Star Wars: Disney Era

[jon_c]

Fair enough, but I would watch the s*** out of film, of just Donnie Yen beating the crap out of Stormtroopers. 

[Ginko]

Watched it last night and loved it. It's by no means perfect, and doesn't quite feel like Star Wars for the most part but if you treat it as a film set in the SW universe rather than a SW film then you'll enjoy it and I think that's what they were going for anyway.

As for more spoilerific opinions... seriously don't read until you've seen the film:

Spoiler

I liked all the characters though you're never going to get much development within a two hour film so whenever one dies you don't feel much, with the one exception ironically being the only character who isn't technically alive anyway.

K-2SO is the star of the show for me, they utilised his humour the right amount so it wasn't too silly and it wasn't cringeworthy like 90% of the comic relief moments in TFA. I'm quite the fan of Alan Tudyk, just a shame he wasn't in the film in the flesh.

Donnie Yen in fighting action is always wonderful to watch and his character has something a bit different about him. I like that whilst Diego Luna's character was meant to be the Han Solo-type they made him more serious and darker. Shame they didn't expand on him a bit more. Jiang Wen's Baze Malbus was okay but not much to him, worked nicely enough with Yen's Chirrut Imwe though. Felicity Jones was decent enough, Mendehlson was pretty good and I always enjoy Mads Mikkelsen.

The story moved along at quite a fast pace, particularly at the beginning and end which did feel a bit rushed. You certainly bounce from new location to new location at the start. For the most part the beats were pretty well-timed and I never found myself bored.

The reshoots make a lot of the stuff in the early trailers completely obsolete. I remember feeling particularly confused when the Jyn vs TIE Fighter scene never materialised. I think that left me a little disappointed as I'd read a rumour that she might fly it as part of the Death Star trench run (the TIE who bumps into Vader to save Luke) which would have been a cool tie-in (pun intended) to A New Hope but it wasn't realistic given the film's timeframe.

Whittaker is poor and amazingly so. His character is daft, his delivery is terrible and I think the film would have been much better without both of them. Shame as I like a lot of his work. Christ knows what went on there.

Tarkin's CGI was pretty good but you could still tell. Leah's was pretty rubbish and a bit unnecessary and finishes the film on ah bit of a sour note.

To end on a real positive, the scene at the end with Vader was **** awesome  Been way too long for fans to see a fully suited Vader look genuinely bad-ass in a fight

I'm a huge SW fan so it'd take a lot for me to dislike the film even though I really didnt like any of Gareth Edwards' other films I've seen. Well worth going to the cinema to see as it looks and sounds great, has plenty of action and nods to the SW universe and moves along at quite a pace.

Solid 8/10.

Edited December 17, 2016 by Ginko

[tonyh29]

Saw this with the boy today on a huge imax screen in London

on one hand it's the best Star Wars film they've made and yet where as the original trilogy you can (and probably have ) watch them again and again R1 sorta fits in with the other films in that once is enough and when it comes to being on ITV in years to come you'll go and find something else to do instead 

 

i liked how it supplements the Star Wars universe and tied up some loose ends ( like the "why " on the Death Star ) , I liked K2 , I liked most of the characters , it looked great , all in all its hard to fault 

 

Btw ,

 

paging General Solo which I'm sure I heard in the background when they are at the alliance base didn't fit the time line... presumably I mis heard or it isn't that Solo and it's just a name check for the sake of it ? [/spoiler]

Edited December 17, 2016 by tonyh29

[villa4europe]

Spoiler

16 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

Btw ,

  Hide contents

paging General Solo which I'm sure I heard in the background when they are at the alliance base didn't fit the time line... presumably I mis heard or it isn't that Solo and it's just a name check for the sake of it ? [/spoiler]

 

Close but no cigar...

Spoiler

It was general syndulla, she's a character in rebels 

i didn't spot it but apparently the ship from the series is in the film a couple of times

 

[villa4europe]

Spoiler

Apparently there are loads of Easter eggs in it, the X wing pilot who didn't pull up in time and crashed? That would be red five, his death created a spare squad number for someone in a new hope...

 

[Chindie]

Went to see Rogue One last night. 

I'm not a Star Wars fan. I've watched all the movies, most more than once, but I saw them too late really to get into them, but I don't dislike the series and the original trilogy has that classic charm it's hard to dislike. 

So we come to Rogue One. An experiment for the new Disney fueled franchise, the first in a planned series of 'Star Wars Stories' spin off movies that sort of 'Marvel' the franchise and let them play with the wider universe that only has really been mentioned with other media (the now defunct Extended Universe books etc). And also an attempt at making a proper prequel that isn't shit.

