Star Wars Anthology shit talk (Rogue One, Young Solo, TBD)

just back from seeing this - it is basically the most expensive fan-film ever made, but it hits almost all the right notes.

it's way more of a war movie than i was expecting. in fact, there are some rebel soldiers in straight-up vietnam-era combat gear, which kinda makes the climactic battle (which lasts for basically the whole third act!) feel a little bit too much like a kid smashing his toys together, paying no attention that some army men got mixed up with the x-wings. it's... distracting.

it manages to achieve one thing i thought was now next to impossible in one scene tho - it makes darth vader scary again. not for long, but for long enough to count.

my wife really liked it too, but as an orchestral perscussionist she was horrified by the timpani playing on the score - her old timpani teacher kurt played on the scores for the original trilogy and she says he'd be disgusted by the tinny sound on the new soundtrack. so be warned if you're a percussion nerd i guess?

is Jake in it

that is an awesomely nerdy complaint xp

of all the inevitable star wars nerd complaints about this movie i think that might be the most uniquely nerdy, yeah. she's a special lady alright

Enjoyed this more than Force Awakens, actually. Despite having an endpoint it has to reach, it felt less constrained plot-wise than TFA, which held so close to the plot of Star Wars. Vader was scary. The almost entirely non-Anglo crew of heroes were a delight to watch, and pretty charming. Liked the robot. Couldn't work out what anybody's names were, but that barely mattered. Some lovely visuals. Didn't notice the timpani. Mendelsohn occasionally sounded Australian, and the rest of the time as though he had a moth full of saliva he was just waiting to propel into somebody's face.

MOUTH full of saliva, the effects weren't THAT special.

since disney are committed to cranking out star wars side-movies i'd like to request that wen jiang and donnie yen get their own, please, cuz they were a total fuckin' treat

^^^^

couldn't believe how good the fx were of (SPOILER?) you know what and you know who. i mean legit could not get my head round it.

kinda ho hum for some of it but the final half hour; peak Star Wars, as good as the series has ever been IMO. and the final few scenes.. holy shit did i love that stuff.

coulda lived without punn-y Darth ("don't choke now" or whatever he said) but that's just nitpicking.

are we not bothering with a spoiler-y thread for this film?

wait you mean they DO blow up the death star?!?

spoiler alert: they do not blow up the death star

however they do obtain individual building meter data from the campus

I was worried

the you know who effects were disastrous I thought

sank every scene with him in it

I thought they were pretty good in and off themselves, but still slightly distracting/uncanny valley in context.

however they do obtain individual building meter data from the campus

― Rush Limbaugh and Lou Reed doing sex with your parents (bizarro gazzara),

Bravo!

I guess I appreciated what a bummer this was (it might be the most downbeat blockbuster ever) but I didn't really enjoy myself at any point. Maybe the final moments. Up until the final final moment that is

i'm stunned by this 'bad CGI' talk maybe my eyesight is fucked because i was wowed. i couldn't even tell it was cgi straight up.

'Star Wars On The Beach' was a good idea too.

downbeat-ness of (spoilzz) killing off characters one by one reminded me of The Dirty Dozen

shocking just how much from trailer 1 hit the cutting room floor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wji-BZ0oCwg

reshoots eh.

If this is a war movie, do they smoke cigarettes? I'm about to find out so shut up

i thought the cgi was noticeable, and i didn't know about it going in --- everyone else i saw it with had no clue

They left Fantastic Beasts in the projector. This crowd is never going to let them live it down.

Not perfect but lots of fun and definitely the best looking SW film by far. But the music --- yeesh. This needed Williams or someone who didn't just know "generic fanfare styles" composing. Liked it far more than FA.

Giacchino trying to be different didn't help, I agree. When he'd work in an echo of Schifrin or Morricone, it was pretty neat, but otherwise not great. It didn't matter much though!

The CG puppets of Spoiler and Young Spoiler were distracting. The first moreso than if they'd just gotten another actor, I think, and the second just completely unnecessary imo. Felt like putting that superfluous button on all the preceding action actually diminished things. Let the little people have their moment!

I loved it, of course.

The guy who played Vader did a great job

The "Leaders" also definitely didn't need to put in more than one appearance each - we all got it the first time, thank you!

I kinda hope the guys driving the hammerhead corvette made it out alive, though it seems unlikely. Should've given that crew southern accents IMHO.

xxpost Bad music / too much music def distracts me just as much as bad editing or acting. There was so much great stuff to take in here, though, that I managed to block it out. Once the final act took off I realized the scoring was infinitely better! I have to This is so packed with badass visuals and moments and feels so completely weighty and lived-in that I almost wish all future spin-off films and Episodes stick to this one as their template.

i think we might as well acknowledge that things will be spoiler-filled from here on, right? i can't be arsed pussyfooting around details anymore

i thought digital peter cushing was both a) the best-looking cgi actor i've seen to date and b) still nowhere near convincing. there's just something off about the way the eyes and mouth move that i can't quite put my finger on which gives the trickery away

weirdly, digicushing didn't look nearly as cadaverous to me in rogue one as he does in star wars - maybe the stress of losing the death star plans hollowed him out a little, i dunno

i think it's the digital actors which are going to date this film fastest - i was really, really impressed with the rest of the cg but i suspect in five or ten years we'll look back at digicushing and digifisher and wince a little

and yeah, looking again at the trailers it's alarming how much stuff didn't make the final cut - at the end i kept waiting for that heroic shot of jyn limping towards the terminal on the comms tower as a tie fighter rises in front of her and it never showed up. i hope there's a decent deep-dive postmortem soon which goes into what the reshoot process was like

yeah that shot was a big miss

on the Cushing issue, I feel like they could have been more creative. Just use him a little less or keep him in the shadows or whatever. And Leia they didn't need to use at all. The shot of her actually ruined what I thought was a pretty cool ending otherwise.

