on that (lack of) accuracy claim:
"Only Imperial Stormtroopers are that precise" - Obi-Wan Kenobi
Merry Xmas :)
How Rogue One's Imperial stormtroopers SAVED Star Wars and restored order
It’s on: the fight over Rogue One or Force Awakens. Which was better? Which has the best bad character - is it calculating Commander Orson Krennic or bratty Kylo Ren? The better Death Star? Best action sequences? Droids? Haul up a chair, grab a drumstick: heads down for the sci-fi nerd Christmas lunch showdown. Sure, blast …
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Friday 23rd December 2016 18:47 GMT JasonT
Re: on that (lack of) accuracy claim:
Hopefully you are not referring to the Thrawn showing up in Star Wars Rebels, who is basically Mr. Salacia in Metalocalypse, who just basically lets his adversaries do whatever they want ("We wait...") making us wait for a grand evil plan that takes forever to materialize in any significant fashion.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 02:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: on that (lack of) accuracy claim:
It turns out the imperials where just having fun hunting desert rats and hit the crawler and the farmstead entirely by mistake.
"PHEW PHEW"
"Oops. I think I just hit a farmstead by mistake".
"You idiot! Wasn't that the Owens' farm? You already did that Jawa rustbucket. We go on like this, locals will become unhappy! Did I tell you about that Black Hawk story?"
"I said I'm sorry, ok? Anyway, better not talk about that at base..."
Damn shame.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 12:58 GMT Matt Bridge-Wilkinson
Hmm, this is making me wonder if we watched the same film ;) ;)
I found more than any other this film showed that the stormtroopers were just people, like any war, normal people on the other side, earning a living and paying the price. I think the director went to great lengths to demonstrate their normality and dare I even say humanity, even with the anonymity of their armour.
I found myself feeling sorry for them at several points, hell they even showed clearly that even the Rebels did plenty they weren't proud of.
For me this did more than any other to blur the lines of right and wrong and to show that even good people can be in the wrong and that not everyone on the "bad" side is necessarily evil.
Either way we clearly both loved it, pints all round.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 13:11 GMT Valeyard
stormtroopers being fodder
The problem with star wars is that we only really see storm troopers fighting mercenaries, gangsters and rebels so they're at least evenly-matched and end up looking not very scary
One thing force awakens got really right was showing them in their true habitat: circling innocent families of men, women and children and showering death on them.
THAT'S the stormtrooper in his day-to-day, being the fascist bully with nothing to stop them
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 18:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: stormtroopers being fodder
>> Still doesn't explain how your galaxy-conquering army with space age armor and blasters can get beaten by stone-age teddy bears :)
You mean like how modern nuclear super power nations have trouble with improvised device wielding locals in middle eastern countries?
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Sunday 8th January 2017 18:14 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: stormtroopers being fodder
"Because teddy bears are so CUUUUTE!"
About those "teddy bears". To quote Kkatman:
"A mechanically intuitive species and fascinated with technology. How many 'primitives' do you know that can engineer a war glider? That can carry boulders? Or figure out a speeder bike in five seconds flat?... Or did you think we worshipped the mechanical man with the glowing eyes because he was shiny?"
In Kkatman's fan fic, Endor was destroyed by the exploding Death Star, and covered up by rebel propaganda.
The only surviving Ewoks were the ones in the Imperial shield generator bunker, and abandoned by their rebel "friends".
They survived the Hell their world became because:
A.They were tech savvy and used the Death star Wreckage, and
B. Their shaman used his new training to protect them.
New training? "The biggest, most badass Sith was betrayed and murdered within sight of my home.
Ask yourself: Do you think only the good ones can pull off that glowey-ghost mentor trick?"
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 13:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
"amazing CGI revival of Peter Cushing’s hatchet faced and ruthless Governor Moff Tarkin."
I'm convinced everyone else must have seen a different film to me. The CGI Cushing was painful to look at! I thought the days of stupidly bad CGI was past us in big movies... but then they brought this out.
I'm fairly sure this is one of those films that in a few years time people will look back and admit how bad it was.
Loved The Force Awakens... about the only positive I have for Rogue one is there won't be a sequel to it next year.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 10:06 GMT jason 7
I thought the Tarkin effect was great.
What put me off was the total lack of a third dimension or any back story to 99% of the new characters introduced.
They just appear, do some stuff and...
Its the characters that let the film down big time. Other than that new droid they don't have any character.
A fine film spoilt by the human element or lack of.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 13:58 GMT phuzz
I've heard a bunch of people complaining about the CGI characters (well, the human ones, nobody has had a bad word to say about K2SO yet), but I've heard an equally large number of people who never even noticed that Tarkin was CG.
A question; did it bother you as much that some of the other characters were just people in rubber masks?
If I stared closely I could tell he wasn't real, but I was too busy watching the film to want to do that.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:05 GMT james 68
I thought that the CGI Cushing and Carrie Fisher were technically excellent and would have proven convincing if it weren't for one thing. The lighting was off, It didn't correctly match the lighting of the surrounding objects and people and in the case of Cushing was over saturated and too severe (too much contrast) giving a very "uncanny valley" feeling.