Gareth Edwards, alumni of a Godzilla film that split audiences and Monsters which might be the best bedroom movie ever, took the helm and lead what was rumoured to be a fairly convoluted shoot that was dogged with rumours and reports of apparently extensive reshoots, other senior names parachuting in to help out and discussions of the story being fiddled with to make it 'more Star Wars'. Edwards himself had actually been rumoured to be uncomfortable with such big blockbuster fare during the shoot and pulled out of doing the Godzilla sequel during filming. You'd be forgiven for spotting the warning signs of a disappointing movie coming in fast.

Rogue One deals with the plot immediately before the opening of A New Hope, with the Rebels stealing the plans for the Death Star that ultimately lead to its destruction in that first movie, and fixes a notorious 'hole' in that movie - why would the Empire build something like the Death Star and include a really obvious and easily exploited flaw to destroy it? 

We open with an Empire shuttle approaching a desolate planet. Mads Mikkelson's Galen Erso tells his daughter and wife to flee, whilst he goes out to meet the shuttle. His wife takes their daughter away from the house, explains what she must do, and heads back. Empire forces leave the shuttle, with Ben Mendelsohn leading in a pristine white cape. He explains to Galen his family will be taken whilst his expertise is needed... A time jump later, we start a journey that will lead to war, with the undercurrent of a heist.

Rogue One is a different kind of Star Wars movie. It tells you from the opening. There is no opening crawl, the Lucasfilm logo fades and it throws you into things. We don't have key familiar characters propping up the movie - there is no Skywalker family member front and centre, no Solo, no Kenobi. The key players are all new. Around the periphery there are familiar faces, not unexpected given this is a direct prequel to the first movie, but the film can't rely on established characters to gloss over its flaws with the good will to a Han or Chewie.

It's also a little darker, with main characters ever so slightly grey in their actions, and more than a little ruthless. This is a movie where one of our heroes murders an informant within a minute of screentime, and where another finishes off a trooper with a headshot as they lie on the ground. This slight darkness might sit uneasy with some, who inherently think of Star Wars as a goofy property, but it does work and adds a little extra bite to proceedings, even if only slightly.

With that slight grittiness comes a return to a grimier look for Star Wars. The prequels had that shiny look to everything and Force Awakens had its Jonny Ive troopers and slick look. This is a return to a mechanical, oily angular Star Wars, and it feels immediately more fitting. Where there are new designs they fit - K2-SO mixes a more modern style with old school Star Wars, the new U Wing fits the Rebel fleet (although of course both create a continuity error since they both disappear entirely from the universe in the next movie...). And with the grimier art style comes beautiful cinematography. This is a gorgeous movie filled with stunning images. You could easily make a 15 minute supercut of iconic images from the film that immediately feel like they belong in the Star Wars photo album. Whole shots feel like they were pondered over for quite some time to make maximum impact visually, which is unusual to actively feel in a movie. You can see it in Edwards incredible ability to show scale, shots are careful to passively imply the sheer size of things - an AT-AT looms over our heroes with the shot perfectly judged to increase the impact and heft of the sheer size of the thing, and it's power, a Star Destroyer emerges from shadow and just keeps coming into the light, it's size emphasising its menace. Locations are gorgeous, opening with the now standard Icelandic landscape filling in for an alien world and jumping from desert to tropical atoll. This movie is a feast the eyes in every second. 

We have a decent cast as well. Our heroine is played by Brummie actress (not that you can tell) Felicity Jones, who adds to the films visual appeal by being supernaturally beautiful, Diego Luna as a Rebel captain with a ruthless streak, Riz Ahmed continuing his breakthrough to America as a Empire deserter, Donnie Yen as a blind Force user, Jiang Wen as his less spiritual buddie, Alan Tudyk stealing the movie as reprogrammed Empire droid K2-SO, and the aforementioned Mikkelson and Mendelsohn. We also get an essentially cameo performance from Forrest Whittaker. This is a really good cast and what problems there are with the film, and there's certainly some, isn't generally the performances. I had worries of Jones being wooden, which are mostly unfounded. The rest of the cast are completely fine and do well with what they have, with the exception of Whittaker, who is awful. His small part is genuinely dreadful. Overacting is one thing, badly overacting is another. He has, perhaps, 3 minutes in total screentime and all of it is some of the worst scene chewing I've ever seen. Star Wars let's you do a bit of that, you can ham things up a little and get away with it, but this is downright silly. Tudyk is, on the other hand, the real star. He's clearly the scripts darling which helps him but the entire role is excellent. His sardonic droid is one of the best things in Star Wars canon full stop, even when lines miss (which they do) the character works.

