Star Wars! Spoilers Allowed So Beware!

Rogue One. Urg. I didn't really like anything in it.

Characters: I felt bad for Jyn at the start, what with losing her parents. After the timeskip I didn't care for anyone much. Rebel spy man soured me when he shot his spy buddy in the back, and that impression was worsened by him attacking the Rebel group going after the Imperial hovertank. I was a bit shocked that the film put him as the male lead.

I often confused Rebel spy man with Imperial pilot guy, who I felt bad for after he got his brain sucked out, but didn't care much about afterwards. Blind oriental Jedi annoyed me with his chanting. Heavy weapons guy didn't have a character. The robot was okay, but didn't have anyone he played off well.

The portrayal of the Rebel as willing to dirty their hands to get the job done makes them seem little better than the Empire. They both use effectively the same recruiting tactics when they have someone who doesn't want to be involved. I really hated this, as I felt that this lowered the Rebel's moral high ground significantly. Previously there was no evidence of forced recruiting. Now all they have is that the Empire has too much of a love of Strategic weapon use. (Which is to say, destruction of enemy civilian centers, instead of just military targets.) I can't remember them using strategic weapons before the Deathstar blows up the desert city, which they wouldn't have known about without the mission.

That means that the Rebellion is essentially just another Separatist movement, except that their stated goal is to overthrow the legally operating government. Remember that at that time there were still elections to the Imperial Senate, so you still had a vote that counted.

Plot: Far too many obvious issues. The main one being that the Rebellion essentially says that they won't go to steal the plans, it's not worth the lives, but one transport with a dozen troops on it is worth spending a fleet on.

The hyper fast X-wing deployment to the research base also bugged me. Jyn suddenly, after one mission, became a trusted member of the Rebellion, and wants to save people she didn't care about because her father left a weak point in a battlestation for her to find.

Tech: Blasters aren't lethal anymore, just sorta wounding. It did happen in RotJ to Leia, but it feels like every non-mook is now largely immune to them. Now that getting shot isn't actually fatal a lot of tension is lost.

U-wings are a bad design. The wings deploy once or twice in the film, but for no apparent reason. They aren't related to hyperspace, as the craft goes into FTL with them in and out, and they're not for atmospheric use, as they aren't reliably deployed there either.

Cameos and touching the fan's collective penis: These ranged between invisible and inoffensive, to completely annoying. Leia was an unneeded addition to the film, and she looked worse than Tarkin. Having her ship be the one that escapes with the data makes Vader look like a calm idiot at the start of Hope. Vader was a poorly chosen addition to this film, he doesn't have enough to do to make his place worthwhile. I can't realistically believe that he'd allow the data thing to escape him when it's in the same hallway is laughable.

Misc: Halfway through the film my brain stopped for a second, then alerted me to a fact. I didn't care about any of the characters. Jyn got sucked into a group that made her join by threatening her with prison. The other five were... there.

The speech given before the suicide mission was terrible. It was essentially 'we've all done awful things to try to take these guys down, so we HAVE to keep doing awful things to make the ones we did before meaningful.' It made me think of someone saying, 'well, I've beaten my wife for three years, if I stop now it was all pointless.' What a shitty speech, with a shitty message.

 

Rogue One...

I sincerely left the cinema disappointed that day. It started as some kind of spy movie in the galaxy far far away (which would have been cool, but they half-assed it) and then devolved into Call of Duty at the end; I'm not even joking here, it literally reminded me of call of duty.

Then, as BlackHadou says, you start thinking about the plot and everything falls apart.

 

I can't imagine a single reason why Rogue One would disappoint anyone unless you just wanted a completely different kind of movie. I've heard older fans claim that the original trilogy defined a generation and revolutionized the way they looked at movies altogether and while I wouldn't go so far as to say that Rogue One was that good (neither is the OT as far as I'm concerned) I think that experiencing it helped give me a better sense of what those fans are getting at. 10 out of 10, would IMAX again.

 

I went in knowing nothing about the film except the title (I didn't even see the trailers); it was very much a spur of the moment thing. Given the title I expected a film about Rogue Squadron, but instead I got to see a spy in action. And to be honest I saw nothing wrong with that, I would love to see something like 'Three Days of the Condor' or The Bourne series in Star Wars. I even almost hoped for a Mission Impossible heist on Sariff but all I got was a Call of Duty battle on a beach (And I'm not making this up, I really got that impression).