If they'd gotten the lighting correct, though they would have been perfect. Actually if I'm entirely honest a few of CGI Cushing's facial mannerisms seemed to glitch - it was tiny but it was there - the movements of his features just a little too jerky like he had some kinda repetitive tick, but tbh I could overlook that, but not the rendered lighting, that was atrocious.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 13:29 GMT Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Not seen R1 yet but...
A few things bugged me about The Force Awakens... the bratty bad dude wasn't convincing, the whole Han Solo dad & subsequent death by son seemed a bit obvious and contrived; the odd tentacly space monster things and chase took me back to that whole childish Jar Jar binks debacle, and finally the sun sucking spaceship / death planet thing seemed a bit too fantastical to sit in the Star Wars universe. I'm pretty sure that was because no-one felt they could say no to JJA.
Looking forward to seeing R1 though as even though it seems I'm in the minority, I really liked the Godzilla reboot.
Apologies for potential incorrect use of the semi-colon. Still don't know how they work.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:07 GMT Jo_seph_B
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
What bugged me about Force Awakens was the fact it was basically A New Hope remade. Which isn't a failure but still nothing new. It was just the same thing being rehashed again.
Rogue one at least stood out as its own film and filled the gap between the 3 we don't talk about and the original 3. It showed the Rebels acting as Rebels should by doing what needed to be done. I thought it was the best star was since Empire.
Its not my film of the year but its in the top 5.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 20:22 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
"the 3 we don't talk about and the original 3"
I may be a heretic, but the original star wars was conceived as a homage to 1930s space operas, with their 2 dimensional villans, heroes, sidekicks and strictly black/white morality tales.
Remember: when they first read the Ep4 script the cast asked if they were meant to camp it up. It was seen as cliched even then. The surprise was Lucas telling them to play it straight.
1,2 and 3 all follow that same ethos. The cardboard cutout villains of the first scenes of Ep1 are virtually exact clones of the villains of 1930s horse, spy and space operas - as was Jar Jar Binks and the other quite painful characterisations (Who didn't spot the Idi Amin references?). Once you understand that, the movies are fairly enjoyable, but don't expect the Star Wars universe to be nuanced or subtle. They were never intended to be, much like the movies they pay homage to.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:54 GMT Preston Munchensonton
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
I hope that I'm not the only one here upset by TFA and R1, but the decision by Disney to pursue new movies whilst completely ignoring and effectively destroying the Expanded Star Wars universe of the many comics, novels, and cartoons has left me no choice but to consider these new films dead to me. I certainly won't pay to watch them in the theater and absolutely won't buy them on DVD. Not sure that I can even be bothered to pirate them either.
Of course, I'm also one of the few that consider ROTJ my favorite film, at least until Lucas ruined the end by replacing David Prowse with Hayden Christensen in the Vader/Yoda/Kenobi spirit sequence.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 10:19 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
" Meh, most of the Expanded Universe was crap, with the notable exception of the Heir to the Empire trilogy and Grand Admiral Thrawn. I'm glad it's gone. "
If the best thing in the "expanded universe" was the work of a cheap pulp writer like Timothy Zahn, I too am glad it's gone.
Of course, "the" EU was not internally consistent either, as Dark Horse wrote their stories independent of Zahn to start off with.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 12:01 GMT Gaspode
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
Not sure where you saw a version with Dave Prose as the spirit version of Anakin - Sebastian Shaw was the spirit / Head in the Suit.
Dave Prowse knew nothing about SS being the face of Vader until he saw the premier of ROTJ which he left angrily and is still extremely angry over .. so ...
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Tuesday 27th December 2016 04:41 GMT RandomFactor
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
"Of course, I'm also one of the few that consider ROTJ my favorite film, at least until Lucas ruined the end by replacing David Prowse with Hayden Christensen in the Vader/Yoda/Kenobi spirit sequence."
On a related note, some fans asked for permission to reshoot Vader's death scene with David and were told flat out NO by Lucas. They did it anyway, but presumably can't release it. There's a youtube documentary about it out there somewhere.
I'll watch TFA and R1 if they ever hit Netflix.
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Tuesday 27th December 2016 12:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
I may be late to the party here but I'm sorry the thing that ruined ROTJ was the removal of the ewoks, I will never forgive lucas for that (and jar jar) and thank the deity that I bought the DVD tin with the original cinematic versions as well as the bastardised half breed lucas self love vehicles.
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Friday 30th December 2016 05:05 GMT kyza
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
Seriously? You're bothered about the old EU being removed as canon enough to regard it as being 'destroyed'?
You can still read the books, comics, play the games etc, without worrying about anything at all, because it is all fiction. As in 'made up stuff' that's not worth being so emotionally invested in.
Besides, the old EU was a mess chronologically, anything and everything was retconned to the services of the new tales, and 90% of it was complete cack.
That's not to say the newer stuff is much better, it is still patchy, but at least this time there's a degree of control being exercised over how its created so it will at least be a coherent whole.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 16:56 GMT Enki
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
The Force Awakens was fine, but it really was a New Hope with what my son would call "Power Creep". Luke, born as one of the most powerful wielders of the force, still had to train to gain cool Jedi powers. Rey just calls up whatever power she needs instinctively.