It's not perfect though. The script is weak. It's clear this is a movie born of one brilliant idea and everything is spun from that and it's not quite there. The shape of the movie is there, the frame, but the depth is a rewrite away. Luna is clearly a ruthless captain but his ruthlessness is token and undeveloped, he's not quite enough of an antihero for him doing a few unpleasant things to matter. Yen has his (slightly irritating) spirituality but Wen is a fun but empty character. Jones plays the part well but the story struggles to give us real reasons why she's the person to develop this team around. Yes her dad and whatnot but it kinda felt to me like there needed to be a little more work on her place in this. Wen and Yen seemingly join up with the Rebels because they can fight a bit and end up in a cell with a Rebel captain. Ahmed has no story at all. His entire plotline 'this bloke told me to give you this. Says if I did I'd be brave'. That he's actually a decent character despite this is testament to Ahmed. Whittaker's character is utterly pointless, making how rubbish he is all the worse. Of course you have to accept that this is a movie introducing an ensemble of new characters and a whole plotline in 2 hours so you're not going to get the most fleshed out characters but you do feel they could have done more than what we get and elevated cool characters to cool and interesting ones. Mendelsohn's villain isn't great as basically the devil's ambitious buerocrat and isn't particularly menacing or threatening.

The opening hour is a further example of a problem script. It's all over the place. We jump from planet to planet to planet, from this character to that character to that at breakneck speed and don't really achieve much in doing so. The first hour is very talky, which is fine, but the dialogue is often dreadful. The film is riddled with absolute clangers, though few worse than 

Spoiler

Vader's 'zinger' - 'don't choke on your ambition' whilst he does the force choke thing?! I nearly choked on my popcorn on how awful that line was. There was an audible groan around me in the screening. Tim Vine would have binned it.

There is a lot of very on the nose exposition - I felt sorry for Mads with his speech early on, a long solioquy in a style never uttered by anyone in the history of ever, a minute of clonkingly hopeless exposition mingled with overwrought and resoundingly false feeling poetic emotion that should probably garner him awards from his ability to do it with a straight face and an ounce of credibility. The script also dearly needed a thesaurus, given the 'hope' is said about a hundred times and loses all impact by 6th utterance.

It's also clear there's been a lot of tinkering. Lots of trailer shots are missing. Characters look different from trailers. Random element are dropped in, bizarre references to movies past that have neon signs above them 'remember this, right?! STAR WARS!'. These changes are almost entirely from the first half and I think might partly hint at how much tinkering was done to the movie and why the first half is so messy. 

There's another problem, which is a bit spoiler-y. It's another example of someone having a great idea.

Spoiler

The film brings back a couple of characters. But digitally. Tarkin features surprisingly heavily given Peter Cushing is long dead, and you can see why he's there's from a canon point of view and on paper its a fantastic idea and gives our villain some fleshing out. The moment he appears is a proper 'oh WOW. That's **** cool' moment. And then he turns around. It doesn't work. As great as the digital representation is, it is still obviously not real. It's the uncanny valley thing and it's immensely distracting. Then at the end we get a true abomination, a young Leia. It looks like some evil animatronic, the worst horror of your nightmares, a completely dead in the eyes young Carrie Fisher imitation monster with the exact look it would have its circuits fried and it grabbed the knife to stab your testicles off. Whilst the technology is clearly there to do the digital de-aging thing, as Star Wars stablemate Marvel has shown in 2 films now, actually faking a real person is miles off.

But make no mistake, for all of the above, the second hour is a barnstormer. The film chucks the best moments of the original trilogy at you again with the budget turned up to 11. The space battle is beautiful and filled with brilliant little moments (watch out for a very unlucky jump to lightspeed). The ground battle is awesome, strangely small and contained but with incredible scale. It's basically the end of Return of the Jedi crossed with the Battle of Hoth crossed with a really expensive holiday. Minus the Ewoks. It's fantastic in every facet. Heroic last stands. Last second reprieves. Defiance in the face of overwhelming odds. Redemption. It's brilliant. 

And then we get the very best. The final moments of this movie, one thing aside, are the best seconds of film in Star Wars history. I don't care about Star Wars really, or anything in it, but this brief sequence is astoundingly good and I demand more of it. If someone at Disney isn't hastily rifling through every bit of Star Wars media looking for every single morsel of material they can mine to expand what we see in this sequence to a full movie in a similar vein I'll be astonished. It's so good. We've never seen the things we see in the sequence before and it's just brilliantly done. 

