Quote:SPOILERS BELOW
This was a movie for fans and enjoyable, but for all the excitement and Easter eggs, it had some flaws. It was good, and filled in some blanks in the larger story, but I wouldn't crown it the second best Star Wars movie. I think there's a nostalgia factor that lends to the enjoyment factor, but I found Force Awakens to be a stronger overall movie. This one started out bouncing from place to place with characters who were barely defined, but because there was a familiar backdrop people overlooked that we barely knew their names. That robot was awesome. And it was great to see a SW film end on the somber down note like Empire. But this was a straight fan movie. If you didn't know anything about the history (i.e.- if you are the 8 year old kid who only sorta knows the saga), this stand alone film is about a girl who sees her family killed by bad guys and gives her life so that those bad guys might not win in the end. Sure it's a nice segue to New Hope.
The thing that got me was the end. The whole Rebel fleet can hyperspace to right outside the shield gate. Okay. Then the Death Star hyperspaces there and fires a shot. Hang on.. I didn't realize the moon-sized ball of death had the ability to hyperspace. If it does, why did we have to wait for it to move into position at the end of a New Hope? Surely the engineers could have plotted a course which would have plopped them into similar position to take out the Rebels in the original Star Wars, no? But in that film the Death Star was a slow moving misery machine we needed to wait in suspense for.. would the Rebels destroy it before it moved into position? We know how it ended, but this piece of the larger puzzle didn't fit for me and it's all I have thought about since watching it.
I did find the jumping around to be slightly annoying. I kept thinking someone with ADHD made it (it reminds me how my brain is when I don't take my meds) or they made it for the times we live in where everything seems to flit from one thing to another.
As for the Death Star, maybe they broke it going into hyperspace. It went from a Ferrari to a Geo Storm. Lol.
Quote:SPOILERS BELOW
This was a movie for fans and enjoyable, but for all the excitement and Easter eggs, it had some flaws. It was good, and filled in some blanks in the larger story, but I wouldn't crown it the second best Star Wars movie. I think there's a nostalgia factor that lends to the enjoyment factor, but I found Force Awakens to be a stronger overall movie. This one started out bouncing from place to place with characters who were barely defined, but because there was a familiar backdrop people overlooked that we barely knew their names. That robot was awesome. And it was great to see a SW film end on the somber down note like Empire. But this was a straight fan movie. If you didn't know anything about the history (i.e.- if you are the 8 year old kid who only sorta knows the saga), this stand alone film is about a girl who sees her family killed by bad guys and gives her life so that those bad guys might not win in the end. Sure it's a nice segue to New Hope.
The thing that got me was the end. The whole Rebel fleet can hyperspace to right outside the shield gate. Okay. Then the Death Star hyperspaces there and fires a shot. Hang on.. I didn't realize the moon-sized ball of death had the ability to hyperspace. If it does, why did we have to wait for it to move into position at the end of a New Hope? Surely the engineers could have plotted a course which would have plopped them into similar position to take out the Rebels in the original Star Wars, no? But in that film the Death Star was a slow moving misery machine we needed to wait in suspense for.. would the Rebels destroy it before it moved into position? We know how it ended, but this piece of the larger puzzle didn't fit for me and it's all I have thought about since watching it.
To add to these flaws, the CGI "throwback" characters were distractingly artificial and did not look real. Glazed and creepy not unlike The Polar Express.
I look at it like the Clone Wars cartoons. Worthy, good, and part of the same series... but too much genuine-ness lacking to feel like it truly belonged in the main storyline. It was missing... something, the core feeling of 1-7 wasn't there. The characters weren't as engaging (combination of writing and acting,) and having a new composer didn't do it any favors. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't the same. It was notably different, which isn't what you want from something that's supposed to be an integral story.
The best thing it did was the tie-in with 4. It was enjoyable. But as much as it felt Star Wars, it still came off as not quite Star Wars.
That's why I've updated my list to reflect:
- Empire
- New Hope
<p style="margin:0px;">(big gap here)
- Force Awakens
- Jedi
(gap here, only smaller)
- Rogue One
- EP2
- EP3
- EP1
EDIT** - To add a comment about the robot. I think K-2SO was a truly understated addition and I don't believe it would have been the good film it is without it.