Rogue One has flaws especially around the gratuitous CGI, but I would rather have that with a reasonable story rather than the other way around.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 13:20 GMT Patrician
Re: Not seen R1 yet but...
"... the bratty bad dude wasn't convincing,..."
I really don't think he was supposed to be convincing; he was supposed to be exactly what he was shown as. A spoilt "brat" with an exaggerated idea of his force ability due to his family heritage and has had *some" force training by somebody that is not fully capable of training force users. This is shown by his "Light Sabre" which very clearly isn't any such thing but is a facsimile of one.
I've read, and heard comments along the lines of "how could Rea beat a Dark Lord of the Sith"? That's rather the point I think; Kylo was not a Dark Lord of The Sith at all, he just thought of himself as such.
I think he was portrayed as a "bratty bad dude" because that is exactly what he was supposed to be and that is how Rea was able to defeat him even while being untrained. She is inherently much more powerful in the force than he.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:01 GMT Kaltern
I may be a minority here, but the latest SW movies are once again all being painted by the equality brush - at the expense of a proper story.
As crap as the prequel movies were - you knew where you were with them, and ROTC, had it not have been for emo boy playing Skywalker, would actually have been a pretty damn good movie I think.
But these last two - especially R1 - are just too infested with PC messages to allow me to enjoy it properly.
I appreciate the female protagonist in R1 - and that's totally fine. But the whole movie was based around her, whereas male 'good' figures were all portrayed as useless, bumbling idiots.
Feel free to mark me down, I quite understand. I just feel that these movies are not 'Star Wars'. Just try and do it without the abuse? :)
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 15:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Did you watch a different film to the rest of us?
"whereas male 'good' figures were all portrayed as useless, bumbling idiots."
I'd say she was in a group of several characters to be the main "good" figures, none of who I'd say were bumbling, except maybe the ex-imperial pilot, and that was explained in the film very clearly.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 20:25 GMT Alan Brown
"But these last two - especially R1 - are just too infested with PC messages to allow me to enjoy it properly."
This is Disney in action.
Disney himself is attributed as saying more or less that he knew what he sold was corny and fake, but corn sells very well, thank you very much, so keep cranking it out.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 10:36 GMT The Indomitable Gall
" But these last two - especially R1 - are just too infested with PC messages to allow me to enjoy it properly. "
I'd like to point out that Lucas's original vision for Star Wars was for a female lead, so it's more Star Wars than you think. The fact that Lucas put a woman (Mon Mothma) high in the ranks of the Rebel Alliance should indicate that Lucas's galaxy far far away was also far far more equal than 1970s Earth.
As to the merits of female leads, well, the one in Rogue One is infinitely better than the one in The Force Awakens. How so? Because The Force Awakens was too knowing and conscious about their female lead -- the conversation between Rey and the orange alien woman was far too self-absorbedly "worthy". But then again, J.J. Abrams has never been one to do anything without making it painfully obvious. (Thank the Force he didn't smash the whole thing up with gratuitous lens flare!)
However, in Rogue One, you have a strong female character whose sex/gender/sexuality is not really relevant to the plot, and she's simply a strong character who happens to be female. The only place in the entire plot where her sex matters a damn is in the dialogue between her and her father, which is an extremely well-written father/daughter relationship.
And the men around her weren't "bumbling idiots". She was brash and reckless and her life was saved several times by men, and yet she wasn't "damselled" in the process.
And crucially it was men who convinced her to fight. They could have slipped into the same lazy "sisters are doin it for themselves" mode as Rey-and-the-orange-woman, and had Mon Mothma be the one to talk her into helping the alliance, but they didn't -- they went with the desert-dwelling terrorist surrogate father and the amoral secret agent.
In fact, the whole character development was one of absolute equality, because Jyn and Cassian were both jaded fighters at the start, and both taught the other to care -- Cassian taught Jyn to care about the cause, and Jyn taught Cassian that the cause was worth nothing if you didn't care about people.
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Wednesday 28th December 2016 21:43 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Too much PC crap and limp-wristed leftyfication?
I may have found a more accomodating review, then:
"The Rebels in both Space Aleppo and Real Syria only achieve any decisive victories with the support of an overwhelmingly white Air Force keeping the skies clear above them, with the Royal Air Force and USAF creating Imperial and Russian no-fly zones respectively (no, I’m not kidding — these are literally British fighter pilots in X-Wings). The Empire and Russian Federation are non-specifically bad, while the Rebels are non-specifically good. As Rogue One embraces moral ambiguity through screening the brutal spectacle of war fought hard on both sides, the shallowness of the Rebel mentality is exposed. The Rebels have a Cause, even though they can’t describe it or tell you what it is. Like Clinton supporters, they’re with Her, because she offers the empty Hope that somehow, in some strange, emotionally tinged way, things can be different.
