Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

[SIP]

A bit slow to build but all round I enjoyed it. I'm a stormtrooper fan boy so really enjoyed the heavy use of troopers! 

THAT Vader sequence was fantastic......would have loved more of that!

[TordelBack]

IMAX tickets booked for tomorrow.  Expectations managed. 

[Arkwright99]

[spoiler]It's darker than Star Wars/Force Awakens but not as dark as Empire given it leads directly into A New Hope.

[spoiler]I thought it was much darker than ESB. I mean, FFS, everyone dies![/spoiler]

Yes, but [spoiler]Rogue One ends with "Hope" (for me it actually changes the meaning of 'A New Hope' subtly, by placing the focus of 'a new hope' off Luke and instead on getting the DS plans to the Alliance so they can implement Galen Erso's revenge) whereas Empire ends with a series of defeats and no real hope for the future (despite the guff that Yoda spouts in the coda about there being "another", which (so far) hasn't been developed any further in the movies). [/spoiler]

[von Boom]

That was a great addition to the Star Wars story in the end. It took a while to find it's footing, it did that in the end in spades. There were a couple of characters in particular that I really liked and should have been given their own film. [spoiler]Chirrut and Baze.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]When Grand Moff Tarkin appeared at first I though they had resurrected Peter Cushing. After a few minutes you could really start to tell it was CGI, but that first reveal. Just wow! The reveal of Princess Leia was less impactful simply because it wasn't quite as well done. Probably because Carrie Fisher was so young then.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]And it was fantastic to see Vader doing what Vader does best. Intimidate and inspire fear! Wonderful![/spoiler]

[spoiler]While it was nice to see nods to the original Star Wars, I was a bit too heavy handed and needless. Conversely though, it was when they tied into the original story that Rogue One had it's best moments overall.[/spoiler]

I'll go out on a limb and make a prediction:

[spoiler]1970's style facial hair is about to make a huge comeback.[/spoiler]

[JOE SOAP]

Expectations managed.

You don't know what's coming to you.

[JOE SOAP]

I'll give Giaiccino a pas son the music until I see it again

I felt it was really only the first section that suffered from some slightly off scoring but the rest was perfect.

[TordelBack]

Haven't got around to reading all your spoilered bits, but I was pretty darn impressed by the film - although wasn't it a bit soon to remake [spoiler]Serenity[/spoiler]? The last half hour was utterly gripping, and despite 'knowing what happens in the end', I don't think I breathed at all for the final five minutes. Bloody hell, what a crescendo!

I wish they'd gone another route for [spoiler]Tarkin and Leia,[/spoiler] just bitten the bullet and recast, and I thought the [spoiler]Dr Evazan and Ponda Baba cameo was cheap and distracting, [/spoiler] but the rest was solid as its own distinct adventure, and in places truly intriguing in the things it implied and the new avenues it opened up.

Things I loved included (perhaps perversely) the [spoiler]characters and ships from Rebels[[/spoiler]/i], all the new characters, and the fact that so much of the footage from the trailers didn't appear at all , either as entire situations that could never have happened ([spoiler]Jyn and Cassian with the ATATs[/spoiler], for example) or as alternate takes on lines that were replaced by far better ones. Very clever how much of what happened was a surprise, even when I had scrutinised every bit of footage released.

Not necessarily what I want to see Star Wars turning into, but as an opening move for the side projects, a bloody strong one.

[radiator]

Going to see it tonight. Have heard very mixed things...

[Pete Wells]

Just back from my second viewing and I adore it. I am a happy fanboy!

[JOE SOAP]

The last half hour was utterly gripping, and despite 'knowing what happens in the end', I don't think I breathed at all for the final five minutes. Bloody hell, what a crescendo!

In this case 'knowing what happens' made the last 5 minutes even better.

[TordelBack]

True dat. Had a great moment in the cinema, at the point where everything was going to hell [spoiler]and our heroes were dropping like flies, and I nudged my son and said "Vader hasn't even shown up yet".  [/spoiler]Magic.

[radiator]

I thought it was passable, wouldn't watch it again.

There's some nice stuff in there - mainly technical, and they at least made a solid stab at a poignant and affecting tale, and at times it ALMOST works, but it all felt a bit flat and uninvolving for reasons i can't quite put my finger on.

I had long suspected that Felicity Jones had been miscast, and i kinda felt that ended up being the case - she looks totally out of her element in action scenes. The team never quite gelled for me, or interacted in a really satisfying or meaningful way - and i think you're in trouble when the only memorable and charismatic character in your movie is a robot.....

The score was pretty forgettable and the plot seemed quite repetitive 'characters converge at same location for big set piece, rinse and repeat', and the finale felt outright videogamey and over the top to the point of fatigue - i feel like i never need to see another stormtrooper being gunned down or x wing blowing up for as long as i live.. As with TFA, i felt like nothing i was seeing on screen was anything i hadnt seen before - specifically its a retread of climax of RotJ but with palm trees.. I also felt that the first act had some very clunky writing quirks, and I still feel very unclear regarding Jyn's backstory and her exact relationship to the rebel alliance. It doesn't really add up and felt like an obvious rewrite, especially as it seemingly contradicts what we learn in the trailer. And if the Empire had her in captivity, wouldn't they know her identity?

As others have already noted, certain creative decisions made are baffling, and damn near ruinous (and will date the movie horribly). I may be crazy, but were some of the in-cockpit shots actually recycled footage from the OT? And yep, cheap fan service and distracting cameos in full effect, was really hoping they'd give that stuff a rest this time. Once again, it all conspired to make the universe feel very small and crowded. Final few scenes were goofy and redundant - strongly brought the closing scenes of Sith to mind.

Overall, feels like a 'fans only' type deal. My girlfriend - who had a great time with TFA - was bored out of her mind, and another (non-geek) friend fell asleep.

[Tjm86]

TBH you seem to have described pretty much every SW film.  The plots are generally recycled versions of A New Hope, with the Exception of Empire.  My concern when they started announcing spin off movies was that this would lead to overload and dilution.  Would like to be wrong but we'll have to wait and see.

Ultimately this is a film that I'll go to see in the Kino but after the prequel films my expectations are not insanely high.  TFA didn't do much to shift that perception.  That said, my eldest daughter enjoyed it and wants to see R1 so there's hope. 

[radiator]

I wouldn't agree with that at all, and I'd say that the only Star Wars film that feels like a blatant retread is TFA, and now the ending of R1. Both TFA and R1 have a very similar formula of what I described - good guys go somewhere to get a maguffin, the Empire show up, there's a fight, good guys escape, and on and on. Yes, this does happen somewhat in the OT, but it isn't ALL that happens, and it doesn't feel anywhere near as repetitive.

[TordelBack]

The repeatedly-thwarted search for maguffins does cover rather a large proportion of all adventure cinema, but in Rogue One's favour, as in Indiana Jones's, this is the explicit purpose of the film.  Stuff like TFA, where we lurch from maguffin to maguffin in lieu of a plot while actually focusing on the pretty people's soap opera, is perhaps less forgiveable.

Also, I'd perhaps note that in R1 it's generally not the Empire that turns up to screw with our heroes' questing ,[spoiler] it's the various factions of rebels - Saw's ambushers on Jedha, and Draven's X-Wings on Eadu. This is the 'other thing' going on in the film, the battered, desperate and paranoid schismatics tripping each other up as they despair of ever finding a way to turn their 20 year long losing war aroubd[/spoiler]. For my money, that setup, and seeing it finally change, was the most effective part of the film.