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12-27-2016, 11:07 AM | #1 | |
High King at Annuminas Administrator
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Wyoming - USA
Posts: 10,752
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Wow - just realized we hadn't yet started a Rogue One thread. So... here it is!
Saw it about five days ago with my sons. We waited until my oldest was home from college and the younger two were off school for their Christmas Break. Do we want a couple threads on this? One for spoilers, and one for no spoilers? Or just start using spoiler text for now? For those not familiar, it works like this... type
Without the gray - the end is [/spoiler] typed out, and the beginning is [spoiler], then everything in between shows up gray until clicked on.
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My Fanfic: Letters of Firiel Tales of Nolduryon Visitors Come to Court Ñ á ë ?* ó ú é ä ï ö Ö ñ É Þ ð ß ® ™ [Xurl=Xhttp://entmoot.tolkientrail.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=ABCXYZ#postABCXYZ]text[/Xurl] Splitting Threads is SUCH Hard Work!! |
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12-30-2016, 06:40 AM | #2 |
Dúnedain Ranger of the North
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: The Ruins of Arnor
Posts: 892
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Rogue One
I went to the matinee the day after it opened here. The theatre offered a nice cool afternoon on a hot summer day. I went in not expecting too much after seeing Star Wars VII last year, but the trailers looked promising. I'm a bit tired and lazy to use the 'spoiler' coding, so I'll just say that Rogue One is a well written, well acted, well made Star Wars movie that totally explains the scrolling lead-in of Star Wars IV (the original movie release for you non-Star Wars geeks). This IS the 'prequel'! Go see it. It's worth the $ to see on the big screen, and in 3D if you are so inclined.
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"I am an outlaw, I was born an outlaw's son. The highway is my legacy, on the highway I will run." |
12-31-2016, 06:11 PM | #3 | |||||||||
Cyber Elf Lord
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Left of Rock, Right of Hard Place
Posts: 986
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Rogue One is long snooze fest until the last 30minutes
Valandil,
On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), I give this about a 3 (maybe 2). At over 2 hours long, I found this movie slow and uninteresting until the action moves to Scarif. (about 90 minutes into the film) For most people, save your money and see this film when it comes out to video. (Actually this is one film that could be skipped without any impact on the rest of the SW universe. The opening scroll from SW:ANH(1977) tells all that one needs from this film.) I would only recommend big SW fans seeing this film at the theatre. Positives:
Negatives:
My biggest complaint is that I was not entertained. Regardless of my problems with SW:TFA(2015), it was an entertaining story. I was not bored for ¾ of the film as I was in Rogue One. If the makers of the film did a better job setting up the film, then the film would have been more entertaining and better for me.
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Sincerely, Anthony 'Many are my names in many countries,' he said. 'Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Drarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.' Faramir What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation? Cicero (106BC-43BC) Last edited by mithrand1r : 12-31-2016 at 07:19 PM. |
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01-02-2017, 08:21 AM | #4 | |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: here and there
Posts: 3,514
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Agree with most of what Mithrandir above says... although i cant really remember any of the names so some of it went over my head a little.
Enjoyed the film last year (one before this one)... it just seemed to be quite fun, well made and was an enjoyable Christmas family movie.... this one left me vaguely interested at best, kinda enjoyed the end fight... best bit for me was the ...spoiler below..
basically i think this is essentially the third time they've used the same basic plot for a SW's universe film and the whole thing is becoming increasingly formulaic. But the previous one i quite enjoyed- this one was at best 3 out of 10...though i still quite enjoyed going to the cinema to watch it- luckily i wasnt expecting too much..so like yeah. Its fair to say that some of my family party that went to see it fell asleep. |
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01-06-2017, 09:22 AM | #5 |
Dúnedain Ranger of the North
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: The Ruins of Arnor
Posts: 892
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Wow. Guess I didn't see the same movie you guys saw. Whatevs. To each their own.