The Latest, Greatest, and Most Right-Wing character to enter this movie is Lord Vader. At this stage of the Star Wars narrative Vader is still an unapologetic jackboot and whilst Anakin may have been born on Tattoine, the character and motivations of Vader were born in the darkness, and molded by it. Resented by technocratic Empire officers for subscribing to the kooky Force religion, Vader is an Evolian amongst the bureaucrats, a pseudo-Knight of Europe set against the occupying Clintonites of the Rebellion. His swaggering robocrotch and slinky black wetsuit is “. . . a perfect expression of Fascist ideals, a glittering example of Aryan technological supremacy and aggressive masculinity.” Vader is a man of strong opinions and expresses them with clarity and vigor, smashing and smiting his way through Rebel Losers, red lightsaber swirling hypnotically in the darkness. And in a galaxy of empty spite and sarcastic robots, our man Vader is the most powerfully human. Part Cyborg, All Fascist: I’m with you, Lord Vader."
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:03 GMT Alan Johnson
The Force Awakens is just a bad movove
I have not yet seen Rogue One but if it was merely poor it would be better than the force awakens.
The heroine was accceptable if uninspiring, the plot was a predictable rehash of the original, the death planet technology made no sense in the wider universe/military envionment but what destroyed it was the villan. A Villan needs to be believable and frightening. It is the Villan that the hero or heroine is measured against. The force awakens had was an unimpressive, incompetent petulant teenager who commits a murder that completely fails to convince from a character point of view. This aspect is reminiscent of Revenge of the Sith but the force awakens is significantly worse than even this movie making it the worst star wars movie so far (IMO).
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 15:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The Force Awakens is just a bad movove
Totally agree about the villain being central to any good Star Wars movie. Episode 1 had Darth CutInHalfAfter5MinutesScreenTime who looked badass till he fell apart. Episodes 2 and 3 had the Emperor to hold them together but he was still hiding in plain sight so wasn't moment-by-moment scary and he had not-quite-Darth Overacting to compensate for anyway. Episode 7 had a prefect from Slytherin as the villain *and* he lost a laserbat fight to a completely untrained opponent when he wasn't crying about how badly treated by his parents he was - wuss! Episode 3.9 ('cos it's closer to 4 than 3) had a completely mental, ass-kicking Darth Vader back in full "you took my last Rolo ya bastich" mode and that's the point that had me stood up and cheering! Finally a top-class baddy again. LONG overdue!
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Saturday 24th December 2016 18:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Alan
I won't downvote you because I agree that it was a rehash.
I *would* however say that it's funny how you complain about the film being identical to the original film, and then go on to complain that the bad guy isn't exactly the same.
Which is it? Do you want an exact copy with a strong/established baddie, or something new? (We ended up with something new.)
Whichever way they go with this, the film makers and audience were going to lose. I dread the Bladerunner sequel.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:22 GMT allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Well, I'm already excited about the next Star Wars film, another sort-of-prequel, which is about something that I actually have been thinking about, on and off, since the first one came out almost 40 years ago. I did mention that my background is in civil engineering, didn't I?
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 19:47 GMT I ain't Spartacus
The Death Star doesn't need planning permission, as it's a non-permanent (moveable) structure.
Thus it would be a rather short film. Anyway, as a certain scene in Rogue One shows, you can't play committee politics with Lord Vader. He has a very direct approach when it comes to office politics. He's one of life's problem solvers.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:35 GMT Rodrigo Valenzuela
I just saw the movie last night, with my twelve year old niece and I can really say that both enjoyed it more than "The force awakens".
As for the Peter Cushing revival... well I was somehow proud when my niece poked me almost jumping on her seat when she recognized "the old guy that ordered the destruction of Alderaan".
So, more enjoyable: yes.
Better movie... may be. May be not.
It can be argued that it carries not-so-subtle political messages about terrorist/freedom fighters, empires that search to crush any opposition, destruction of ancient cultures, a lot of symbology and many other stuff.
All I care is that it was a fun thing to share.
R
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Thursday 29th December 2016 20:27 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Re: Grunts
I'm a Mary Gentle fan. But Grunts ain't great.
Stan Nicholls has a trilogy Body Guard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder, and Warriors of the Tempest (anthologised as Orcs) which also makes orcs the protagonists, but without sending things up. I found it amiable but predictable; not adding anything beyond the choice of protagonists.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 14:57 GMT gskr
Loved it
Yes!! It felt like a proper star wars film.
Not just a bratty kid as the main character (as in Ep1) or villain (as in Ep7) to sell merchandise to 12 year olds.
I actually thought the Peter Cushing CGI was pretty good, certainly not completely perfect, but close enough to not distract from the film. Carrie Fisher however was awful - so blatantly CGI I'm surprised they bothered. I appreciate she didn't get much screen time, so maybe didn't warrant the effort, but c-mon - way brighter than her surroundings, face was much rounder than real life (at time of EP4). Couldn't they have just got a similar-ish looking actress to wear a wig, and take the shot from behind, so her face wasn't in focus? It'd have worked just as well without putting that stain on an otherwise fantastic movie.
Despite that, thoroughly enjoyed it. Its a definite must-see for any fan
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Thursday 29th December 2016 15:28 GMT salamamba too
Re: Loved it
Not only was it a much better film than TFA, but (much to my daughter's delight) it had Donnie Yen in it - Yen also choreographed his fights. When I was introducing my daughter to (subtitled) Chinese films, I started with one of his - The Twins Effect.
