots many distinctly styled new scenes which have similar lighting, composition, pan rates, use of fades, editing, etc. etc. as the original trilogy. Apart from some erratic jumping in the first half hour, it is *far* more consistent with the standard epic scale and scene flow, and is more clearly a labor of love for the material (at least on the part of the editor). I also appreciated that the suspension of disbelief was more Classic Trilogy than Prequel Trilogy or worse. More *real*, more grim, less frenetic.
The point at which The Force Awakens lost me was a cut early on of Rey putting away her scavenging tools. “Punched up” in editing in such a way that instantly told me that either Abrams has no idea what a Star Wars movie is supposed to look like or doesn’t care. Rogue One *almost* lost me in the same way with the rapid cuts from planet to planet, but got back on track.
"Agrajag" (Agrajag)
04/19/2017 at 21:30, STARS: 1
The indestructible Millennium Falcon is the thing that bothered me the most in Force Awakens.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/19/2017 at 21:39, STARS: 0
Indeed.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/19/2017 at 21:41, STARS: 0
It has the right amount of maudlin for me. There are good things in many of the films, and some
really
good characters in Episode 7.
"Jared E" (jaredeast)
04/19/2017 at 21:42, STARS: 1
I loved that it didn’t have a forced happy ending.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/19/2017 at 21:42, STARS: 0
I would not disagree. There are some subtleties about his character that are quite well developed.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/19/2017 at 21:43, STARS: 1
I liked TFA.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/19/2017 at 21:44, STARS: 0
The did all
die
...
"wafflesnfalafel" (wafflesnfalafel1)
04/19/2017 at 21:46, STARS: 1
It does an excellent job of painting the picture for 4. It reminds everybody it’s a big deal and Vader will kill you.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/19/2017 at 21:46, STARS: 1
Kind of like my ‘97 GMC Safari...
"Jonee" (Jonee)
04/19/2017 at 21:48, STARS: 0
That doesn’t make them interesting .
"Jonee" (Jonee)
04/19/2017 at 21:50, STARS: 0
Of course there was. That’s how come the original characters and even the new guys from TFA are so memorable. And they all had relationships with each other. In this movie it was just a collection of people who could’ve been replaced with any number of other people.
"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
04/19/2017 at 21:51, STARS: 0
Well, to be fair, the entirety of R1 took place in what, a couple of weeks?
"Jonee" (Jonee)
04/19/2017 at 21:58, STARS: 0
Star Wars appears to take place over several days.
"coqui70" (coqui70)
04/19/2017 at 23:33, STARS: 1
I like how it ties into the original trilogy and gives us the back story. We see the sacrifices made by the rebels, and the fact that war is a dirty business. I noticed a bit of the themes/images from many other war movies. All the heroes die in the end - also unusual.
"boxrocket" (boxrocket)
04/20/2017 at 00:50, STARS: 1
I’m a huge SW nerd and still haven’t seen it. I’d made plans several times to see it in the theater but that probably won’t happen.
"boxrocket" (boxrocket)
04/20/2017 at 00:55, STARS: 1
That, and why the hell did Finn go down to the belly turret instead of up to the dorsal one? They’re trying to do ground-following flying, why pick the one facing the ground?! Made for a great shot when the cannon got stuck, though.
I hope in Episode 8 C-3P0 gets disintegrated. He added nothing that anyone else couldn’t have done better and less-annoyingly. I also feel he shouldn’t have been in the prequels.
"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
04/20/2017 at 07:15, STARS: 0
Yeah I’m a massive fan too :) it really captures the unique feel of the Star Wars original movies. Slightly gritty, slightly cobbled together techno-punk, contrasted with stunning panning shots of alien landscapes.
There’s only two things I’d change with the movie. The first is the speech Jyn makes trying to convince the rebel counsel to go to Skarif. That speech is one Cassian should have made. He’s the one who has dedicated his whole life to the front lines of the rebellion. It should be him convincing the counsel of its worth. Plus, it would mark the changing point where Jyn no longer distrusts him for trying to kill her father.
The other is the ending. I utterly loathe the whole ‘bad guy gets shot while monologuing’ trope. It’s just bloody stupid, and they’d done Krennic so damn well up until that point. Here’s how it should have gone.
Cassian stays dead when he’s shot.
Krennic: Who are you?!
Jyn: I’m the daughter of Galen Erso...
Krennic: ...who cares? (shoots her with blaster, blowing her off the edge of the tower to her death, but fails to notice the tiny little panel stating that the dish is realigned and transmission has begun).
Victorious, he takes a shuttle back to the Star Destroyer to inform the commander of his victory.
Krennic: The rebels are dead. The blueprints are safe. I have seen to it myself.
Tarkin: ...tell me Krennic. If that is the case, how have the blueprints been transmitted to the rebel fleet?
Krennic: ....
Scene ends as Krennic crumples to his knees, force-choked by Lord Vader.
