Defiant1

I am a very causal SW fan with limited recall of specific events, but is this the first time a Star Destroyer has been destroyed on screen?

Dan

^ That article is excellent.

Supermallet

No, in Empire a Star Destroyer is disabled by an ion cannon at Hoth and in Jedi multiple Star Destroyers are taken down at the Battle of Endor.

Abob Teff

One of my biggest knocks is the score. The music wasn't bad in and of itself, but it wasn't very "Star Wars-esque". Worse than that, as Pizza said, it really felt like filler music or a temp score in most places.

I am amazed nobody has mentioned this -- perhaps we have just gotten used to it. I loved this movie, but I hated the way the end played out. We went from a (somewhat) gritty, realistic war movie to another lame-ass video game script. Using every character to solve a piece of the puzzle which then allows the hero to move on to the next puzzle. Use the robotic arms, then climb to manually grab the idol, escape through the meticulously timed hatch, upload the data -- oh wait, have to run out on that platform (with a marvelous view of the beach, but otherwise senselessly placed) to through another switch, then come back ... Zzzzzzz. I was waiting for R2-D2 to jet pack his way up there.

Another thing that really bothered me, but I think I've only seen one person mention it casually here, was the portrayal of Darth Vader. I love what they did with him, but again the "how" was severely lacking. His body, stature, movement, and costume felt very "off". I'm not talking about his fight scene, that was kick ass to a new level. I'm talking about his scene with Krennic. I'm not sure if it was the design, the physical actor, or both. I'll need to hone in on that with future viewings. Sadly, I also have to critique the voice. Yes, erect fanboys everywhere are having geekgasms because James Earl Jones is back. However this fanboy was saddened. It may have been the same actor, but it was far from the same portrayal. They would have been better suited with another actor (or more work with JEJ, either in studio or in post).

I said coming in that this could be the Star Wars film I have been waiting almost four decades for. I think it was. I wish things were done better (or different), but this accomplishes much of what I have wanted to see. I wanted stories of the struggle of the Rebellion, the plight of the Jedi, and to know more about the Clone Wars which Obi-Wan spoke of. While I understand the Skywalker bloodline is a PART of that story, we have spent too much time pruning that family tree. In 1977 Luke did not set out on a quest to plan a family reunion, he set out on a quest to save the Galaxy.

More random tidbits:

With the missing crawl, no wipes, and rather generic score, I felt the lack of those did impact this as a "Star Wars Story" (still lame nomenclature). By removing those elements, filmmakers distanced it from the source material. Unlike "Casino Royale" which started out the current James Bond iteration by removing some of the "Bond trademarks", Rogue One felt too far removed.

I want to see what we will never see -- the original cut. I've heard speculation that they had to come back to "soften" the Jyn character, that she was actually more rough around the edges and not as likeable. Mainly, I want to see the final battle cut which is shown in the trailers. More battle, less up-down, up-down, A, B, A, B ...

A cameo nobody mentioned: the chess pieces! Awesome!

For the most part I loved the world building character designs, but what was up with the Minecraft versions of the Imperial guards?

I also would have liked to have some aliens in the main crew. They had some cool designs but relegated them to passing views.

Cannot wait for the prequel about Baze and Chirrut!

Draven

The character is not "Hammerhead" - he's an Ithorian. Didn't even have to look that up.

Brack

Interesting take on how this film helps set up Episode IV, but the problem is I really didn't care about the characters in Rogue One, since the movie didn't really allow us to know more than one, maybe two characters. Maybe I have to see it again, but I connected with TFA characters pretty quickly, whereas here I just felt like they took some elements of the special forces team from Predator and made them Star Wars looking. There was even a minigun, which was apparently the last of its kind since we never see a weapon like that again, much like we never see Vader do the things he did at the end of the movie ever again, except for Force choking people.

Draven

I think you might be mis remembering how Vader is, especially in A New Hope. I distinctly remember some moments where he's moving around like a guy in a suit who's overacting. It's not all slow gravitas. And his costume is kind of shitty in the first movie too, especially up close.



EDIT: Yep, right around :25 to the end. Not menacing at all.

dex14

Well... apparently there wasn't enough backstory for Chirrut and Baze, so now they internet has deemed them as lovers.

Brack

There were too many characters in this movie, period.

Supermallet

I started to read this to see if maybe I had overlooked some good aspects of the film. I got to the sentence that called the characters "beautifully well rounded" or something similar. I started laughing and closed the tab.