The Tarkin CGI seemed to give him a more cadaverous face than Cushing had, but in the circumstances that wasn't an issue.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 15:03 GMT jamesb2147
Critique
Critiques:
1) Han Solo character sucks. A lot. If you're going to use this character, you need to NAIL both the archetype (in the writing) and the acting (whoever played him was a miserable failure in this film). Yes, I realize his name wasn't Han Solo, but put the pieces together, people: He flew the ship, worked with the Alliance, commandeered a vessel, and was the awkward and forced love interest of the female lead. Where is my morally ambiguous, charming scoundrel who works only in his own best interests, thereby existing in this gray space between the Good and Bad characters?
2) Writing, and particularly line delivery, was often sub-par. This is not unusual for most of the Star Wars films, but generally the amusing droids were at least OK. I like Alan Tudyk. I did not like his droid character.
These were so distracting as to ruin the movie for me. Force Awakens wasn't a great film (and no, God, no, do not let Abrams finish the new trilogy... he's proven himself repeatedly incapable of handling reveals and endings) but it didn't feel as contrived as R1. I could buy into it as entertainment and enjoy it. R1 was an impossible pill for me to swallow and therefore ranks as probably tied for the worst Star Wars film in my personal list, right alongside E3/ROTS.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 19:59 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: Critique
The guy isn't playing the Han Solo role. He doesn't do any wise-cracking, and he's far more morally ambiguous. Solo is your basic happy-go-lucky cheeky chappy, duckin' and divin', bobbin' and weavin'.
The droid is the only real source of humour in the film. And he's not playing it as slapstick, like the droids in many of the other films. He's a sarcastic bugger instead.
I think the reason for the difference is that this isn't a family film. It's not aimed at ten year olds as well as adults. We really ought to have a 12 and a 12A certificate in the UK. 12A is under 12 if accompanied, but the BBFC recomomend 8 is about the youngest you should take. 12 should mean, no under 12s. This is a war film, that's set in the Star Wars universe. So it's playing with some of the moral questions that war films tend to address. It's also got a lot less of the 5 minute sequences where you set up jeopardy, then chase/fight, escape/get saved, then tension relieving joke, that you tend to get in action films aimed at families.
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Wednesday 4th January 2017 03:11 GMT jamesb2147
Re: Critique
RE: The guy isn't playing the Han Solo role.
You might be right on the moral ambiguity. The only thing I'll say is that Han's character was only involved with the Alliance for the money in the beginning, whereas the new R1 guy was clearly motivated to work for the "good guys" even when they asked him to do "bad things." (I'm waiting to find out what those were.)
There's definitely something missing from his character, though. I miss the roguish charm of Ford's character, especially when Leia accuses him of being a scoundrel, and he says (presumably correctly) that she likes him because of that. I like that Han shot first, with no agonizing over his decision. He's a character with swagger, something the Star Wars films have been unable to capture since (though, mostly, they've not tried).
This film was probably an attempt to inject a grey area into a world Lucas designed to be almost entirely devoid of it. I'm honestly not sure how much it really achieved this goal, as I saw it mostly as a film about how evil Vader is, how bad greed is, how internal politics and jockeying can lead to evil deeds... but mostly only by the Empire. The Alliance were still the good guys, they just made mistakes sometimes. The bad guys were evil, so they still needed to be stopped, by any means necessary.
That, combined with the cut footage just from the R1 trailers, makes me wonder how much this film changed between directors. It seemed much darker in the earlier trailers, and honestly, I suspect that would have made for a much more interesting film ("What will you do when they catch you? What will you do when they break you?"). I hope we learn that one day, but Disney makes me think we'll never know what R1 might have been.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 10:49 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Re: Critique
K-2SO is a very clever character. He's comic relief with an explanation -- his hyper-honesty is deftly defined as a side effect of the hack, whereas C3PO's witterings were presumably part of the factory spec. But more than that, they've used a good understanding of people in it. Autistic human characters in TV and film are typically portrayed unfairly as being quite "robotic", and here they have used behaviours that mimic certain traits on the autistic spectrum to make a robot seem more human (his excessive frankness and inability to stop himself blurting out inappropriate things people don't want to hear).
I'm massively, massively impressed. For anyone writing a Star Wars story, one of the heaviest millstones they've got to carry is that the comedy droids are an established part of the formula, and they managed to turn that to a strength.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 15:23 GMT Youngdog
It feels like Star Wars but...
...there is a whole fan base for the Prequels that I just don't relate to because I'm too old. For me A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are Star Wars and Rogue One looks like the world I was in aged 8 with my Kenner AT-AT. I think a lot people who liked Force Awakens are not going to get as much fun out of Rouge One as I did. Great job.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 20:04 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: It feels like Star Wars but...
Rouge One is the next film in the sequence. It's set in the Imperial Brothel, where the storm troopers are sent for their annual R&R. The Rebels infiltrate and try to break Imperial morale by planting poisoned make-up, so that all the space hookers die, and then the storm troopers will rebel agains the Emperor out of sheer sexual frustration.
My brain is now filling up with jokes about Vader and the Emperor's new force powers used to relieve their poor, sex-starved army, such as force-lightning powered vibrators or somesuch, so I'm going to stopy typing before I incriminate myself further...