The general disappointment of course led to taking a closer look to the plot (which did not stand up to the closer scrutiny), which also led to the realization that out of all the characters present, The only ones I remotely cared about were the female lead (which I even forgot the name!) and the droid. Everyone else might as well been a faceless mook.

 

That's basically the exact opposite of my experience. I followed along with the trailers, got the sense that R1 was going to be a Star Wars war movie like Saving Private Ryan, and that's basically what I got out of it so I walked away completely satisfied. I was completely invested in everyone even knowing they were all probably going to die and they all made their deaths worth something, which is one of the few kinds of character deaths I can actually enjoy, so I wasn't put off by that either. The reveal of Tarkin and Leia's CGI-deaging treatment was gorgeous in IMAX although I can't speak for its quality in ordinary theaters, and of course Vader was more badass and terrifying in his five minutes of screentime here than he was in all three of the original movies. I especially liked that shot during his first scene where even his shadow on the wall towers over Krennic and makes him look tiny and pathetic, a clear metaphor for the difference in villain cred between them.

 

To be honest I DID (briefly) wonder why the... advertising board? That paper thing at the cinema had a woman displayed rather prominently on it when Antilles was male. A rather big example of Critical Research Failure, eh?

I didn't find it as terrible as many people did. Tarkin was better than Leia but he was also always put in rather dark places, making it easier to hide imperfections and potential Uncanny Valley.

When he shows up at the end? Part of me was going FUCK YEAH! and the other was cringing in sympathy for all those poor redshirts about to be stomped into the ground by a Vader sized boot.

 

Horse shit. The vast majority of people who hold this opinion are little better than plucked parrots with flattened nails, mimicking the bitchery of middle aged shits who may have grown grandchildren by now.

 

I'm surprised nobody reopened this thread for The Last Jedi's release. Holy shit is there a lot to talk about.

Can I start by saying that I love Luke's character in this film? He does a great job as a crotchety old man with an "I'm too old for this shit" attitude. Mark Hamill has an excellent performance, and this is probably the best that Carrie Fisher has been in a Star Wars movie too.

 

I think the reason no one did is because world wide, a lot of people still ahven't had a chance to see it. Like, I won't get my first chance till after Christmas.

 

I haven't seen it yet, but all the major plot points have been spoiled for me.

Anyways, ended up reading back through the thread... my comments regarding Carrie Fisher have NOT aged well.

Feel a bit bad now...

 

TLJ: None of the jokes were funny, an entire third of the movie is Podracing level of bad, writing and dialogue were shite, pacing was fucked, awful space battles, obsessed with subverting expectations to the detriment of the story, plot holes and wasted potential everywhere. And fucking porgs.

Literally the only reason I think someone would say this film was amazing was if they hated TFA with every fiber of their being, because Johnson goes out of his way to shit on everything that film setup. Shame he didn't bother setting up anything to replace it.

Looked quite nice though, great spectacle shots if you ignore the retarded contexts.

 

I don't think we watched the same movie.

 

You aren't missing anything. Only real improvement over TFA was that it's so soulless that you can't even be mad at it.

Short summary if you want it:
It continue to shit on old characters (those from before disney), introduce new, shitty ones you don’t care about and resident sue continue avoid any significant challenge. So just like the previous one but without ability to arouse any emotions, not even anger at how bad it is.

 

Translation into non-bullshit:

The old characters are not portrayed as perfect demigods but as normal people capable of making mistakes. Luke's mistake was a moment of weakness at exactly the wrong time. The new characters are not immune to this either: Rey, despite her supposed "sueness", which is also complete bullshit, fucks up harder than anyone and walks right into an obvious trap because she thought she could be the big hero and redeem Kylo Ren (spoiler: it doesn't work. At all.)

As far as emotions go, this film was full of high and low points. Unless you went in with the intention of hating it from the start, or if you're just salty that it pissed on your meaningless fan theories, it was an excellent movie.

 

Old characters are universally incompetent (new ones aren't really better) and in no way represent their old selves.
Reysue's actions had no negative impact on anything, they were even presented as positive given their consequences.