oh and the scene in Vader's castle was TERRIBLE. JEJ's voice sounds so different now. Plus that godawful choking pun

when digicushing shows up first and you see the back of his head and his reflection in the window i thought maybe they knew their limitations and they were going to minimise his presence. then he turned round :(

thing is, they recast Mon Mothma (not to mention Han and Lando in their upcoming flick) so why not do the same here? I know Cushing was a pretty distinctive looking actor but surely that would have been preferable. Felt like they did it to prove they could.

saw this last night, enjoyed it -- more than Force Awakens. For me, the movie got more engaging, more fun, and I had a stake in the characters more as it went on. No spoilers, but I (and the rest of the theater) cheered at the end, so chalk it up to good pacing, and the director telling a story well.

Regarding the music -- I wouldn't say it was distracting, but multiple times I had the thought, "this is obviously going for Star Wars feel without actually being traditional Star Wars music" (except in a couple of spots where it did actually quote Star Wars themes). Not actually sure why they didn't just get John Williams to do this, except that there does appear to have been a conscious effort to distance Rogue One from the other films, as being somehow a different thing.

Acting generally good, tho IMO Felicity Jones, while not bad, also not terribly interesting onscreen, which is odd considering the things her character had gone through. Diego Luna was very good, and Ben Mendelsohn was a good villain. Totally disagree about Leia thoughts above -- her moment was kind of amazing in the theater.

the scene in Vader's castle was TERRIBLE

this has me most hyped. i remember reading that from the early ESB scripts and thinking it sounded so amazing.

agree that the digiactors will age this v quickly

the rest of it is gorgeous, though, def the best looking SW movie. also really nails the (as someone else said upthread) "lived-in" feel, totally captures what i think is the best part of the whole aesthetic

and yah JEJ's voice sounded...weird. and really a lot more clearly like himself (i guess) than Vader. the castle was dope, that scene was goofy

forrest whitaker is a cornball

^ agree on all points here

Oh yeah - loved the Cthulhoid Octo-thing

Vader's Castle made me go "wow". Remember seeing McQuarrie art for it - I think - as a kid and didn't expect to see it here. Lots of little "wow" moments in this.

"the emperor and the army are building some sort of super weapon! if we show proof to the senate, surely they will act"

"omg shut up they built a giant weapon thing, this is the time to openly rebel, not do a powerpoint presentation"

*five minutes after this movie*

"the senate has been dissolved"

This was pretty good. Had my problems with it in the first half or so but once they get on the beach planet it gets really good.

Like most people I wish they hadn't bothered making a cgi Grand Moff Tarkin and princess Leia. Even Darth Vader looked kind of weird, his suit looked a bit too much like cheap plastic.

These are minor quibbles though, overall.

One thing that speaks to how much fun this was: when they landed on Scarif, I thought "aw man, this is the last place"

I like how Vader in his flotation tank mirrored Luke in his Hoth tank

Pig Nose and his buddy Ass Face on Jedha!

Supposedly loads of cameos in this including some SW Rebels stuff (Chopper, the Ghost) that will hav eto wait for home viewing, Iguess, since the frame is usually *full* throughout the film.

Also loved the use of perspective once they were on the jungle planet (Scarif?) : from the pilot's view looking down in the space battle to Jyn on that transparent platform and the "Data Room" scene which called back Obi-Wan and the Tractor Beam. Good stuff.

oh and the scene in Vader's castle was TERRIBLE. JEJ's voice sounds so different now. Plus that godawful choking pun

― Number None, Friday, December 16, 2016 5:21 AM (eleven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't find vader's "ambitions" comment to be a groaner...it didn't really strike me as going for humor. i thought it was pretty badass tbh

there was however too much humor in this movie, same as with TFA. the humor is just too...modern? i don't really know how do describe what i mean. it took away from the gravity of the film. on that same note, for a movie in which literally every main character dies, i didn't find myself really caring about any of the deaths. i guess as a side-movie where we weren't going to see the characters again anyway that matters less, but i really just couldn't bring myself to care about any of them

also...what...the fuck was forest whitaker's character? was he a magical crackhead in the comics or whatever too?

I like how Vader in his flotation tank mirrored Luke in his Hoth tank

https://j.gifs.com/n5Wg8Y.gif

best callback cameo in this was the blue milk in the urso family kitchen right at the start

I actually did care about the characters by the end of this, tho admittedly it took about half the movie before that started to set in. And the cameo stuff makes me want to see it again -- which is the first time I've felt that about a SW movie since the original trilogy in a LONG time.

Also, was anyone else impressed at how seamlessly this ramped up to ep IV? If it hadn't been so late, I'd have watched it straight away when I got home.

It took me a minute to realize what they did with whitaker's character. he was completely paranoid and half robot after being a guerilla fighter for over twenty years. the secrecy, breaking with the alliance because they refused to sanction overt action, living in a stronghold in a place the imperials were fully dropping the military hammer. the kid he pretty much raised shows up and he still can't tell if it's real or just another point of a plot to take him down

in the cartoons it was twenty years earlier and he was trained to fight using guerilla tactics by a few jedi and iirc had all his original limbs and a family