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 17:08 GMT Tikimon
How many Stormtroopers does it take to...?
It doesn't really matter what task you put in, the correct answer is "At least a hundred."
Which is not what purpose-trained clones of Jango Fett should be like! These guys should be more like the Sardaukar from the Dune series, terrifying and nearly unstoppable. Like the famous Jedi Master Yoda (Leopold!) who nevertheless gets his ass handed to him in every screen fight that matters.
It's just more of the clumsy and inconsistent storytelling that pervades the Star Wars stories. And one of the many reasons I have regretfully checked out of the series. Which is a shame, they could be incredible with good writing and direction.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 18:12 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: How many Stormtroopers does it take to...?
> Sardaukar from the Dune series, terrifying and nearly unstoppable.
But then you wouldn't need Vader to come and put mop-up operations on the rails again.
Seriously, rebels stopping Sardaukar? No contest."A New Hope" would have ended immediately.
This is not the Real World, get over it!
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 20:08 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: How many Stormtroopers does it take to...?
The Empire are the baddies. Therefore their troops have to be crap, but there be loads and loads of them. It's the rules of narrative whatsit.
You only fight the elite guys at the end, once you've finished with most of the crap troops and got your rebel elite trained up to be just as good, or better. Which is why the Sardaukar don't turn up until the very end of Dune for the final showdown.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 20:49 GMT Whitter
Re: How many Stormtroopers does it take to...?
Except they did turn up earlier: dressed as Harkonenen troops. Thus one of the (many) threads that the Emporer would do nearly anything to avoid being caught having used his crack troops vs. one of the noble houses. And while his troops may have been the best (until the Fremen show otherwise, and there is a suggestion that the Atridies may also have had the edge), they were a well-known "extreme" force - one he could not use without political cost.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 21:20 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: How many Stormtroopers does it take to...?
Well, in Dune (the novel!) Sardaukar, the emperor's praetorian guard, immediately turn up in a "we officially strongly deny the presence of" role and are suddenly very interested in going up against these Fremen guys who are the only ones in the universe on challenger-worthy badass levels (I think they were thinking about some genocide operation lest there be competition but didn't get that far before a shift at the top occurred)
Jimbo's inpho stuffing service has more.
Frankly, none of this is meant for a family-friendly Star Wars universe. Imperial super-soldiers vs. rebel super-ISIS, probably all on drugs and behaving like rabid dogs? Nah. I would LOVE to see Fish Speakers though...
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Friday 23rd December 2016 12:15 GMT Snark
Re: How many Stormtroopers does it take to...?
The Empire is a very large organisation, everyone knows the middle-management block any and all training requests. Those poor Empire storm troopers are wondering who they are reporting to in the latest re-org and as for those training requests they put in to learn how to use the new blaster? Forget it, they've been given an online video telling them which way to point it and are wondering when they are going to get outsourced.
The Rebels however are that trendy startup that has the self-taught, highly motivated elites who have options in the new world order and know the only way to get paid is to give it everything.
Hold on, new email from the Empire. Apparently there is a new video on how to be "agile". Must be to stop everyone tripping over their armour.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 19:23 GMT Joe Gurman
Finally
After 33 years, we finally get a Star Wars movie that's true to the original vision of the force we got in Star Wars (no, not A New Hope, I mean the one where Han shot first) and The Empire Strikes Back. The Force is something everyone can share in not just prospective Jedi knights with a rare blood condition. Consider me corny and old-fashioned, but that, and the willingness to [spoiler deleted] every last character you care about, to demonstrate they were serious about their business, make this the best one yet. "I am one with the Force. The Force is with me."
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Friday 23rd December 2016 11:08 GMT phuzz
Re: Finally
I did like that we get only one short bit of light-sabre swinging in the the entire film, and it's scarcity makes it look so much more cool.
After an entire film of more or less normal people shooting at each other, to see a single character breeze through half a dozen opponents, making it look easy, even showing off a bit, really emphasises quite how powerful the Force is.
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Thursday 22nd December 2016 22:18 GMT JustNiz
IMHO it was better than The Force Awakens, but thats not exactly a high bar to reach. I though there wasn't enough back story and the battle scene was way too long/predictable/boring.
I just wish they would flesh out the everyday lives of people in the universe far more, and we could have a star wars movie that finally goes beyond the formula of a 30 minute batltle scene inevitably culminating in the hero alone blowing up a deathstar/deathstar 2/planet turned into a deathstar/base with plans to the deathstar
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Friday 23rd December 2016 09:51 GMT MonkeyCee
Vader
It had proper bad guys. Who are scheming against each other, which adds to their depth.
Had decent action sequences, and (IMHO) a proper character arc for the protagonists. If you attempt a suicidal mission against all odds than success still involves you all dying in the process. Which the protagonists accept, don't spend their time whining about, so their deaths have some gravitas. Rather than some redshirt or Sean Bean dying at the end of act 1 and everyone else lives happily ever after. Duty heavy as iron and all that.