"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
04/20/2017 at 07:18, STARS: 0
I absolutely agree. Rogue One definitely feels much more like a Star Wars movie, rather than a movie about the Star Wars universe (which is how I categorise The Force Awakens, and better than how I categorise the prequels which don’t feel like the Star Wars universe at all).
There’s only two things I’d change with the movie. The first is the speech Jyn makes trying to convince the rebel counsel to go to Skarif. That speech is one Cassian should have made. He’s the one who has dedicated his whole life to the front lines of the rebellion. It should be him convincing the counsel of its worth. Plus, it would mark the changing point where Jyn no longer distrusts him for trying to kill her father.
The other is the ending. I utterly loathe the whole ‘bad guy gets shot while monologuing’ trope. It’s just bloody stupid, and they’d done Krennic so damn well up until that point. Here’s how it should have gone.
Cassian stays dead when he’s shot.
Krennic: Who are you?!
Jyn: I’m the daughter of Galen Erso...
Krennic: ...who cares? (shoots her with blaster, blowing her off the edge of the tower to her death, but fails to notice the tiny little panel stating that the dish is realigned and transmission has begun).
Victorious, he takes a shuttle back to the Star Destroyer to inform the commander of his victory.
Krennic: The rebels are dead. The blueprints are safe. I have seen to it myself.
Tarkin: ...tell me Krennic. If that is the case, how have the blueprints been transmitted to the rebel fleet?
Krennic: ....
Scene ends as Krennic crumples to his knees, force-choked by Lord Vader.
Much, much better...
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
04/20/2017 at 09:07, STARS: 2
Yeah, my line about suspension of disbelief? That was my suspension of disbelief being folded, spindled, and mutilated - far beyond anything in any of the other movies including the prequels. The “TENTACLS IN SPAEC CORRDOERS WOOO” would also qualify had I not been done suspending at that point, let alone the Wile E. Coyote ground crumbling scene.
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
04/20/2017 at 09:22, STARS: 0
I tend to disagree about the prequels. They’re bad films (at least 2/3) and present things it’s easy for a fan to want to reject because they’re silly, but they *are* fundamentally Star Wars-ey in a way that TFA for all its “playing safe” only sort of is. Some portions are very good
Star Wars
in the middle of a muddle.
The way I describe it is that with both movies in a vacuum, TFA would probably be a better film, but just like when any remake borrows heavily from a previous source, you have to take into account how well it deals with what it’s been given - and its marks are less in comparison with R1, which, among other things, is simply less
arrogant
to the source material. Or, to not put too fine a point on it, R1 is for “Yoda fans” and TFA is for “Luke fans”.
I think you’re right that that should have been Cassian’s speech. His screen time is limited enough that beyond his confrontation with Jyn, you don’t get that clear an idea of what he’s
all about
, so to say. Not so sure about your Krennic edit - the original sequence is somewhat cheesy, but a very Star Wars appropriate kind of cheesy. I think a comfortable middle ground probably exists, but I don’t know what that scene looks like. The ideal would probably be neither a He-was-only-wounded plus Nevil Schute’s On The Beach nor a TWIST writ large but something more like Han-Consigned-to-Carbonite.
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
04/20/2017 at 09:26, STARS: 0
There’s a very stupid (or possibly hilarious) reason that C-3P0 is in all the main line movies. As I understand it, the movies are the tale told by C-3P0 many years hence to another entity - hence the long time ago, galaxy far far away. There’s a “storyteller” conceit baked in.
"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
04/20/2017 at 10:32, STARS: 1
Hmmm, I think I see what you mean, although I can’t help but think of the long desert panning shot at the start of TFA and think that that seals it for me, regardless of however much lense flare there is in the rest of it ;)
The reason I dislike the Krennic scene so much is less that it’s not Star Wars-y, it’s more that it’s completely at odds with core feel of the film. Rogue One is (above all of the other films) gritty, realistic and hard-hitting. Of all the Star Wars films, this should be the one that’s more of a ‘film about the Star Wars universe’, purely because of its tone of near-futility. All of that grim realism is built up to a finale...where the bad guy gets shot while he’s monologuing.
It’s just a disappointment.
They’d done Krennic so well, and I’m a bit hard to please when it comes to villains. He’s a really well defined character. Nothing he does up until that point is out of character with that definition. Whatsmore, he’s actually effective . He gets shit done. He’s actually got half a brain. Then at the end of it all he throws all of that away and monologues until he gets shot.