You see even if this movie didn't fail at delivering emotional scenes it'd still fail due to not building any connection between audience and characters. When you introduce new characters you need to make people care about them.

 

Rey is not a mary sue. She does literally nothing that Anakin and Luke didn't do first and better. Oh no, mysterious origins! Bitch, Anakin was literally born by immaculate conception. Remember that? Oh no, she's strong in the Force and knows how to use a lightsaber untrained! Just like Luke did when he started deflecting blaster bolts blindfolded on his second try and used precognition and telekinesis with no training whatsoever. How did Luke even know that he was going to be able to grab his lightsaber from across the room? Prior to the wampa cave we had never been shown that the Force could be used for telekinesis. He just pulled that shit out of his ass on instinct.

There is no valid argument for Rey being a mary sue. Fuck off with your salty bullshit.

It didn't.

And it didn't do that either. You went into the movie determined to hate it and you didn't allow the movie to do its job. I did and I loved it from start to finish. There are dozens of emotional high and low points right from the word go and of the new characters I'd say only one of them, the slicer guy, didn't get much development, and I feel like that was intentional given how that plot ultimately went.

 

She is sue, it may be hard for you to see but search your feelings, you know it is true.
Luke succeded in learning his first lesson in safe, controlled environment with teacher to correct his mistakes, the lightsaber thing is explained within same movie, he trained by himself and there was a bit of time skip (very useful tool that). Anakin's origin is wonky but he still needed training before having more than things that are indicators of strong Force connection, later he destroyed everything he held dear and was broken by his master.

It did.

Don't ascribe your excuses as my motives. I gave it as much chance as I'd any other movie, it failed. You fail to understand two things, first is that someone can't just dislike the movie because they didn't like it, second is that "I like it" is separate category from "It was good".

 

My feelings say that anyone who tries to play the 'Rey is a mary sue' card is either a delusional fanboy with his nostalgia goggles welded to his face or a misogynist trying to present his disdain for any kind of female lead as something else.

Oh that's rich coming from you. You have no legitimate criticisms and actively ignore all the film's strengths. You have a point about personal feelings being different from objective analysis but you also mix up "I didn't like it" with "it was shit". Why don't you try arguing against the 93% critical score this movie has on Rotten Tomatoes? That's about as objective as you're going to get.

Anakin was using precog in his podracing before he even met a Jedi and we're only shown Luke training once or twice against the drone. This is the sum total of his lightsaber training in the entire trilogy. If he can pick up a lightsaber and use it perfectly on the first time then Rey can do exactly the same thing.

 

I quite liked it.
Sure there were a few things that I'd change given the chance:
-The part at the casino wasn't 100% my thing, but not bad either.
-There were a few moments I thought could have been better explained ("why was poe not informed of the plan" for example. They couldn't have been afraid of spies, after all Leia was grooming him for a leadership position.).
-It wasn't what I expected. Not only did it feel slightly different than the other movies, but I also expected some more info on snoke and how the first order was formed. I expected it to take a while until the first order took over, and that the resistance would fight them on even ground for longer. That would have made the eventual defeat of the resistance sting even more.
-Sometimes it seemed like some of the plot threads from TFA were dropped (like Kylo's training for example. Sure it might have happened off screen, but I still would have liked to hear it mentioned at least once)
-Also, to me it seemed like in the trailers that there was going to be the whole spiel about luke teaching rey to embrace the dark side and the light side equally. It would have fit with the previous story imho, after all luke used the anger to defeat Vader but didn't fall to the dark, and the Jedi were so focused on surpressing their emotions and keeping completely to the light they were blindsided by palpatine.

But all in all I was well entertained. The theme of 'out with the old, in with the new' was done well enough, and tbf we didn't get much info on the emporer in the OT either so snoke just being another enigmatic but unexplained big bad is fine with me.
Rey didn't come across like a mary sue to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed driver as Ren. Fin, Poe, and Hux, the other more important new characters were fun as well. I thought the old guard was handled with respect and did their job well.
I enjoyed the whole sequence on the island, and even though Snoke could have been expanded his demise was cool and the battle with the guards afterwards was awesome. The sequence on the salt planet was beautiful, and Luke's standoff with Kylo at the end was badass.
I also liked how the march of time was portrayed, with all the weapons and ships being bigger and newer, and shiny new technologies being brought in.