Still has the usual issues with the fairy tale of the US. Plucky (American) rebels against evil (British) empire, evil empire is super evil for no point other than to justify chaos caused by rebels. Wheras for most non-USians the empire is pretty clearly the US, with it's super CV being taken out by the equivalent of a zodiac with a limpet mine, and plenty of oppressing brown people in sandy countries.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 11:16 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Re: Vader
" Still has the usual issues with the fairy tale of the US. "
Not proven. The rag-tag bunch of soldiers fighting on the South Pacific-inspired beaches were wearing uniforms that were ambiguous in whether they were modelled on US or Japanese uniforms. Two of the main fighters in the battle were oriental martial artists, and another pivotal figure was of Middle Eastern extract. And then the real biggie is that there were two Death Star explosions, and not on a planet scale. You can justify the lack of planet scale explosions by continuity (Tarkin using Alderaan as a test for the weapon), but it also gives a much slower, expanding explosion, and in the context of two such explosions, we see something that really doesn't send out the "Team US, heroes of the world" message you think it does.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 11:25 GMT Stuart Elliott
Two things bothered me
Watched it last night at the local IMAX, thoroughly enjoyed it, but two things bothered me, firstly, was the the lack of theme tune at the start, I saw the "A long time ago" and closed my eyes in preparation for the spine-tingling crescendo , but was denied, bummed me out for a minute or two that!
Secondly was at the other end of the film, and the poor CGI of Leia, it was completely unnecessary and bad to be honest, they did well with Tarkin though, even if the voice was off.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 13:27 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Two things bothered me
> the lack of theme tune at the start
No this is EXACTLY CORRECT. The fanfare stuff is so laden with Lucas letdown events that it wouldn't have been appropriate. It tells you "this is new!".
> poor CGI of Leia
People complain about this but in the end it's not so bad. It can pass for the couple of seconds and triggers the uncanny valley effect, same as for Tarkin really. But in the end, it's not worse than bluescreen leftovers in movies of old.
Now, let the management types of the Empire run the Death Star with no designers and no plans. Idiots from the Coruscant Imperial MBA churn institute...
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Tuesday 27th December 2016 07:18 GMT Allan George Dyer
Re: Two things bothered me
"Now, let the management types of the Empire run the Death Star with no designers and no plans."
I recall from ANH that the Empire completed an analysis and also discovered the weakness, so therefore they still had the plans. Therefore, there was an offsite backup, or DR site, for the archives on Scarif.
I'm guessing that the consultants who completed the analysis made sure they were safely on a shuttle for home before the project team delivered the unfavourable report to top management...
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Friday 23rd December 2016 13:31 GMT DaveNullstein
I preferred last years film. It was a blatant homage to the first movie but it worked and I smiled.
Rouge 1 just feels like just another CGI action/comic book movie. It raised more questions than it answered. The multi-cultural cast was good (if not calculated for global profit) but not the story.
But then none of the Star Wars stories are truly good. We are all chasing the nostalgic dreams of our adolescent selves.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 14:28 GMT BartVDE
The stormtroopers aim explained...
On the subject of stormtrooper accuracy, I am of the opnion that they were shooting pretty well in R1... I noticed them hitting and killing stuff all through the film.
at one point though... you see the monk chanting his force prayer while advancing... and all shots miraculously miss him... this same phenomenon was repeated by the mercenary... using the same chant/mantra.
This makes me think the Force is passively protecting its users by bending the laserbeams to miss... and why in the other movies, where even more force wielding characters are active, the stormtroopers are even worse shots...
im sure the troopers themselves are just as confused about why their shots miss...
the force is all around us.
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Friday 23rd December 2016 19:37 GMT fandom
I have to say I was terribly disappointed watching the film.
For some reason I thought it was going to be great, I went to the theater expecting to love it.
This is the first time a Star Wars movie has bored me, the ewoks, Jar Jar, the wretched Lucas dialogue may have been eye rolling, but not boring.
Yes, there were times where X-Wings made me smile and the like but really by the time the final battle started I was hoping for all the characters to die so they wouldn't be in another movie.
Like in the first scene, the parents talk about the plan they had, I don't even want to think about what they would have done if they had had to improvise.
And really, what was the Asian character about? It looked to me they piled all the Asian character cliches they could find into him, he felt like a parody of a parody. He and his sidekick were worse than the ewoks and I can hardly believe I am writing that.
And usually I root for comic relief characters but, except for the droid, I found most of the jokes eye rolling.
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Sunday 25th December 2016 00:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Death star plans...
Being a bit bored while watching, I couldn't help but notice that the Empire's data backup cartridges were quite chunky things, but when Leia was given the Death Star plans they fitted onto a much more svelte gold disk thingy. It's nice to know that the rebels have much better archive storage media than the Empire!
(Also, who the hell puts a data upload terminal on the outside of a tower, half a mile high? No wonder there was no danger of reactor cooling design flaws being noticed.)
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Sunday 25th December 2016 11:22 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Death star plans...
If you want to go down that route...
> Why is the dish control panel on an outrigger away from the dish, exposed to weather and wind? (It's like I'm really playing Myst: Empire)
> Why can one jump into Hyperspace from inside Jedda atmosphere with planetary mantle rocks hanging around everywhere? (Also: Jedda is finished. That looked like an extinction event. Some mining accident!)
