meh. (response with MAJOR SPOILERS) (Off-Topic)

by Kahzgul, Sunday, December 25, 2016, 06:07 (2678 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Rogue One is certainly less flawed than TFA, but it doesn't spend enough time with any of the characters for any of the emotional weight to hit home. And that's the main thing I look for in a Star Wars movie.

In a New Hope, Luke doesn't 'answer the call' until FOURTY ONE minutes into the film. Think about that for a second. We get to know Luke for THIRTY TWO minutes before his parents are killed and he sets off on his adventure. That is literally a quarter of the movie.

In that 32 minutes, everything is set up so that we know exactly who Luke is. His hopes. Dreams. Frustrations. His relationship to his aunt and uncle, and to Obi Wan. We know everything about him.

I didn't really know much about Jyn at all. What are her hopes, dreams, and frustrations? When Luke tells Obi Wan he can't go with him to Alderaan, we know exactly why he would say and feel that. I don't know why Jyn would help or not help the rebellion really.

A feel like a lot of film makers these days have a very good sense of story pacing, but they are almost too good in the sense that we are whisked along and caught up in the adventure without taking the quiet time we need to dramatize it.

But DAT Dunkirk prologue though… :-D

It's interesting, because I just re-watched ep IV with my son (he's 3 and really didn't care at all, except to point out whenever Darth Vader was on screen by yelling "Dat Dar Gader! He Good Guy!!!"... poor kid, one day he'll realize how wrong he was, only to discover later that he was right all along... he's in for some confusing years, but I digress)... So I watched ep IV (special edition) and I have to say:

First, every single change in the special editions was the wrong call. From Greedo shooting first completely changing the character of Han Solo to the stupid badly animated sequences of droids punching each other and jawas falling off of giant horse camel things, to adding fifty X-wings to the space combat, they were all wrong. They turned the setting into a joke, made the movie feel more comical, and removed the ambiguity of character from some key players.

Second, the movie sucks until the moment they rescue Princess Leia. It is slow, uninspired, and uninteresting. Yes, we get to learn that Luke is a whiny bitch, but we don't like him as a whiny bitch. Of course, we do grow to like him over the course of the film, and for that reason it works perfectly, but those opening 40 minutes are very, very poorly paced with lots of time spent sans dialogue or action. It's a very dated style that is very much of the time it was made, whereas - once Leia's rescue is in full effect - the rest of the film is perfectly modern in style and pacing. Her dialogue and character bring the whole thing to life, and suddenly the ensemble gels brilliantly.

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Now to Rogue 1.

This film is dark as fuck compared to the original Star Wars films. I wanted someone to live, and I'm disappointed that they all went out like that. A couple of the deaths were well done and well earned, but a couple felt cheap and meaningless to me, which is a shame. It was like if you took the first Christopher Nolan Batman movie and said it was a prequel to the second Tim Burton Batman film.

That being said, the ending was so goddamn on point that it made me want to instantly watch ep IV again. Why it isn't being shown as a double-feature is beyond me. The seamless tie-in was great.

One last thing - it's completely unclear why certain members of the "team" actually joined up. Not the randos at the end, but the main guys. No one really questioned it, but it only made sense to me in a "they want to live" sort of way, until the end when obviously that's not why they went with it. I would have appreciated a little more dialogue in the prison to explain how they all became friends and not just guys who are in prison together.

All in all, however, I felt it was a better and more complete film than TFA, if a bit outside the general themes of the Star Wars universe.