Very Halo Reach, but in a good way.

Not sure how I feel about CGI people though.

And things felt like they were occurring logically and in a way that made sense

That was something I noticed while I was watching it as well. At every point in the film, it was clear to me why each character (or group) was doing what they were doing, or going where they were going.

I'm not sure that surprised me, exactly, but it was something I was conscious of.

It's really well made, top to bottom. Looks beautiful, great action, lots of moments. But I didn't care about any of it. As deeply flawed as TFA was, I was invested in the characters and their struggles. Even when the plot was dumb or overly darrivitive, I cared about their personal journeys.
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.

I pretty much agree. I think it's the Halo Reach of the Star Wars movies, with many of its attendant strengths and weaknesses. Both owe a debt to the Magnificent Seven of course.

It's really well made, top to bottom. Looks beautiful, great action, lots of fun moments. But I didn't care about any of it. As deeply flawed as TFA was, I was invested in the characters and their struggles. Even when the plot was dumb or overly darrivitive, I cared about their personal journeys.
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.

I deeply enjoyed it from the look at the fracturing Rebel Alliance to how the Empire operates internally to the Halo Reach grand finale with all its spectacular moments. But there was something about the characters and that did not resonate with me. I'm not even sure what yet! I just have this vague feeling that I'm excited to rejoin Rey and Fin and Poe for another movie, but this group? I'd be ok if we never see them again. (Which, as it goes, is quite easy to pull off... :p)

On the plus side, I loved seeing this tale of heroism:

It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, the DEATH
STAR, an armored space
station with enough power
to destroy an entire planet.

Now we've seen this, and despite whatever flaws it was still pretty awesome. :)

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

One of my favorite things ever put to film.

Now I'm interested.

Though a badass unstoppable super villain Vader caming down the hallway that you are trapped in in order to mess you up gets a solid 5.

That was the thing of my nightmares this weekend. (okay, not really nightmares, but gee whiz that was scary!)

I didn't like it as much as VII. I thought VII was a decent star wars movie.

I really disliked the uncanny valley CGI people, particularly Leia. Everyone knows who it was. They didn't have to show the creepy wax face.

Yeah, it's been implicit in the media narrative that the crew that is now in charge of Star Wars had learned the right lessons from Lucas's mistakes. Less definitely would have been more for the CGI characters.

I didn't like it as much as VII. I thought VII was a decent star wars movie.

I really disliked the uncanny valley CGI people, particularly Leia. Everyone knows who it was. They didn't have to show the creepy wax face.

To me, she looked flawless. It was Tarkin that was creepy.

I didn't like it as much as VII. I thought VII was a decent star wars movie.

I really disliked the uncanny valley CGI people, particularly Leia. Everyone knows who it was. They didn't have to show the creepy wax face.

I thought it was a look-alike?

Won't tell on them, though :)

I see people do it all the time. The joke's been making the rounds in Red Dwarf fandom (where the titular ship is sometimes referred to as "the small rouge one") for some time now.

And I've never been a fan of the Star Wars films in general.

Well, there you go. EXPLAINS A LOT.

With some exceptions (like Cruel), I do think original Star Wars fans perceive the universe and the movies differently. Lucas started losing some of us with the ewoks.

I'm happy about the new movies. They're better than the prequels by a long shot, but the bar doesn't get much lower than that.

Rogue One could have worked better as a miniseries, exploring each of the individual characters,

I totally agree with this.

and we could have done without the mind-reading animal,

and this

but in the end, this was the best film in the Star Wars universe,

Couldn't agree less on this... sort of... I think it is one of the least flawed movies in the franchise, but fails to deliver where it really counts (emotional impact of any kind)

and took a simple segment of the original Crawl, and presented it in a way that made sense and expanded the franchise in a way none of the films have before.

This is part of what I find so fascinating about this style of movie, and one of the big points that people's opinions of the film turns on. Rogue One is set right smack in the middle of the Star Wars timeline, and it connects directly to the movies before and after it. So it only makes sense that it leverages that timeline in certain ways, and hopefully enriches it as well. I think they delivered plenty of the latter, but not enough of the former. By which I mean I feel like Rogue One does a better job of adding context to and depth to the other movies (A New Hope in particular) than it does of leveraging the rest of the franchise to help make it a compelling movie to watch.

For example: Captain America Civil War is part of an ongoing series. It works well as a self-contained movie. Everything you need to know about the characters' perspectives and motivations is communicated within the film, their points of view are understandable and relatable, the tension and conflict all works. But if you've been following the Marvel movies from the beginning, it is even better. That familiarity helps create deeper investment in the characters, adding even more weight to the entire scenario. It leverages its place within an ongoing series effectively, but not at the cost of working as a standalone film.

Rogue One leverages the Star Wars films in purely superficial ways. The look and sound of everything (which is fantastic. Credit where it is due), the ships, the locations, the design aesthetics, etc. There are a few moments where R1 leverages the rest of the franchise in a slightly deeper way...

like when it comes to Darth Vader. We finally get a glimpse of Vader in his ominous prime, and it is by far the highlight of the movie. As a long time Star Wars fan, the final 2 minutes of the film had me thrilled. But at the same time, that scene sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the movie because if you take the "OMG VAAAADR" nerdgasm out of the equation, it comes completely out of nowhere, brings neither resolution nor payoff to anything that came before it. I read an interview with one of the filmmakers earlier this year, back when it was first confirmed that Vader would be in the movie. He said Vader's part would be small, but important. He also talked about how Vader is this mysterious figure to the rebels at this point. How they've heard rumors about this agent of the emperor who can supposedly do impossible things but nobody knows if its true or if he's even real. WHY IS NONE OF THIS IN THE FILM? Imagine how much BETTER than final scene would have been if it there had been any kind of dramatic lead up to it. It could have been the moment when Vader is truly revealed to the rebels, and they get their first real glimpse of who they are dealing with, and all the shock and horror that comes along with that. Instead, the scene is treated as masturbatory fan service.

Again, it's a great scene. But as it stands, it doesn't serve the movie at all. It serves A New Hope. And for a lot of fans, maybe that's enough? I guess I just need a movie to do more than remind me of how great a bunch of other movies are. But that's usually as far as Rogue One goes. Well produced action sequences set in a universe we know and love, glimpses of characters we already care about, and a new cast of characters that struggles to justify their own inclusion other than to fulfil their assigned plot devices.

Instead of having devoid of brain doofus-bo and all around chump Anakin betraying the entire galaxy because some guy he barely knows sorta kinda promised him that he would help him try to find a technique that might be able to maybe prevent his wife from possibly dying, we could have an awesome story about family and a fracturing Rebel Alliance and a powerful new super weapon that we have to find a way to stop.

Then just rewrite Episode II so it ends right before this new Episdoe III and Episode I that ends just before the new Episode II and we could have a pair of great trilogies...

As we were leaving the theater, my brother and I had a similarly-themed conversation about this. My biggest argument in favor of redoing the prequel trilogy was basically "Jimmy Smits isn't that old!"
Which is really a great argument any way you look at it.

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