This movie could have been great. A Magnificent Seven meets Guns of Navarone meets Hackers in space with Darth Vader. Instead it was vapid and empty and sheer spectacle for the sake of it. I felt no connection to any of the flat and dull as mud characters. I cared nothing for their struggles because the movie didn't care. It was just about hitting the plot points so we could have the next OT reference/fan service wank. If this movie didn't have Star Wars in the title no one would care about it. Such a waste of potential.

mewmartigan

On a sidenote, the second death star, in ROTJ, I always thought was a carbon copy of the first one. There wasn't any time to redesign and build it between the end of IV and VI. Their quick and dirty solution after the first death star was blown up was the shield generator on Endor.

The line "many bothans died to bring us this information" I always took to be the information that the emperor himself was personally overseeing construction, not death star plans v2. Mon Monthma mentions the bothans right after that line about the emperor.
Knowing the emperor, vader and death star are all in one spot to be blown up together is good motivation for the attack.

Mr. Flix

I find your implication that she was actually likeable in the final cut disturbing.

Draven

Per IMDB:

A New Hope:

Mark Hamill ... Luke Skywalker
Harrison Ford ... Han Solo
Carrie Fisher ... Princess Leia Organa
Peter Cushing ... Grand Moff Tarkin
Alec Guinness ... Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi
Anthony Daniels ... C-3PO
Kenny Baker ... R2-D2
Peter Mayhew ... Chewbacca
David Prowse ... Darth Vader

And then the next cast member is Uncle Owen, so that's where I'm making a cut off:

Rogue One

Felicity Jones ... Jyn Erso
Diego Luna ... Cassian Andor
Alan Tudyk ... K-2SO
Donnie Yen ... Chirrut Îmwe
Wen Jiang ... Baze Malbus
Ben Mendelsohn ... Orson Krennic
Forest Whitaker ... Saw Gerrera
Riz Ahmed ... Bodhi Rook
Mads Mikkelsen ... Galen Erso

And the next cast member was Bail Organa, who had a minimal part in the movie.

9 cast members for each

Supermallet

Rogue One didn't have too many characters. It had too few characters worth giving a shit about. Bail Organa was the best character in the movie by far, and that's mostly because it's cool to see Smits reprise the role.

Draven

I thought Jyn, K-2SO, Chirrut, Baze and Krennic and Galen were all great

Dan

It's fun to see Supermallet in full-on-Prometheus mode again.

Too bad he's wrong about this one.

RoboDad

I'm so glad you are able to decide that for EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE.

You have NO IDEA what my, or anyone else's, reaction to the movie would have been if it had not had "Star Wars" in the title. But even with that absurd claim aside, the basis of your argument is fatally flawed. If it had not been a Star Wars movie, it would have been different. At the very least, some of the primary characters would have survived. That alone would make the entire movie different. Comparing peoples' reactions to this STAR WARS movie to a different, non-STAR WARS movie makes no sense.

So please, stop making such assertions.

Supermallet

I only get this way when a movie that should have been great turns out to be a turd. Most of us could have written a better script for Rogue One than the one we got.

I was right about Prometheus and I'm right now.

Shady12

It was a good script. One of the best in the series. I'm right.

Supermallet

Calm down. Take a breath. We're talking about a silly space opera and we disagree. Life will go on.

EddieMoney

Can we at least all agree that Turkish Star Wars is amazing?

Brack

But the difference being that pretty much all of the characters in A New Hope were significant while Rogue One introduced a bunch of people but only made 2 or 3 of them fleshed out, if that. I didn't really dislike any of the characters except for K-SO (all he did was quip) but they were kind of just there and did a few cool things to make the last hour entertaining. I'd like to see it again though, because the multiple locations intro made for a very slow start.

Brack

Same difference. If l cared about all of them, it wouldn't have mattered the number.

milo bloom

That covers a lot of the same thoughts I had - that this really brought home the idea that it wasn't just our small group of heroes. There were a lot of soldiers that died in ground battles and pilots and crewmembers of the fighters and capital ships that died too. ROTJ could have helped with this by showing more of the squad on fighting on Endor, but now we have R1 to drive that home.

devilshalo

I noticed that maybe it was the way the suit fit the actor, but they way his chest plate moved made him look as though he was walking a catwalk. And I also thought JEJ's voice wasn't the presence that it used to be. Almost softer with more care.