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"I am an outlaw, I was born an outlaw's son. The highway is my legacy, on the highway I will run." |
01-06-2017, 02:10 PM | #6 | |
Cyber Elf Lord
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Left of Rock, Right of Hard Place
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Quote:
Perhaps we did see different movies. If true, I want to see the good movie you saw. Zu jedem das seinen Perhaps I expect more from Star Wars than other films.
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Sincerely, Anthony 'Many are my names in many countries,' he said. 'Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Drarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.' Faramir What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation? Cicero (106BC-43BC) Last edited by mithrand1r : 01-06-2017 at 02:13 PM. |
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01-06-2017, 03:31 PM | #7 |
High King at Annuminas Administrator
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Wyoming - USA
Posts: 10,752
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Really? I don't expect too much from Star Wars films. When I go back and watch episodes 1, 2 & 3 now... they seem so awful. Very much geared toward small children. I even thought much the same about episode 6 - back when it first came out.
Star Wars doesn't really sweat the continuity, or logic. BTW - a couple other "Positives" about Rogue One: * No Jar-Jar Binks! * No Anakin-Padme adolescent romance
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01-07-2017, 11:13 AM | #8 |
Salt Miner
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: gone to Far Harad
Posts: 987
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I suppose Carrie Fisher will be all CGI going forward. She completed filming Episode VIII, I understand, and Disney bought an enormous insurance policy on her, likely enough to digitize her image and voice well enough for most fans, at least for a while, and probably for that reason.
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01-10-2017, 11:58 AM | #9 | |
Quasi Evil
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Maryland, US
Posts: 4,634
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Let me just preface this by saying if you DON’T want spoilers then read no further because Im not going to be holding anything back and Im not going to kill myself redacting out every third word I write. Its been almost a month now. Go see it already…
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This movie, unlike Force Awakens, isn’t presented as hollow badly written derivative nostalgia worship meant primarily to tease the audience about the next film. It’s a fully self contained work that still fits pretty much perfectly into the Star Wars continuum. In fact, its bridging is so precise (as we witness in the final scene) that I felt the urge to run home and watch New Hope again while it was all fresh in my mind. And by god, that scene with Vader entering the transport… I have never gotten chills from any of these movies in the 40 years Ive been watching them but THAT scene completely sucked the breath out of me. It was outstanding. Not the Princess Leah portion which was good (and eerie considering I saw it just days after she died) but Vader emerging from the darkness and mowing through terrified troops with such cold determined malice. That 30 second scene gives us a more terrifying glimpse at the inner workings of this Sith Lord/machine then we ever get in any of the three original movies. Just stunning. Some people complained that that scene and a number of other scenes in this film were just too dark and chilling for the Star Wars franchise and this is definitely a darker colder film then any of the other 6. But that’s largely because its about war in a way none of the other films were. The other films had battle scenes but they were all dramas involving characters. This is a purely military movie. It reminded me of Guns of Navarone or A Bridge Too Far. And it chooses that path purposefully rather than the path of long careful character development like we get with the original trilogy. We know Luke, and Leah and Han and the rest like the back of our hands and more importantly they all have time to know each other. This movie is the polar opposite in that it throws an ENTIRELY new slate of characters at us almost all at once and doesn’t give us any opportunity to get to know them before action has begun. That did bother me some because I felt like they were trying to have their Star Wars nostalgia feel to the movie where we expect to know all the characters well while not making the effort to get us there. This made the movie less appealing just by its very nature and I found myself more dubious about the