Tarkin did not hit uncanny valley for me. I knew there was CGI in play, but can’t say it pulled me out of the moment.
“How to visit 7 worlds in 7 minutes” at the beginning was a rough start IMHO.
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Agreed, it was a relief when they ended up on Yavin 4. “Oh thank god, one less new name to try to remember.”
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I’m amazed anyone wouldn’t think that tarkin was cgi, i thought it was clear as day but maybe it’s because i saw it in an imax. Fair enough if it didn’t take you out of the moment but the way the eyes move, the way the skin moves and reflects in direct light, i’d say it was fairly obvious. Leia’s cg double was even worse really, probably more obvious due to the brightly lit room but i’d like to see a side by side comparison to a new hope.
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I really didn’t notice Tarkin was CGI. Leia bothered me a bit though. I think holo-Tarkin and back-of-Leia would have been fine.
I’m seeing a lot of Facebook friends saying this one was the best Star Wars ever. I still think Force Awakens might be. Rey was more compelling to me than Jyn, and Finn was way more compelling to me that Captain Whatshisface. My favorite Rogue One characters by far were K2 and the two martial arts badass types.
The whole stolen plans thing was established in Ep. 4 so there was no getting around that with “turns out we don’t need the plans”, but I feel like the plot doubtfulness could have been cleaned up with a little more dialogue polish. The convoluted data archive probably could have been less goofy, while still necessitating in-person theivery from secure offline storage (and not on a chunky VHS-looking magnetic tape…).
The shield gate battle was well done, though the physics of one Star Destroyer holing the other instead of also pushing it off course was certainly questionable.
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I also saw it in IMAX and thought the CG characters were seamless. I didn’t see anything obviously artificial about them.
I was really, really hoping they would refer to him as “Captain Ackbar”.
I think it would be a much better movie if one were to cut out 90% of the dialogue.
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Saw it this afternoon. So was the “big secret” the studio begged reviewers to hold that they all die in the end?
I would not put it in the top 3. The 2nd half was just too much blowing up and shooting relative to plot and character advancement. The only justification was to show how grim the fight of the Rebels was, with huge casualties, rather than most of the films where onscreen carnage to the heroes is minimal, though billions died offscreen.
OT: the trailers for sequel after sequel were stupefying, the one for Fast and Whatever made me close my eyes to not get dizzy from the relentless 1/2 second cuts.
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If so that’s pretty lame. I mean think about it. There’s a clear timeline for the story and it’s mostly new characters that don’t have any future role in the very well established chronology. It wasn’t likely that there would be a happy ending here.
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Hmm… i’m a little curious to know what you thought you were watching. I can understand you thought it was seamless but surely you could see this was a cg character, right? For me, every time he was on screen i couldn’t not think he was a cg character but K-2SO i could accept as a fully realised character no problem and forgot he was cg: that’s the uncanny valley in a nutshell i guess.
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Quite honestly, at first, I thought they were doing what they did in the prequels: have a lookalike shown mostly from behind as a cameo for the fans, no CG. But when he turned full-front and had substantial scenes, I knew logically that this must be a CG recreation, because you can’t get another Peter Cushing. And once I realized that, I was automatically looking for “tells”— “well, his eyes weren’t perfectly realistic” or “his skin was too plastic”. Like watching the CG Jeff Bridges in Tron 2, or the CG Marilyn in a Snickers ad, it’s nearly impossible to turn your brain off and just accept it as a person, because you know logically that it’s fake. I think it’s interesting to contrast that with the person I was sitting next to who didn’t know who Peter Cushing was and never thought for one second that it wasn’t an actual human up there. So I think there’s the ‘uncanny valley’ and then there’s just simple logic getting in the way.
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Is that a cg marilyn though? It looks to me like they’ve digitally inserted her from other footage. Any time they try and portray a human character realistically i just can’t suspend my disbelief enough to go with it, the young jeff bridges in tron: legacy being a particularly off-putting example. Give me a non-human character any day, with some realistic performance capture like gollum, king-kong, caesar… hell, anything andy serkis is doing.
She’s a hybrid – a body model with footage of Marylin that’s been modeled with a CG mouth so she can say new dialogue.
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Fair enough, but can someone explain why he and Mon Monthma were having that whole side conversation about how he would need to get help from his Jedi friend on Tattoine, and how he knew he could trust his daughter to deliver the plans? They didn’t even have the plans yet, and it makes zero sense that he would be planning on having things go down that way in that point of the movie.
And why didn’t ALL of the rebel ships get to download copies of the plans? But whatevs. Digital files apparently work differently in the SW universe, what with the analog droid brain interfaces and all.
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Has anyone taken a pass at how large a file we’re really talking about? Tried a search to no avail. Maybe there’s a way by volume, using a terrestrial structure CAD file as a reference. No one would have believed even 25 years ago what would fit on an SD the size of your pinky nail, hard to imagine the Empire’s data handling is so lame. But they’re holos suck, so who knows?
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My take was that maybe they did, but Leia’s was the only one to escape (except for maybe a few of the fighter craft like the X-wing flown by the guy from Space Texas who was in the original movie).
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Speaking of dang ol’ Red Leader (as well as stick-up-his-ass Gold Leader), I sure was proud to see them both cameoing in Rogue One. Very well-cast doubles, right down to Red Leader’s sweat.
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There’s a reason those guys looked just like they did in the original film: those two characters were actually included through the magic of archival footage rather than body doubles or CGI resurrection.
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I went to watch Rogue One last week, but I had a panic attack in the middle of it so I can’t make any rational judgement of it yet. I plan to try again soon.
But my copy of Elstree 1976 arrived today! I now have two Star Wars films to watch over Christmas and new year.
This is almost word-for-word the comment I just wrote in another discussion. I don’t think Tarkin needed to be in 1/4 of the movie. He could have been calling in via hologram for most of it.[quote=“politeruin, post:16, topic:91355”]
Talking about vader, i loved his reveal to krennic, with his shadow looming over him but he just didn’t move right and his suit seemed off to me. Was he also shorter as well? I don’t know the height of the guy playing him but he just looked shorter next to krennic
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Okay, this bugged me. At one point CG-Tarkin kind of looms over Krennic. But when Krennic talks to Vader, he seems to be nearly of a height with him. And in ANH, Tarkin’s almost a head shorter than Vader.
I noticed that the only planet that doesn’t get named in a subtitle is the lava planet Vader’s palace is on. Is he still hanging out on Mustafar? Seems like an odd choice.[quote=“crashproof, post:24, topic:91355”]
the two martial arts badass types.
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Canonically gay couple? I think yes.
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Yeah, did the Emperor just set him up there so he’d be angry all the time?
Palpatine: Hey Annie, I know you’ve kinda been down in the dumps ever since your pregnant wife died and you lost all your limbs and most of your skin in that fight with Obi-Wan. But I’ve got a surprise for you! How would you like your own secluded villa? I’ve got you set up with your own private staff of creepy dudes in robes. It even has a hot tub.
Vader: Gosh, boss. That’s so thoughtf—
Palpatine: You like lava, right?
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