Defiant1

I saw it twice this weekend and really liked it. Yes, there are some slow bits in the first two acts that could have been tightened up, but the third act redeems it big time. As a casual Star Wars fan, I didn't know that Peter Cushing died, and had no idea watching it the first time that that was a CGI character in the movie and I thought they did a great job with young Leia as well. The second time, I knew about Cushing and looked for the uncanny valley and yeah, I could notice it this time, but it still looks pretty damn good.

Some random thoughts:

- How long does it take to travel between star systems in the SW universe while in hyperspace? Minutes? They just seemed to hop to and from multiple worlds so quickly. Also, I believe all of the planets visited were named on screen except for the one in the beginning and Darth Vader's planet. I don't know why they didn't bother naming those ones.

- So I guess Galen told Bodhi to take the message to Saw in hopes that Jyn would get it. It seems a little convoluted, considering how difficult it was to get in touch with Saw. if the end goal was to deliver the secret flaw to the rebels, then why not have Bodhi go straight to the Alliance and not this whacked out extremist?

- Why didn't Saw get off the planet with the others? It didn't seem like sacrificing himself accomplished anything.

- The Battle of Scarif, especially the ground battle, was stunning to look at. Loved the tropical setting and seeing those giant walkers.

- I thought all of the principal cast was fine with the exception of Diego Luna. He lacked the gravitas and charisma necessary for that role. I also found his Mexican-English accent too heavy. If they wanted to go with a Latino actor, I would have loved to have seen Pedro Pascal in the role. He would have been perfect!

Supermallet

FWIW I would love to see movies that expanded the SW universe in interesting ways. I do not think that taking every tossed off line from the OT and making a movie about the history behind it is a good idea. There was nothing in Rogue One that gave me a greater appreciation for the SW universe or any particular character. That's why I say it felt like the PT. It checked off all the boxes of things that needed to be established for A New Hope to make sense, but ANH already made sense without showing us those things. So in the end it feels like an exercise in futility.

I would love a series of SW films that were not connected to or only tangentially connected to the OT. Hell, I'd kill for a Knights of the Old Republic series of movies. But I suspect that Disney will continue to trot out a series of films that fill in every last bit of the OT world and as a result make it all insufferably boring. I have very low hopes for the Han Solo prequel.

slop101

Do blasters have firing pins that need to be pulled back? Because more than once, people in this movie were cocking their laser guns.

joe_b

Yes, that whole plot should have been streamlined. Too many variables at play to ensure the Rebellion would get the upper hand. I mean, why would Galen want his daughter to personally go out on this death mission? Jyn only located the plans because they were filed under her childhood nickname. Father of the year right there.


I agree. Still... let's just be thankful they didn't give that character any more screen time.

faust69

Love R1. Wasn't sure if I liked it better than TFA until I saw it a 2nd time tonight. Yeah, it is better. Quite a bit better. And I do like TFA a lot, but it took me 3 viewings before I was actually willing to forgive how damn derivative parts of it are. With R1, I really liked it the first time and loved it the 2nd time.

Obi-Wanma

I think that Galen had some kind of relationship with Saw and trusted him. I think there was some kind of agreement that if things went south for them, Saw would take Jyn in, and that's what the bunker that she hid in was for. So he probably expected that if anyone could reach Jyn, it would be him.

Also, if you want him to go straight to the Rebel Alliance, where do you send him? It seemed like Saw's location was commonly known. The location of the Rebel Base on Yavin 4 was not.

Seeing the way he moved around, I'm not sure he could have moved quick enough to reach the shuttle if he had wanted to.

Pizza

I'd rather they strip the new score from the first two thirds of the film. No music. Then when the big battle starts let the original score trumpet away then fill with the new score where needed because that is how it sounded: like fill.

Bandoman

I loved this. I will need to see it a few more times to see what I missed, but it had heart and I thought was great background for the OT. I see where Supermallet is coming from, but I don't think it's tedious at all. For example, I'm thrilled to have a canon explanation for why the Death Star had such a glaring weakness.

I also "liked" that the main characters died - it was more "realistic" that way, if you get what I'm saying. The narrative has always been that the rebellion was fighting against long odds, with a brutal Empire seeking to crush them. Many good people died along the way, and I love that they are now telling some of those stories.

majorjoe23

I can't believe they cut out Jyn running on the beach.

Timber

I wonder if Jyn lived in an earlier cut of the film?

Dan

That's what I figured after seeing that. You can see she's got the hard drive with her in that shot. I'm thinking the original story was that she escaped and managed to hand the files over directly to Leia.
What might have been kind of epic was if she escaped, handed the files over to a rebel soldier at the last second before Vader arrives and kills her.

I like the way it played out in the film, but that might have worked.

Anyway, I wanted to say that Supermallet is crazy. A Michael Bay movie? Duuuuuuude... no.

dex14

Or she steals the plans from one building...and runs to another. So maybe they cut down the sequence.

mewmartigan

Saw was the one whole helped Galen and his family hide. Galen also contacted him when Krennic landed on the planet at the beginning.
Half of Galen's message was a message to Jyn about how he missed her. As far as Galen knew, Jyn was still with Saw and Saw was still fighting against the Empire so I definitely think it made sense to send the message to him.