Quote:SPOILERS BELOW
This was a movie for fans and enjoyable, but for all the excitement and Easter eggs, it had some flaws. It was good, and filled in some blanks in the larger story, but I wouldn't crown it the second best Star Wars movie. I think there's a nostalgia factor that lends to the enjoyment factor, but I found Force Awakens to be a stronger overall movie. This one started out bouncing from place to place with characters who were barely defined, but because there was a familiar backdrop people overlooked that we barely knew their names. That robot was awesome. And it was great to see a SW film end on the somber down note like Empire. But this was a straight fan movie. If you didn't know anything about the history (i.e.- if you are the 8 year old kid who only sorta knows the saga), this stand alone film is about a girl who sees her family killed by bad guys and gives her life so that those bad guys might not win in the end. Sure it's a nice segue to New Hope.
The thing that got me was the end. The whole Rebel fleet can hyperspace to right outside the shield gate. Okay. Then the Death Star hyperspaces there and fires a shot. Hang on.. I didn't realize the moon-sized ball of death had the ability to hyperspace. If it does, why did we have to wait for it to move into position at the end of a New Hope? Surely the engineers could have plotted a course which would have plopped them into similar position to take out the Rebels in the original Star Wars, no? But in that film the Death Star was a slow moving misery machine we needed to wait in suspense for.. would the Rebels destroy it before it moved into position? We know how it ended, but this piece of the larger puzzle didn't fit for me and it's all I have thought about since watching it.
see if I can go point by point
Force awakens was pretty good but I found this one to be stronger in my opinion. Force awakens did a lot of cheap member this member that nonsense. They also made it so anybody could seemingly be a jedi and basically copied a new hope almost to a tee. Then the non believable parts like no one on a planet knowing of the most famous ship in the galaxy. There was even some cheap throwaway dialogue to explain a situation like how chewii and han found the falcon. I considered it a lazy movie.
I think the Idea of Rogue one was not to focus so much on any real character although the girl got all the screen time. This was a movie about the rebellion and where it started, how it grew. They didn't really need to define the characters since the knew what happens to them at the end of the movie. The most defining character of the film was the father who designed and built the death star. The rest were just pieces on the board.
Death star has always been able to jump to hyperspace it just gets lost in a new hope. It did travel from aldaran to yavin 4.
Difference is the way the weapon was being deployed. In new hope its being put in position to blow up yavin 4. Here it is only being used to blast a military complex off the map.
I thought the worst part of Rogue One was that they spent a tremendous amount of 2+ hours just to try to explain away or excuse how easy the Death Star was to destroy. The reason was apparent from the opening scene, but they felt it needed to be drawn out and explained/justified across nearly the entire story. There was heavy re-writing/re-shooting for this film, and given how basic the storline was at the core it's easy to see why. I'm intrugued to see how much different the original cut was. Hopefully someone will put it out as a "director's cut" one day so we can compare the two. I'm curious to know what was added to make it work better (the tie-ins, additional backstory, etc...)
I think it's funny that Bail Organa barely aged and Obi Wan aged greatly. Also, we go from savage Vader in the end of Rogue One to him slow dancing with old man Obi Wan on the Death Star. Not a big deal but I thought it was funny.
Quote:Death star has always been able to jump to hyperspace it just gets lost in a new hope. It did travel from aldaran to yavin 4.
Difference is the way the weapon was being deployed. In new hope its being put in position to blow up yavin 4. Here it is only being used to blast a military complex off the map.
So.. why couldn't it just hyperspace to a position where it could have appeared, destroyed Yavin 4 and that would have been it. Why did it need to appear and then wait to move into position? How it was used has what bearing on where it appears?
Quote:So.. why couldn't it just hyperspace to a position where it could have appeared, destroyed Yavin 4 and that would have been it. Why did it need to appear and then wait to move into position? How it was used has what bearing on where it appears?
Yup, made no sense. The drama behind the ending of IV was blowing it before the Death Star "cleared the planet" and could target the Rebel base.
Plus, Alderaan was described as the first demonstration/operation of the Death Star in IV. To rewrite that history, they excused away the firing of the weapon in One as a smaller burst that would take a city instead of an entire planet. Meh, your fans didn't forget IV, guys. Not getting a pass from me on that one. Had that really happened in the IV timeline, then Han and Obi Wan certainly would have heard about the Death Star and it's power well before they encountered it - systems would already have been afraid of it. It would have been the talk of spaceports (like Mos Eisley) all over the galaxies. There would have been no "that's no moon" surprise moment. They would have recognized it as the deadly space station they had heard about the moment they saw it, quickly putting two and two together when they encountered what they called the "scout" Tie Fighter.