characters interactions with each other because they haven’t had an opportunity to connect at all. BUT I guess that’s what happens when you make a disposable film with characters that have to be disposable by definition. These folks cant continue on. We dont see them after this and therefore they must all die. So you are left with a film where you never really get a good feel for anyone and what connection they do develop with each other comes off feeling thin and fake. I mean you have characters (some of the rebels that agreed to go with Jyn) that you get NO INTRODUCTION TO AT ALL yet they play key parts in the battle on Scarif. That was too much for me. If you aren’t going to introduce them AT ALL then don’t feature them as characters at all. The audience has no idea who they are and doesn’t know why they should care. Theres much less comic relief in this film and I think I liked that. Clearly that’s a departure from all the other films. The only thing that came close to it was the droid but hes funny in a defiant bad attitude kind of way. Not in a fluffy playful way like R2 and C3PO. Reminded me a little of Chopper from Rebels but better actually. I definitely felt a lump in my throat when he finally gets taken down. As for the CGI controversy, I think they did a pretty good job with Tarkin. Was it obvious he was graphically generated? Sure. But it looked good enough to me to work. Better than any video game Ive ever seen at least (apparently they were able to get their hands on a face mold he had made for a role in another film which they said turned out to be incredibly valuable in properly digitizing him). And I don’t understand people who insist you dindt need Tarkin in this movie (or Vader!) He was the head of the whole operation. How are you going to write around that exactly? So I was good with it and I thought it came off reasonably well enough not to impact my enjoyment of the film. The approach certainly fits right in with the concept of disposable less than developed characters anyway. Not sure why they felt the need to give Vader a “castle” and put it on Mustafar no less! Why!? I don’t need to know about Vader’s house. And it seems completely out of place and unnecessary. We get that Vader has an old gothic feel to him but you don’t need to actually mock him up like Count Dracula thank you. I did enjoy the scenes on Jedha. The whole feel of the thing was biblical, with the empire being like the Roman occupiers of an ancient holy city and Forest Whittaker hiding out in the caves with his band of zealots like the Essenes. The metaphor was a little in your face (Roman “Empire” on a planet whose name sounds just like “Judea” with the destruction of the Temple echoed in the destruction of the capital walled city) but I appreciated it. I guess this movie finally answers the eternal burning question (after 40 years) of “why would they make a super weapon with such a glaring flaw to it”. But it now changes the question to “why would they hire someone to build their superweapon who is fundamentally opposed to the Empire politically and morally”? Or even “why would you NOT try to fix the flaw AFTER you know the rebels have the plans SHOWING the flaw”? I mean they really do nothing at all. Shouldn’t they have put it on ice for a bit till they cleaned things up? At least cover over that hole or alter it so its just bristling with anti aircraft guns? At LEAST post some ships near it at all times?! But no. Its just business as usual and the rebels are allowed to successfully exploit this weakness that the Empire knew they knew. But plot holes aside, I definitely enjoyed the film. I enjoyed its differences and I enjoyed its small nostalgia moments that they don’t knock us over the head with (we get Leah for 5 seconds, Ponda Baba and Evazan from Mos Eisley for 5 seconds, and the briefest cameo by C3PO and R2, unlike Force Awakens which is one long unnecessary nostalgia explosion). I respected that it was a film about war and that it perfectly handed the baton off to the very moment I remember seeing in the theater as a little kid. In that way it was magical unlike any of the other prequels or sequels have been.
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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01-10-2017, 04:14 PM | #10 | |
High King at Annuminas Administrator
Join Date: Oct 2003
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Quote:
As for your point on the Empire not covering up - or eliminating - the weakness. I'm not sure if they knew what the weakness was... Did they? Or would they? And while I thought it was quite unwise, they DID kill all the scientists/engineers (I forget which term was used) who worked on it. That wipes out any institutional memory. Would they even know that the plans would reveal a weakness of any kind?