Having him kill Jyn at the top of the tower instead of that would cement him as an effective villain. Then, having him get killed by Vader for overlooking the smallest of details seems like something the Empire would absolutely do. Plus, there’s the symmetry with the phrase earlier in the film where Vader says ‘be careful not to choke on your ambition Krennic’. It’d be very fitting if at the end, that’s exactly what happened ;)
Oh, and Tarkin being there cements him as the better political animal. Let Krennic do the dirty work and take the fall, while Tarkin simply watches as the man dies and then takes over his life’s achievement :)
Edit: Oh and another thing (I swear that’s a quote ;) ). It would also give them the opportunity not to show Jyn’s death, but still make it absolutely clear that she has died. If Krennic shoots her and she falls over the edge of the tower and that’s the last we see of her, you’d get tons of fan debate over whether she’s dead or not (despite the fact that she clearly is as they nuked the place with the Death Star shortly after). That’s probably as close to the ‘he’s not dead, just encased in carbonite’ thing which is as gritty as the original saga got when it came to killing people :)
As an aside, my mum is convinced that Han Solo’s not dead in TFA. Purely on the basis that ‘we thought he was dead before, but he came back’. Fairly certain he’s dead as a dodo, but her unwavering conviction is starting to give me doubts...
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
04/20/2017 at 11:01, STARS: 0
I think of Krennic being shot as a capstone to the futility of
his
efforts (just as being choked out would have been), rather than a note against futility in general. The only reason that the team succeed against incredible odds is that the Empire have suffered so many failures themselves. Plus, it sets up the scene on the beach, which is hopeless in a way while being hopeful. They’re done, but the Rebellion isn’t. Though it should have been handled better to get there.
The panning shot in TFA of the desert wasn’t enough for me, because it was too clearly borrowed. Sort of “yes, okay, I know where you got that bit. Now, can I see something *like* this in impression that you didn’t take from ANH’s pockets in a back alley?” Spent the rest of the movie waiting, more or less.
Edit: on Krennic getting shot, I think his death sort of has to be anticlimactic, but I’m not sure it has to be in that way. The clearest parallel - Jyn at his mercy, taunting - is with Darth Maul in Ep. 1 and Obi-Wan in the pit, and that was a self-resolving anti-climax which worked rather well. Similar might have been for Jyn to set off a thermal detonator, killing herself and wounding Krennic, robbing him of his satisfaction, or for them both to have witnessed the Death Star strike and for him to have fled, with her having a secret triumph she doesn’t share (or does!). I think Jyn needs her moment of success, regardless how it comes.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/20/2017 at 11:26, STARS: 1
That would not work because the bad guys only realize the weakness when the Rebel attack is underway, don’t they?
I was struck by how, for the sake of continuity, they recruited middleaged, relatively poor actors -- or good actors who were good at acting like poor actors — to man the terminals of the Rebel command center.
"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
04/20/2017 at 19:22, STARS: 0
Haha I hadn’t thought of that! Yeah that is a nice touch :)
The rebel attack in the original films? They’d still have destroyed Skarif with the Death Star so they wouldn’t have had the blueprints to pore over to find the weakness, and all the Imperials know is that the rebels now have the blueprints for the Death Star. Not that there’s a weakness placed in there, which is still a secret.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/20/2017 at 20:18, STARS: 0
Isn’t there a line where they say, “We’ve analyzed their attack strategy and we see a weakness,” or words to that effect?
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/20/2017 at 20:38, STARS: 0
This is an thoughtful analysis. I couldn’t have put terms like “pan rate” into play, but as I read them, I realize what you are saying. One of the things that caught me, and must have been intentional, was the middle-aged, poor actors manning the workstations in the rebel cave. One of them chased down the senator and someone said, “Cool your jets, Private,” or similar. Same old guys flying the attack ships also.
I think you are spot-on, though. R1 definitely has much of the look and feel of Episode 4, though clearly has greater visual depth and some gems in the characters, even if subtle. For me, the most moving scene in the film was when the grenade got tossed into the shuttle and the deserter pilot was in there. He’s like,
Oops
. Bam! The scene where Krennic kills Jyn’s mother was reminiscent of the killings of Owen and Beru, but we were present for it. Black Dude was a little disappointing to me as a character, but overall, I think they projected a sense of just how desperate and hard scrabble the rebel cause had become and it made a great backfill to the first movie. In all, I am more emotionally moved by R1 than I was at any other time in the other 7 movies.
"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
04/21/2017 at 04:28, STARS: 0
In Rogue One or the old ones?
"Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero" (sampsonite24)
04/21/2017 at 09:42, STARS: 0
Alan Tudyk made that movie fantastic, i was really hoping for an exchange btween K2 and C3P0 though
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/21/2017 at 12:52, STARS: 0
Ep 7, the “original” one.
"Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo" (rustyvandura)
04/21/2017 at 12:53, STARS: 0
You’ve lost me...
"Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero" (sampsonite24)
04/21/2017 at 13:34, STARS: 1
alan tudyk was the voice of K2-SO and i was really hoping for dialogue between him and c3po
"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
04/21/2017 at 18:14, STARS: 0
Ah gotcha. I think they bend quite a bit about the original scene. In the first movie they say that it was bothans who died to get the plans, who are sort of cat people..
"bubblestheturtle" (bubblestheturtle)
04/22/2017 at 18:57, STARS: 1
Watched it last night. It was only Ok to me. I was suprised.