It was never a hyperspacing station. It was in orbit. It wouldn't need to orbit anything at all if it could move like a space vessel. It could just be stationary. I'm sure that could probably be excused away as... "well, it was orbiting because they were hiding it, pretending it to be a moon." You see where all the stories turn into more stories to try to spin away the changes? It doesn't bother me that they changed the story, let's just be honest in that's what they did. Let's not pretend this is what was intended from the beginning.
Quote:I think it's funny that Bail Organa barely aged and Obi Wan aged greatly. Also, we go from savage Vader in the end of Rogue One to him slow dancing with old man Obi Wan on the Death Star. Not a big deal but I thought it was funny.
Well to be fair, Vader moved very slowly even in taking down those soldiers. In his prime without the injuries those plans would have never been lost. It seems with the suit, he has to be more precise and slow in his movements.
Quote:Yup, made no sense. The drama behind the ending of IV was blowing it before the Death Star "cleared the planet" and could target the Rebel base.
Plus, Alderaan was described as the first demonstration/operation of the Death Star in IV. To rewrite that history, they excused away the firing of the weapon in One as a smaller burst that would take a city instead of an entire planet. Meh, your fans didn't forget IV, guys. Not getting a pass from me on that one. Had that really happened in the IV timeline, then Han and Obi Wan certainly would have heard about the Death Star and it's power well before they encountered it - systems would already have been afraid of it. It would have been the talk of spaceports (like Mos Eisley) all over the galaxies. There would have been no "that's no moon" surprise moment. They would have recognized it as the deadly space station they had heard about the moment they saw it, quickly putting two and two together when they encountered what they called the "scout" Tie Fighter.
It was never a hyperspacing station. It was in orbit. It wouldn't need to orbit anything at all if it could move like a space vessel. It could just be stationary. I'm sure that could probably be excused away as... "well, it was orbiting because they were hiding it, pretending it to be a moon." You see where all the stories turn into more stories to try to spin away the changes? It doesn't bother me that they changed the story, let's just be honest in that's what they did. Let's not pretend this is what was intended from the beginning.
It was a hyperspace station even in new hope. Never was said explicitly that it was, but how else would it get from where it was constructed to Yavin 4? The bus?
And it's not unlikely that the whole galaxy didn't know about the cities being destroyed. Only a few people made it off alive and the movie stated the senate was told it was mining accident. Scarif was an imperial base. Remember the movie literally led into the beginning of a new hope, and only a day passed until alderaan was destroyed.
As far as the demonstration thing, I think the exact line in A New Hope was it was time to demonstrate the *full* power of the Death Star. Which was true. Up until that point, it only had used a fraction of its power
Quote:It was a hyperspace station even in new hope. Never was said explicitly that it was, but how else would it get from where it was constructed to Yavin 4? The bus?
And it's not unlikely that the whole galaxy didn't know about the cities being destroyed. Only a few people made it off alive and the movie stated the senate was told it was mining accident. Scarif was an imperial base. Remember the movie literally led into the beginning of a new hope, and only a day passed until alderaan was destroyed.
As far as the demonstration thing, I think the exact line in A New Hope was it was time to demonstrate the *full* power of the Death Star. Which was true. Up until that point, it only had used a fraction of its power
exactly thats not a plot hole it always had the ability to hyperspace. To the question of why did it need to get into position. Only one part of the death star shoots the laser so to put that part of the death star into position may take time depending on where it arrived from hyperspace from. As we know hyper spacing needs to be calculated out for something as small as an xwing or falcon so you don't fly through an asteroid or something. I imagine the same risk applies to a moon sized ship. So to imagine a moon sized ship flying across the galaxy it may not always be lined up perfectly with the planet it intends to destroy due to debri in the area, it would take time to be put into position.
Thats not so much of a plot hole as it is common sense
Common sense tells you they took liberties. Which, again, is fine. Let's just be honest about it.
Quote:To add to these flaws, the CGI "throwback" characters were distractingly artificial and did not look real. Glazed and creepy not unlike The Polar Express.
I look at it like the Clone Wars cartoons. Worthy, good, and part of the same series... but too much genuine-ness lacking to feel like it truly belonged in the main storyline. It was missing... something, the core feeling of 1-7 wasn't there. The characters weren't as engaging (combination of writing and acting,) and having a new composer didn't do it any favors. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't the same. It was notably different, which isn't what you want from something that's supposed to be an integral story.
The best thing it did was the tie-in with 4. It was enjoyable. But as much as it felt Star Wars, it still came off as not quite Star Wars.