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My Fanfic: Letters of Firiel Tales of Nolduryon Visitors Come to Court Ñ á ë ?* ó ú é ä ï ö Ö ñ É Þ ð ß ® ™ [Xurl=Xhttp://entmoot.tolkientrail.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=ABCXYZ#postABCXYZ]text[/Xurl] Splitting Threads is SUCH Hard Work!! |
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01-10-2017, 10:37 PM | #11 | |||||||||||
Cyber Elf Lord
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Left of Rock, Right of Hard Place
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Zu jedem das seinen To each his own. Quote:
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Regarding Vader, I would have preferred more screen time for him. I think he was under used in this film. Since he was used so little, they could have made the film without him (although the end scene with him was visually impressive). Quote:
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Sincerely, Anthony 'Many are my names in many countries,' he said. 'Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Drarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.' Faramir What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation? Cicero (106BC-43BC) |
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01-27-2017, 09:06 AM | #12 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Durham, England
Posts: 694
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I'm with Insidious Rex. In a film series set against war after war, this is the first PROPER war film. Not the high commands, not the glory boys (and girls) in their spaceships: the poor bloody infantry dying by the score. For the first time since Empire Strikes Back, you get to see the Empire as a generally effective and undeniably enormous military machine (as opposed to a bunch of incompetents who can't beat a bunch of bloody teddy bears...), the rebels on the back foot and truly desperate. Finally we see how Vader got his reputation.
The glaring weakness in the Death Star design was so glaring that it was worth exploring, I think. As IR says, the fact that the film took the story to within hours of where it all started back in 1977 was, frankly, thrilling. But maybe you had to be there in 1977 to feel as giddy as I did about that. Interesting if people saw Biblical allusions in Jedha. A group of dangerous extremists who are against the regime but dangerous to other rebels? I saw present-day Syria. As to looking at other inexplicable shortcomings in the Empire - let's not over analyse. Don't forget, Star Wars is at heart anti-Fascist, and I think it draws on our own world's wars against Fascism. That's why lots of Messerchmidts (sorry, TIE fighters) get beaten by far less Spitfires (sorry, X-Wings). Big Fascist governments might look scarily efficient, but they are ultimately stupid, run mostly by stupid people who will make stupid decisions. Why did the Empire employ Galen Erso? Cos they're not all that bright, basically. Star Wars is about the heart more than the head. It needs to feel right rather than have its internal logic all perfect. When it's about backs-to-the-wall heroism and big themes of love and honour and freedom it gets it right, when it's about trade alliances and senate politics it gets it wrong. For my money, Rogue One sits in the "got it right" category.
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03-08-2017, 02:52 PM | #13 | |
Quasi Evil
Join Date: Jan 2003
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Ive talked to folks in their 20's ad 30's and they loved this scene generally because "Vader kicked ass!!!". And sure, that was great to see and was very well done but I know now its not JUST about that for folks in my generation. It was more the magic of reaching out to our childhood and letting us feel that again... I will note that there does seem to be a Vader worship I was unaware of among younger folk. He has really become the most worshipped big screen villain I can think of. There is a video on YouTube of Star Wars nerds (almost all of them young) reacting to the first Rogue One trailer (yes 15 minutes of people reacting to a trailer... god YouTube... ) when at the very end you suddenly see the back of Darth Vaders helmet and hear his breathing just for a moment. This was Disney's way of saying "Yes, Vader will be in Rogue One" so this was the first verification of this. And you would have thought these people had just won a lottery or watched their team make a last second shot to win a game. Unbelievable emotion and jumping around and screaming and arms in the air and falling backwards off of chairs. It was stunning to watch. And all over the briefest glimpse of their villain hero for LESS THAN A SECOND! I love that a new generation SO embraces Vader and Star Wars lore but holy crap...
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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04-04-2017, 11:00 PM | #14 |
Advocatus Diaboli
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Reality
Posts: 3,767
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Best Star Wars movie ever! And I saw them all in real time back in the day.
This was the first one that actually felt like a WAR! And the first one where I really felt some remorse for the characters lost. I absolutely loved A New Hope (and still do!). Empire was great as well, if a little overrated. All of us back in the day knew Vader was Luke's dad before the movie came out, in addition to the Han/Leia romance so it wasn't as big a reveal as some seem to think it was. All that said, these characters felt so real! I'm not sure whether I even knew what the original was missing until a saw this. It made the first three look like a Frank Capra movie. Endearing, timeless, idolized, everything you could possibly expect from a movie except real. I loved the bigger than life characters in the originals, but it's a whole other level when you watch real flawed people populate a world you loved. I hope they take a bit of this to the next film.
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