kefrank

Yeah, the whole thing with initially showing him from behind with the faint reflection and then having him turn around was very much a "look how good our CGI Tarkin is!" move. I'm surprised he didn't turn around and do jazz hands. The constant close-ups after that kept hammering the point home, which just made everything worse because the uncanny valley effect is still way too strong.

slop101

I think he's good as a shooter/cinematographer. R1 might well be the best looking/shot SW movie yet. But yeah, he's not a very good director.

hasslein

In ANH, the troopers cleared the way for him before he entered, but I will accept your answer, he did get fed up and jump in his fighter. Thanks, now I can fully enjoy this scene.

I just believed we were further along than that. IV opens with - it is a period of civil war...


As far as people liking Force Awakens or Rogue One, I really didn't care for either, but for different reasons. TFA had abysmal dialogue, it was painful to watch. Rogue One had not one interesting new character, save Donnie, and put me to sleep.

Mr. Flix

Absolutely this.

Dan

This is in the deleted scenes, yes?

...right?

Supermallet

Monsters was garbage. Total waste of time.

EddieMoney

Little Monsters is great.

Supermallet

Agreed! Mods, please close the thread. We have come to an accord.

mcnabb

The problem with this generation of directors (including Gareth Edwards) is that they have the full use of any technology in their movies and the characters have taken a backseat because of it.

The Spielberg, Cameron, Zemeckis, Scott, Lucas generation who were making blockbusters in the 70's/80's had to the develop the characters and story because they could not rely on CGI.

That's why Star Wars, Jaws, Raiders, Back to the Future hold up 30 years later. This movie will be forgotten because there isn't one memorable character.

dex14

Mr. Flix

Couldn't agree more.

There was a movie I watched recently on Netflix (for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it), where the world was coming to an end. The final scene was very much like Jyn's final scene in Rogue One -- two main characters alone on a beach while a burning horizon rapidly approaches them. In the Netflix movie, that scene was very gripping. In Rogue One, the feeling can best be described as "meh." It doesn't help that Jyn and what's-his-name don't even make an attempt to escape nor seem all that upset about their fate. Had they made more of a "go" of trying to escape death, then resigned themselves to it, conveying that their death was worth what they had just accomplished, it might have resonated more. But they -- like Saw whats-his-name -- just seemed to shrug it off. Which makes it much easier for the audience to shrug it off as well.

EddieMoney

These Final Hours?

B5Erik

I saw it a different way. To me, it seemed like they were treating Tarkin the same as they did every other significant character in the movie. To only show him in long shots or from behind would only draw attention to the fact that the actor was dead and they were trying to hide that.

They didn't show any more close-ups of Tarkin than of anyone else.

Mr. Flix

Response to Eddie Money. Don't read if you don't want the ending to the Netlix movie I mentioned above spoiled for you.

Mr. Flix

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that there was no way to have Tarkin in the movie without it being distracting -- either through obvious CGI or by obvious long shots / distorted holograms / reflections.

I'd have preferred the latter approach over the former.

Supermallet

But Peter Cushing IS dead and the CGI drew more attention to that fact than other filmmaking techniques would have.

kefrank

+1 to both. Preach brothers, preach!

EddieMoney

It's a pretty great movie!

B5Erik

I thought it was well done and very cool. That was a great tie in to the movie that directly follows this one.

RoboDad

It did for you. It didn't for me. Different people can have different opinions without one being right and one being wrong.

Supermallet

Look, let's set aside you or me. We're both huge film and Star Wars fans, so we already know who Cushing is, that he's dead, and that the filmmakers have to account for that.

Let's look at this from the perspective of the average movie goer, who has seen Star Wars but isn't obsessed with it.

What is going to be more distracting for the average movie goer, some artsy shots of a character, the character as a CGI hologram, or a CGI uncanny valley human occupying the same space as flesh and blood actors? Do you really think that the CGI human is going to be the most convincing? As I mentioned earlier in this thread, as soon as Tarkin turned away from the window my wife leaned over to me and asked why he's CGI. It was obvious and distracting. And the other methods of using Tarkin wouldn't have been questioned by as many people. Same with Leia.

Additionally, by going with a hologram they could have made a nice parallel to Empire/Jedi, where you only see the Emperor via hologram in Empire and then in the flesh in Jedi. Here we could have seen Tarkin via hologram only, and the film ends with him taking control of the Death Star project, and then we see him in the flesh for the first time in ANH.

EddieMoney

Tarkin should have been played by Howie Mandel

slop101

Totally.

It goes to the old adage that the more restrictions you have, the more creative you get. If they can just press a button and CGI everything, while it might be a lot of work for the CGI house, it's makes the actual writers and directors be more lazy creatively, as in the case for both Tarkin and Leia. Even if you were okay with them, you have to admit that there was zero creativity to how they were presented.

Supermallet

I'm also cringing at the last lines of the film. How on the nose can they be?

Draven

My wife and I see a lot of movies together, but she doesn't do much beyond just watching them so I'd say she's a little above average for a moviegoer but not a die-hard.

The first thing she said to me when it was over was "That was so cool what they did with Tarkin".

Personally, while I could tell it was CGI it was really GOOD CGI and was a neat way to connect the movies. And Leia was even better. So overall it worked for me too.