That's why I've updated my list to reflect:
- Empire
- New Hope
(big gap here)
- Force Awakens
- Jedi
(gap here, only smaller)
- Rogue One
- EP2
- EP3
- EP1
EDIT** - To add a comment about the robot. I think K-2SO was a truly understated addition and I don't believe it would have been the good film it is without it.
I love that it was voiced by Alan Tudyk. I love him in everything I've seen him in. He's great with comedic stuff (Firefly) and equally as good with a truly bad dude (Dollhouse). It's too bad he didn't have a bigger part but then it might have been too much.
Saw it again tonight, and I picked up on so much more background lore. If you read between the lines, it seems like Saw Gerrera's falling out with the Rebellion was because of their intended use for Jyn Erso.
I watched the movie last night and though I have plenty of thoughts about it I'll say this; the image of the Rebel fleet kumping into Scarif followed by the X-wings locking their S-foils into attack position makes me desperate for a movie about Rogue Squadron featuring plenty of space dogfights.
Quote:I watched the movie last night and though I have plenty of thoughts about it I'll say this; the image of the Rebel fleet kumping into Scarif followed by the X-wings locking their S-foils into attack position makes me desperate for a movie about Rogue Squadron featuring plenty of space dogfights.
For real I'd rather see a whole top gun in space movie than a young Han solo movie.
Quote:Saw it again tonight, and I picked up on so much more background lore. If you read between the lines, it seems like Saw Gerrera's falling out with the Rebellion was because of their intended use for Jyn Erso.
I almost always enjoy a movie like this more after a second viewing. The anticipation of everything is gone and you can just watch it and see/hear things you missed the first time around.
Quote:I almost always enjoy a movie like this more after a second viewing. The anticipation of everything is gone and you can just watch it and see/hear things you missed the first time around.
Like Chopper and the Ghost
Quote:Like Chopper and the Ghost
The death of Red Five hit me.
I feel like I've finally zeroed in on why I liked this movie so much. As much as I hate to say it, I think a lot of it was rooted in nostalgia. Normally, I like new things, new stories, new characters, new adventures, yadda yadda yadda. But this movie really did root itself in A New Hope. And it didn't really tell any kind of a new story. But I feel like this movie reached out to all of us "old" Star Wars fans in that it gave us a 'grown up' movie with dire consequences, conflicts, power struggles and everything else. But all it really did was fill in some inconsequential gaps without altering the overall story arc.
It did give us new characters, but ones that we would be familiar with. My peer group and I could easily wrap our heads around why Galen would not want to help build a Death Star to help the Empire, and why a Science Officer would view it as being his key to the upper echelons of power. The movie showed that the Rebel Alliance wasn't all buddy buddy with one another all the time and that there were real power struggles and conflicts of interest going on as you would expect. There was none of this in Episodes IV through VI, because there probably didn't need to be.
And mostly, I think it was a sharp contrast to Ep VII in that The Force Awakens was trying to bring in new fans to an old story but couldn't get out of their way when trying to come up with something new.
Also, Vader.
Quote:I feel like I've finally zeroed in on why I liked this movie so much. As much as I hate to say it, I think a lot of it was rooted in nostalgia. Normally, I like new things, new stories, new characters, new adventures, yadda yadda yadda. But this movie really did root itself in A New Hope. And it didn't really tell any kind of a new story. But I feel like this movie reached out to all of us "old" Star Wars fans in that it gave us a 'grown up' movie with dire consequences, conflicts, power struggles and everything else. But all it really did was fill in some inconsequential gaps without altering the overall story arc.
It did give us new characters, but ones that we would be familiar with. My peer group and I could easily wrap our heads around why Galen would not want to help build a Death Star to help the Empire, and why a Science Officer would view it as being his key to the upper echelons of power. The movie showed that the Rebel Alliance wasn't all buddy buddy with one another all the time and that there were real power struggles and conflicts of interest going on as you would expect. There was none of this in Episodes IV through VI, because there probably didn't need to be.
And mostly, I think it was a sharp contrast to Ep VII in that The Force Awakens was trying to bring in new fans to an old story but couldn't get out of their way when trying to come up with something new.
Also, Vader.
Its the first star wars film that doesn't do all the star wars things and really feels unique. No immediate scrolling of text explaining to us where we are getting started. Labeling the systems we are going to when we leave one planet. There is a good vs evil vibe in the film but it isn't as in your face as the other ones, and we actually get shown the morally grey side of the rebellion. Like you said its a star wars movie made for grownups more so than any of the others that try and pander to kids in so many ways. You hit on why I think its right up there with Empire but just below and ahead of everything else.