It was only while Galen was cloistered away that Saw broke with the rebellion and left Jyn behind.

kefrank

Saw this last night. I liked it overall, but it was somewhat of a mixed bag...

The good:

• Donnie Yen's Force Monk Character - wish he had even more screen time
• K-2SO's humor
• Jyn was a solid lead
• Excellent climactic action sequence
• The hammerhead ship
• Vader's fortress of eviltude
• Vader's rampage
• Sacrificial heroes that actually die

The bad:

• CGI Tarken & Leia - took me right out of the movie every time and it didn't need to be done...they could have accomplished the narrative purpose of those scenes by other means. I really, really hated this.
• Cantina guys' cameo - disruptive and unnecessary
• Saw Gerrera (or at least the way Whitaker played him)
• Can't quite articulate why yet but the narrative felt...choppy...didn't quite flow like it should have and therefore didn't carry the dramatic weight it could have

Shady12

Unlike Mallet I think R1 greatly enhanced ANH. I went into it with almost no knowledge or high expectations. I was excited to see it but not as excited as TFW which I followed the development every step of the way. Then I saw it and was blown away. Going to see it again tomorrow!

I do agree with Mallet that sooner than later I'd like to see some SW movies completely unrelated to what we've had already.

Kal-El

Word on the street is that the payoff of that shot is it gets shot out of the sky by an X-Wing which the filmmakers thought was repetitive since they'd already done it with the AT-ACT a few minutes before.

Kal-El

Last year when my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told her I wanted to see TFA as much as I could and the week between Christmas and New Year I saw it 3 times. :-)

I didn't ask for the same gift this year.

I might watch this one again in IMAX just for the experience but after that I'm good.

Sean O'Hara

Never needed to be explained.

Kal-El

Because it's Star Wars, duh.

And of course I'm talking more about repeat viewings, quick Star Wars fix type things.

The beginning of this film doesn't have a "I'll-only-watch-til-this-part" for me. TFA for me is chock-full of those that I usually end up watching the entire thing anyway.

Timber

I watched TFA last night and while I really like it it has a scene that is perhaps the worst in the whole series (on board Han's ship with the smugglers) but other than that I think it holds up pretty well.

Supermallet

Technology almost always has some issues. How could Toyota have allowed some models of the Prius to come to market where the brakes stopped working? The Death Star having a weakness (not a glaring weakness BTW, the rebels had to study the stolen plans to discover it) makes things seem more real than if every bit of Imperial tech is perfect and a weakness had to be built in on purpose. Furthermore, it also ties in perfectly with the Empire's arrogance and power mad greed--in their haste to make a weapon that would secure their power they overlooked the small details.

The action isn't cut like Michael Bay, and the juvenile humor is missing, but the way that the film essentially jumps from action set piece to action set piece with very few breaks and essentially no character development (or very abrupt changes in character) reminds me more of Bay than Star Wars. The plot lead the characters here, the characters did not lead the plot.

Shady12

But the plot was awesome!

Mr. Flix

The biggest flaw with this film was at the script level. You don't necessarily need lengthy (or really, any) back story to make viewers care for characters. Look at Aliens. Now there is a ragtag team with very little backstory but tons of personality, which made the viewer not only care for them, but even remember their names.

Here, the only character with backstory is Jyn, and I can't say I gave two flips what happened to her. She completely lacked Rey's personality and likability. And the other members of her team, with the possible exceptions of K2SO and Chirrut, were almost completely interchangeable and equally forgettable.

Throw these generic characters into a choppy, from-one-location-to-the-next script, and it's a recipe for a bad movie. And don't get me started on Tarkin and Leia. My wife, who's a Star Wars novice, leaned over to me during Tarkin's first scene and said, "What's wrong with his face?!" She didn't immediately know he was CGI, but she knew something sure wasn't right. I didn't catch one word of Tarkin's lines because I kept thinking I was watching a character from The Polar Express.

I hope it improves upon a second viewing, but I thought this was bad, and nowhere in the same league as Force Awakens.

Supermallet

The plot was needlessly busy and resulted in a really fragmented pace. The characters were just devices to keep the plot moving.

Edit: What Mr. Flix said. And my wife also asked me why Tarkin was CGI.

mcnabb

Count me in as someone who disliked using Tarkin and Leia in the movie.

The Leia scene was fine when they showed her from behind with her white hood on.

I actually think it was sort of disrespectful using Tarkin 39 years later, but I'm sure they got consent from the family. Reminds me of Lucas getting rid of Sebastian Shaw (who was really dead) to insert Hayden in the ROTJ force ghost scene. It's just creepy.

Maybe it's time to hire a non-SW fan to direct movies so they don't get sucked into all of the fan service BS. I'm not sure how big a fan Kirshner was of the Original, but he made his movie and not tried to please fanboys like they do now (including Lucas in the PT.)