Given all the negatives I listed at the beginning I think it's understandable that some people might not have liked it. It was different from the star wars we know, but if it had been more of the same we would now have people complaining that it's just a rehash of the old movies. I don't think it's a bad movie. In fact, I think it's pretty good.

 

Shit characters are shit be they man (pilot guy who should have been executed by now and worst stormtrooper[showing signs of development but still worst stormtrooper]), woman (admiral "I have no charisma or presence and can't even speak without leaning on authority of others") or alien (that annoying ex bar owner). Mary sue type characters aren't the only bad characters in existence, they are part of group very well represented in ep 8.

Those scores are of very little value for one (if you want review then read or watch one instead). Also I don't ignore those supposed strengths of the movie, it's not completely worthless (few things are), it's just worh less than sum of it's parts (not much in the first place).

Explained in the very same movie as sign that someone is Force sensitive, there was also passage of time between end of New Hope and Empire plus dialogue later when Luke mention training on his own (another failing, not explaining shit), plus he struggled to summon it from just beyond his reach. Those same extremely talented jedi got shit kicked out of them when facing skilled and powerful opponents before they were ready.

 

so ummm did anyone go with the Darths and Droids Bingo?

http://darthsanddroids.net/bingo/Episode8/

 

Nope, but looking at it now, I would have won big time... XD

 

So here's a pretty decent breakdown of TLJ's good and bad points, courtesy of a YouTube analyst I'm rather fond of.



TLDR: It's good. Has a lot of dumb shit in it, but so does literally every Star Wars movie ever made. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about things like the casino planet and such but there's a lot more good than bad in TLJ and it shakes up a franchise which is very sorely in need of being shaken up. Also, if you hate the hyperdrive kamikaze attack, you're a bad person and should go away.

 

Oh well I guess I'm a terrible person for being morally opposed to YAMATO DAMASHII im sure the force will rewards its martyrs with 99 Virgins in Heaven.

If finding suicide attacks being glorified to be something morally repugnant makes me a bad person in someone's eyes I'll at least know the worth of any soapboxing such a person does in the future

 

Haven't seen the movie yet but arent the hyperspace kamikaze attacks carried out by the villains? And don't they kill beloved characters?

Why would that be considered "glorifying suicide attacks" out of curiosity?

 

I actually hadn't heard that take on it, the video is referring to people who complain that it contradicts Legends lore about how hyperdrives work. Which is just a really fucking dumb fanboy complaint when there's other things like bad pacing and wooden acting which actually has a measurable impact on the movie's quality.

 

And you're in this thread?!

Answer that hopefuly won't spoil it for you: There are a few scenes where some of the "good guys" blow themselves up (or attempt to, at least) to save the day.

I just saw this and didn't want to drag the debate out in a thread that's supposed to be for something different. I hope you don't mind I quoted you here.

Anyway, I think one could also say that the movie played a lot with the core elements. Luke rushed off to save his friends against the advice of his masteres and lost a hand. He did it for love and for what he thought was right, but still. Poe and Fin, rushed off against the advice of their leaders/mentors as well, also for love (for the cause) and for what they thought was right, and they too paid for it.

In my headcanon, the reason Yoda and Kenoby didn't want Luke to leave was because they feard he wasn't strong enough to withstand the lure of the dark side. They thought he would turn. But Luke chose death rather than turning, even though Vader promised him an empire, and so it turned out well in the end. Luke may not have been fuly trained, but he proved he was capable of doing what is right when it came down to it.
Rey had a similar moment. Kylo offered her a place at his side, so that they may rule the galaxy together just like Vader promised luke, and she too rejected him, choosing death instead of turning (And yes, she chose death, or at least potential death. She probably knew she couldn't beat him if it they fought, and she chose to fight anyway).

The fact that luke thought the Jedi were flawed is also based on the previous films, this time the prequels. If the Jedi hadn't been so focused on repressing their emotions, demonizing the dark side, and breaking their own code, then a lot of really bad shit might not have happened. Also, it would have been really boring if luke himself would have been this perfect icon of a hero with no flaws.

I've said it before, the movie isn't perfect, it has flaws. But I don't think it's a bad movie, and I don't think it 'ruins star wars' or anything like that.