Rogue One is a very long way from a perfect movie, with a slow messy first hour and underdeveloped characters, weak script and the distinct feeling that, as great as the ideas are out could have been better done. But there's an awful lot of really good stuff in there too. Probably a top half Star Wars movie that threatened to be a top 2 but is undermined by some flaws. Diehards will lap this up all day long though.

Edited December 18, 2016 by Chindie

[Ingram85]

Jesus. 

[Xela]

Liked for the effort. 

[darrenm]

Liked for no possessive pronouns.

[Designer1]

Excellent write up as usual 

[wazzap24]

As good as Rogue One is, I left the cinema with only one take away thought. 

The world needs a stand alone Vader film. 

[dAVe80]

So what happens after the end of Rogue One then? They should make a film about that next. 

Just back from seeing it. Loved it! Blown my L+J=R theory out the water, so now even more intrigued about what's going to be revealed in Episode VIII. Another year to wait, but I already want to watch Rogue One again, so that will keep me going for now. 

[ThunderPower_14]

18 hours ago, villa4europe said:

  Hide contents

Apparently there are loads of Easter eggs in it, the X wing pilot who didn't pull up in time and crashed? That would be red five, his death created a spare squad number for someone in a new hope...

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

My favourite was probably them bumping into the "He doesn't like you, I don't like you either" guys from the Cantina who attack Luke in A New Hope before being killed by Obi-Wan.

 

Edited December 19, 2016 by ThunderPower_14
Stuffed up the quote

[hogso]

Biggest surprise from @Chindie's review - he is an eater of popcorn at the cinema. Almost enough to put me off reading any of his reviews ever again. Almost.

If the next spin off is young Han Solo, what are the realistic possibilities for the 3rd one? It seems Disney are producing movies based very much on what the fanbase want to see more of, so other than why the Death Star had that weakness, and how Han became the person he did, what else would be up there as a dream movie for fans?

I'd love to see a Yoda movie, personally.

[Chindie]

It's very rare I eat popcorn in fairness.

They've been rumoured to be looking at a Yoda movie (a rumour supposedly supported by a lot of Yoda stuff in the other media recently), an Obi Wan movie (McGregor has hinted they've spoken to him about coming back) and a Boba Fett movie (Josh Trank was on board until his complete blowout). I'd stake good money they are looking at a Vader movie.

I think a Han movie is the least interesting of the lot.

[dAVe80]

1 hour ago, hogso said:

Biggest surprise from @Chindie's review - he is an eater of popcorn at the cinema. Almost enough to put me off reading any of his reviews ever again. Almost.

If the next spin off is young Han Solo, what are the realistic possibilities for the 3rd one? It seems Disney are producing movies based very much on what the fanbase want to see more of, so other than why the Death Star had that weakness, and how Han became the person he did, what else would be up there as a dream movie for fans?

I'd love to see a Yoda movie, personally.

I was under the impression the third spin off was going to be about Boba Fett, although a Yoda movie would be the tits.

I'd also like to see something about the Guardians of the Whills, and the stuff that goes down in Jedah. Maybe they could do that as the live action TV series that been mooted.

 

Edited December 19, 2016 by dAVe80

[villa4europe]

saw a rumour at the weekend that the young han solo could be a trilogy, on paper with no details it does very little for me if im honest

the surprising thing for me is just how much they're covering in rebels, darth maul and thrawn have been in it, the EU still exists and they are dipping their toes in to it

i think the problem they'll have is that im enough of a star wars fan to say id love them to go properly out there whilst at the same time id also inevitably go watch a jar jar binks film, rogue one i think was $100m down on force awakens opening weekend (it was still hugely successful though) there is an element of risk with going too far away, they have however shown plenty of balls with marvel

darth vader seems the obvious one at the moment

[villa4europe]

6 minutes ago, dAVe80 said:

I was under the impression the third spin off was going to be about Boba Fett, although a Yoda movie would be the tits.

I'd also like to see something about the Guardian of the Whills, and the stuff that goes down in Jedah. Maybe they could do that as the live action TV series that been mooted.

for me live action tv show should be the old republic and a (near) completely clean slate that they can do whatever they like with

but thinking about it a film with qui gon jinn discovering the secret afterlife thing (which apparently comes from them) could maybe be done, the problem being before the phantom menace theres no sith so i dont know how they come up with an antagonist 

[dAVe80]

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

for me live action tv show should be the old republic and a (near) completely clean slate that they can do whatever they like with

but thinking about it a film with qui gon jinn discovering the secret afterlife thing (which apparently comes from them) could maybe be done, the problem being before the phantom menace theres no sith so i dont know how they come up with an antagonist 

I just want them to do everything!

[Phumfeinz]

Give me a movie based on KotOR and a movie based on Rogue Squadron and I will be so happy forever.