Supermallet

I actually don't think Lucas was trying to please fans. I think he had a story he wanted to tell but his storytelling instincts had been dulled by decades of riches and not being active as a filmmaker.

mcnabb

Jango Fett in the PT is the ultimate fan pleaser as he knew how popular Boba Fett was in the OT. Of course it backfired cause nobody cared about little boy Boba.

fumanstan

I really like this take on the lack of character development. I've seen a lot of people say that it doesn't matter since it's a war movie and they all die anyway (and don't appear again in the future) but there's plenty of 2 hour movies that aren't part of a franchise that develop and make me care about the characters plenty in that time frame that I never revisit.

B5Erik

As I noted before, I absolutely LOVED seeing Peter Cushing as Tarkin in this movie. It was very well done (better than the younger Michael Douglas in Ant Man or the face on the smaller Steve Rogers in The First Avenger) and he was a HUGE part of the original Star Wars, and leaving him out would have made no sense at all. He was in charge of the Death Star. You couldn't leave him out any more than you could leave Darth Vader out (as Vader was the boogieman in this galaxy at that point in the Star Wars timeline).

The Leia appearance was necessary as well, even if the CG Carrie Fisher wasn't as good as the CG Peter Cushing.

I loved seeing all the familiar faces as they were at that time, even if they weren't the focus of this movie. Leaving them out would have made this movie feel disconnected from the original rather than the story directly leading up to that one.

And, again, I thought the CGI Tarkin was excellent. Perfect? No, but better than any other CG human character I've seen to date.

kefrank

While it may have been better than other human CG characters to-date, it was still way too unnatural to be remotely convincing. I'm starting to think "uncanny valley" is something some people are more sensitive to than others and I must be very sensitive to it.

To be clear, I don't think Tarkin should have been left out - I just think they should have handled the character in such a way that wouldn't include close-ups of him talking in-person with other characters. All of his key interactions with Krennic could have been done via hologram communication, like the Emperor's appearance in The Empire Strikes Back, which would have been much easier to pull off convincingly given the distortion in holographic imagery in the Star Wars universe. His final command to destroy Scarif could have been done with a medium, 3/4 shot from behind.

brayzie

I like that idea better. We all know that Coppola couldn't get Brando for GFII but the flashback scene involving his character without actually showing him on screen actually worked to the film's advantage.

Having CGI Leia and Tarkin reminded me of something that Lucas would do, in order that people could watch all these films back to back, in one long sitting and still have a sense of continuity.

Or why not just hire a different actor to play Tarkin?

This is a good idea too.


Yup. A lot of fan service and winks to the audience. Had to have 3PO and R2 in there, had to have a giant lightsaber battle involving hundreds of Jedi. Vader in full armor at the end. Death Star being seen three times. Chewbacca. etc etc

Josh-da-man

Yeah, this is problematic because...

1. Jango Fett was unnecessary. It dilutes the character of Boba Fett because it immediately deuniques him.

2. Seeing Boba Fett as a child likewise dilutes the character. Same with Vader. Seems to be an ofd obsession of Lucas' to show the OT villains of children. It only damages the characters to see them as children.

3. The less we know about Boba Fett the better. He works best as a mysterious cypher. We don't need to know what's under the mask, who his daddy was, or what his childhood was like.

mrhan

I totally enjoyed the movie even with the distracting CGI characters. I loved the way it just leads into ANH.

B5Erik

Exactly. A different actor playing Tarkin or Leia just wouldn't have worked if you popped on Star Wars right after Rogue One. It would be a distraction.

And, to me, Tarkin was a character of such importance that just showing him as a hologram or in long shots would have diminished how important (and how great) the character was.

I thought the CGI Tarkin looked great. There were only a few moments where he looked CG, the rest of the time he looked pretty damned natural. Peter Cushing Lives!!!

(Too bad they couldn't do a Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee scene... )

stvn1974

Dead Peter Cushing gave a better and more lifelike performance than anyone in the prequels.

Supermallet

Hey, Ewan McGregor was great as Obi-Wan!

B5Erik

And Liam Neeson was great as Qui-Gon. And Ian McDiarmid was excellent as Palpatine.

But CG Peter Cushing was better than everyone else in those 3 movies.

mrhan

And his lines really does mesh in with the real portrayal in ANH. They got the character down pat in R1.

majorjoe23

I need to watch it again, but the only thing that bothered me about CG Cushing was that his head seemed larger than actual Cushing's head.

Big Boy Laroux

Can't believe no one has mentioned the funniest part of the movie...

Rabble, rabble, rabble... WHAT IS SHE PROPOSING?!

I literally LOL'd at that. One of the characters engaged in the actual debate couldn't have said that line?

Overall, I liked it. 3.5 stars. The ending half hour was great, the stuff before it was just ok.

kefrank

I had the exact opposite experience. There were only a couple of very brief moments where it looked natural to me. The rest of the time it was utterly distracting.

I also think you're overstating how essential it was for Tarkin to appear "live" and close up. I actually think it would have been more effective in the context of the story if he communicated with Krennic via hologram. It would have added a layer of "I'm too important to see you in person" to their adversarial relationship.

Daytripper

No way was the CGI Tarkin better than Douglas in "Ant-Man". They clearly filmed Douglas first and then touched his face up to make him look years younger. Tarkin looked like something from a bad video game. It was terrible and really creepy. If they had to do this at all, I wish he could have been in the distance so it wasn't so distracting.

Supermallet

When they first showed Tarkin from behind and we could see the reflection of his face in the window, I thought they were going to keep him there to conduct the conversation. That is one of the many ways they could have worked in Tarkin without making an uncanny valley abomination of him. Same with Leia.

And I just remembered the awful "Don't choke on your ambitions" line. Jesus fuck, this movie was basically a bad fanfic. The only thing missing was Krennic and Tarkin sharing a steamy kiss in the Death Star rec room.

slop101

Heck, or at least stop giving him constant closeups, basically winking at the audience, saying, "eh? eh? pretty cool Tarkin, huh?" Meanwhile, no Mr. Demille, he is not ready for his closeup.

Supermallet

This movie confirms to me that Gareth Edwards is not a good director, nor does he have any good ideas. I like Godzilla initially because it was Godzilla but seeing it again completely soured me on it. And Monsters is unwatchable. Dude is a hack.

Why So Blu?

Monsters is great. Godzilla blows.

dex14

I kind of agree with this. I do think he tries to add some cool stuff and sequences to action... but it just doesn't make up for underdeveloped films. Godzilla was really crappy though.

This is one of the the indie to big league careers that just doesn't work.

Lt Ripley

It is 'aspirations' not 'ambitions'. Reuben fuck.

Josh-da-man

Godzilla was mind-numbingly terrible. The 1998 turd was more watchable.

dex14

http://ew.com/movies/2016/12/20/rogu...r-wars-rebels/