Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

[Hawkmumbler]

For all the grumbling about Vader i'll interject with my own pointless cameo, the C3-PO and R2 one really didn't add anything, espescially at that point in the movie. At this point I assume its just contract bound that the two have to appear, seeing as they're the only characters to apoear in all 8 movies thus far.

[TordelBack]

Annoying thing about that one is that they could have had a perfectly fine cameo in passing on board the Tantive IV, where they belonged. As it is, it's my least favourite scene of the movie - it essentially breaks the fourth wall, they may as well have been footage of a Disney exec pointing at two droids and shouting 'See? See? Betcha weren't expecting that!'

[JOE SOAP]

You're absolutely right, but it also had great new characters, charm, wit and a sense of fun and adventure. All of these things were absent from Rogue One.

Don't know about that; I'd say K-2SO's mocking wit and Donnie Yen's impish ways can well stand against the most popular characters in the OT and the Star Wars gallery in general.

[JOE SOAP]

For all the grumbling about Vader i'll interject with my own pointless cameo, the C3-PO and R2 one really didn't add anything, espescially at that point in the movie. At this point I assume its just contract bound that the two have to appear, seeing as they're the only characters to apoear in all 8 movies thus far.

Like Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba, the droid cameos are so short - mere seconds - that as much as they're not worth the effort of inclusion, they're also not worth complaining about amidst 2 hours of far more vital content.

[JOE SOAP]

While I think TFA did a much better job creating lasting and fun characters, that wasn't R1's job: we did get some endearing Magnificent 7/Dirty Dozen thumbnails in Baze, Chirrut, Bodhi and Potassium Sulphide, and slightly more intriguing figures in Saw and Cassian, but by and large these were just meat for the grinder, and their disparate motivations were subsumed into their experience of Jedha's destruction.  Jyn unfortunately didnt really work for me - it was never really clear which version (of many) of the character we were watching at any one time. Essentially none of them needed to endure or express much beyond their desperation and willingness to give everything to oppose the Death Star and what it represented. And that was enough.

Indeedy. The short-hand actions to understand the short-time relationships between the crew in a time of instant crisis was well enough for the performers to do the rest and carry the characters through to the end. The only one left blowing in the wind is Jyn - a short sequence after Galen's capture of kid Jyn acting as cub to Saw Gerrera's lone wolf, as they carry out some terrorism, followed by the rift in their partnership would've solved clarity issues.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I watched it, and didn't hate it, but I thought the whole thing was a bit of a messy mess.

SPOILERS

It really could have done with the rolling text on a starfield opening.

The EVIL GALACTIC EMPIRE are developing an
ULIMATE DOOMSDAY WEAPON!
Unbeknown to them, the lead scientist, "TV's HANNIBAL LECTOR"
is reluctant to unleash such an evil on the galaxy,
and has enlisted the help of a defecting imperial pilot.

Armed with a cryptic message the pilot triees to deliver
hope to one of the rebel factions, in the hope that the disparate
insurgents will unite against the greatest threat this galaxy has known

Something like that to set the scene, but with better writing. I didn't have a solid grasp on any of the events until well into the second act.  A wee introduction would have gone  long way. They could have cut a lot of preamble and replaced it with some solid character development.

They missed out on the whole idea of the rebels being an alliance. The main thing I took from the first act was that the rebellion was a bunch of different groups opposing the Empire. Much like here in Norn Iron, you had the INLA, the 32CSM, the IRA, the Provisional IRA, the Real IRA, the continuity IRA, the Fat Free IRA, the Gluten Free IRA and all these different groups with the same goals, but different ideals.

The movie should have focused more on them all uniting, and the battle@infiltration

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Double post removed as per request following.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Drunken double post. Sorry. If the mods could fix that, it would be just super

[Jim_Campbell]

It really could have done with the rolling text on a starfield opening:

You want the entire plot laid out in an opening crawl, presumably so the film could skip straight to the end? Well, okaaaay...

[The Legendary Shark]

I think it was a good decision to leave the opening crawl out of this film as it helps set it apart from the main spine of the ongoing narrative. It is, after all, a Star Wars story and not Star Wars. As soon as I realised the crawl wasn't there I was momentarily dischuffed but almost immediately changed my mind and thought its absence a perfectly acceptable and even desirable state of affairs.