> Why can one jump out of Hyperspace precisely in front of Skarif gate, but not go a hundred km further and emerge inside the shield, giving imperials facepalm moments?
> Why does Vader's personal stardestroyer (is that like Heydrich's personal pocket battleship?) not get mangled as it arrives and bumps a rebel fregate? These stardestroyers are fragile (not unexpected).
It's a fantasy movie!
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Sunday 25th December 2016 23:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Death star plans...
> If you want to go down that route...
When the pilot has to run that cable from some sort of comms cabinet to the shuttle on the landing pad, they should have had him plug the huge Imperial standard data port connector into a dongle and then plug the dongle into a solitary USB-C connector on his laptop. :-)
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Monday 26th December 2016 00:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Death star plans...
Indeed.
CABLE seemed to be a WWII-era brit-issued asbestos-fabric-clad contraption working at 30V/-30V for 50-baud/s teletype transmission. Or something.
It should have been a barely visible fiber optic link, which (as we know from Ghost in the Shell) can be routed to and plugged into "comms consoles" by pinky-sized autonomous robots.
But it looked good in a retro-future way.
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Monday 26th December 2016 00:20 GMT Howard Hanek
Whack a Mole
.......coming to a big screen near you. Hint: The bad guys are in white and the good guys wear dark robes.
Perhaps we should NOT clone soldiers after all. There appears to be serious deficiencies in their hand/eye coordination resulting in combat resembling ........whack a mole. This makes me wonder about the F-35 program costing out at $300 million per.
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Tuesday 27th December 2016 12:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
All later Star Wars films are average.
Why? Because they do not introduce new elements; they try to live off an already established formula. Where are the the major twists? Where are the new concepts such as the “force”? Where are the amazing visual effects that are cutting edge? None of these things happen in Star Wars anymore. It’s more of the same – the new films need to push the boundaries in the same way as the originals. They are simply made now to make money.
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Tuesday 27th December 2016 14:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: All later Star Wars films are average.
1) Where are the new concepts
If you into the theater to see a "sequel" (and worse, a "prequel") you are specifically NOT looking for "new concepts"
2) Where are the amazing visual effects that are cutting edge
You may want to go back to the 90s to experience the "fresh". It's more or less settled now.
3) They are simply made now to make money.
Films made by people from Médecins sans Frontières to show what's going down under an AC-130 gunship can be watched elsewhere
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Tuesday 27th December 2016 21:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
The Force Awakens vs Rogue One
For me, TFA was a better film than Rogue One. I get the drive for "dark" but I've never thought that added value to Star Wars. If you want gritty, depressing realism watch the news. If you want escapist space opera, watch Star Wars.
On a side note, the Jeddah City ambush on the Storm Troopers pretty squarely cements the relationship between the Rebellion and certain middle eastern terrorist groups.....
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Tuesday 27th December 2016 21:51 GMT Belardi16
Here in the USA... we Americans have to be the resistance, the rebels against the incoming fascists leader who has the fascists house and Senate to back him up. Yeah, a lot of us are worried that this insane person is going to start nuclear exchanges. If not in the USA, perhaps somewhere.
The empire is the bad guy. The russian puppet is the bad guy. Taking away the rights of Americans makes them THE BAD GUYS. And its not just the USA under attack, our allies in Europe are under attack too. Learn from our stupidity! Briexit should have been a wake up call. If the EU and NATO collapses - things will go to shit very quickly on a global scale.
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Wednesday 28th December 2016 00:35 GMT Destroy All Monsters
> a lot of us are worried that this insane person is going to start nuclear exchanges
But Hillary wasn't elected?
> If the EU and NATO collapses - things will go to shit very quickly on a global scale.
If would say things would normalize rapidly. Liberventionist dreamland EU and its groupthink politicians and rabidly-looking-for-aggro NATO are just cancerous at this point in time.
You haven't even mentioned the Obamite ultra-clusterfucks "Syria" (I hear the CIA will now pump AA weapons in to bugger the Ruskies; I hope there will still be safe civilian flying in Europe in a year's time) and the "Pivot to Asia" (more like, "i'm down with da carrier action, I wanna see a china reaction")
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Wednesday 28th December 2016 18:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Rogue One did not have the force in it...it was a boring and pointless endeavor just to earn Disney back the money it spent in buying Lucasfilms...only good part of the movie was Darth Vader...showing up in his dark no nonsense form. I am going to skip any side stories of Star Wars from now on...
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Friday 3rd February 2017 11:11 GMT enormous c word
Rogue 1 Wins
Agree: Rogue 1 (ep 3.5) beats Force Awakens (ep 7) Kylo Ren is just not intimidating as the bad guy, the other characters were pretty forgettable too. the storyline was just too busy and the StarKiller base overblown - why does anyone need the ability to destroy 5 planets simultaneously? Does 5 simultaneous planetary destructions really make a bigger statement than the ability to destroy one at a time?
I enjoyed ep7 but I loved ep 3.5
Things I missed in ep 3.5 - the opening sequence was disappointing - there is only one way to begin a Star Wars movie - rolling text to introduce the story and a big ship flying over head with a massive one following soon after.
The score didnt match up to the originals (or even the god awful prequels)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