[Keef Monkey]

Didn't mind the missing crawl, it did mark it out immediately as a different beast to the main episodes and that was neat. One thing I did find distracting was the way it skirted around the musical themes from the main series while also seemingly trying to keep them at arm's length (with one very notable exception). In theory it was another nice way to distinguish it from those films but in practice I thought a lot of the time it had that 'cover version tweaked just enough to avoid copyright' feel to it.

Probably won't bother me on repeat viewings, but was a little distracting on a first watch.

[JOE SOAP]

Rogue One's editors reveal the scenes added in the Star Wars standalone reshoots



Yahoo Movies: How did the reshoots change the film?

John Gilroy: They gave you the film that you see today. I think they were incredibly helpful. The story was reconceptualised to some degree, there were scenes that were added at the beginning and fleshed out. We wanted to make more of the other characters, like Cassian's character [Cassian Andor, the Rebel spy played by Diego Luna], and Bodhi's character [Bodhi Rook, the defected Imperial pilot played by Riz Ahmed].

The scene with Cassian's introduction with the spy, Bodhi traipsing through Jedha on his way to see Saw, these are things that were added. Also Jyn [Jyn Erso, the reluctant leader of the film, played by Felicity Jones], how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better.

Of course, things like that have a ripple effect all through the movie so there was a lot of work to do, and as Colin said, there were three of us, we rolled up our sleeves and we got to work and made the movie you see.

The point with the opening scenes that John was just describing was that the introductions in the opening scene, in the prologue, was always the same. Jyn's just a little girl, so when you see her as an adult what you saw initially was her in a meeting. That's not a nice introduction.

So having her in prison and then a prison break out, with Cassian on a mission... everybody was a bit more ballsy, or a bit more exciting, and a bit more interesting.

They got there eventually in the film, but this way we came in on the ground running, which was better.

John Gilroy: It became very important to plant the seeds the right way, you've got to set up the movie the right way, and then things pay off in the second and third acts.

Yahoo Movies: How much of the film's final third changed?

John Gilroy: It changed quite a bit. The third act has a lot going on. You have like seven different action venues, the mechanics of the act changed quite a bit in terms of the characters, and I don't want to go into too much detail about what had been there before, but it was different.

We moved some of the things that our heroes did, they were different in the original then they were as it was conceived.

Because you needed to figure that out, and everything else changes. Everything was connected to everything so doing something to one venue would change all the other venues, so really we had to... we were working on that until the last minute, because we working closely with ILM, they were giving us temporary shots and we'd put them in, we'd work them, we'd reconceive again.


It was really like a very tight puzzle and we had to keep honing that and honing that, and I'm very proud of what we did there.

[Mardroid]

I think they made the right decision with those added scenes.

And I really like Krennic's blaster in that photo. Kind of reminiscent of a big old revolver with a Sci-fi twist. Similar I guess to Captain Reynold's shooter from firefly.

[TordelBack]

Didn't mind the missing crawl, it did mark it out immediately as a different beast to the main episodes and that was neat.

Agreed, although I did miss it! I'd even have settled for one of Tom Kane's newsreel intros to Clone Wars, but on the second viewing it didn't bother me at all .  What did rankle, and still does, is the bizarre placement of the titles.  It's just plain awful, a starfield inxplicably wedged into the transition from Jyn-as-child to Jyn-as-adult. Having dispensed with the crawl, I would have preferred if they just stuck it at the beginning or even the end credits.  As it is, it just breaks a nice transition between scenes and adds nothing. Ugh, I say!

Yes, this film is so far ahead of its prequel chums that I'm reduced to slagging off droid cameos and title placement.

[Keef Monkey]

Yes, this film is so far ahead of its prequel chums that I'm reduced to slagging off droid cameos and title placement.

That's definitely a good sign!

While we're having quibbles and gripes though, the one thing story/action-wise that I really didn't like (and I did really, really enjoy the film so this was a rare blip for me in an otherwise hugely enjoyable film) was the way the [spoiler]confrontation on the top of the radio mast played out.

It seems pretty obvious from the trailer footage that it was one of the things that changed late-on, but the whole 'baddie has her in his sights dead to rights, then goodie you haven't seen for a bit appears to conveniently shoot him in the back' thing felt so, so lazy. With all that money and talent that ex machina bull is the best they could come up with to resolve that?![/spoiler] Really bugged me, just like it's bugged me in the other 7 million movies that have done it before. Not sure how much it'll bug me on future watches (I might come to terms with it or my annoyance might snowball) but I really groaned when it happened.