Well, George didn’t have to do anything. It’s just that since they managed to reanimate the late Peter Cushing, they could have had someone on the team that we did eventually recognize. It’d be funny if, to pick a random example, the defecting Imperial pilot hadn’t been named, and at the very end of the movie had a shave and a haircut and turned out to be Wedge Antilles. Or whatever.
In fact, had George been involved, it’s pretty guaranteed he’d have done something lame like that.
Fuck literature. 
I tried reading literature once but I fell asleep.
I think watching them get obliterated by a Death Star blast is pretty conclusive. They’re dead dead.
That’s the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. In Star Trek, Scottie would beam them out and the last possible moment and we’d have a happy ending.
I remember when I used to read the comic PVP Online and actually enjoy it; it’s been awhile. Its author, Scott Kurtz, has a weird habit of posting bizarrely out-of-touch opinions on social media and his website, and dearly loves seeking out people on Twitter criticizing his comic to berate them. I say all of this because his “review” of Rogue One is another of his grumpy-clueless-old-man posts to his fans.
I genuinely don’t care if someone likes or dislikes a movie, but if you dislike all Star Wars stuff outside of the original trilogy and didn’t understand what happened in Rogue One, you’re maybe not the right audience for it.
I’ve heard him speak enough that I read that whole thing in his most whiny tone.
Most of his complaints seem to be dismissed by pointing out other parts of the film. The rest can be explained with arguments that are less complicated than the whole Kessel Run thing.
Personally I never really paid much attention to the whole EU (now Legends) or the Clone Wars and Rebels series (Just can’t get past the art style.) But I loved Rogue One.
The clones and rebel art isn’t my favorite style, it’s just that there are too many episodes to slog through. If there was an expurgated version that was even a third the length, I could probably make it through
For all I know he’s reading this right now. He flamed/blocked me on Twitter long ago when I said something to a friend about a PVP storyline not making much sense.
There’s been lots of whining about Disney “killing” the EU, but it was such a great decision. They can pick-and-choose the good parts of the EU and add them to Rebels or the movies while ignoring all the ridiculous stuff about three-eyed sons of the Emperor or whatever. There’s deeply geeky stuff in Rogue One that pulls from old EU stuff as a reward to fans.
This is also true, there’s a lot of it. Clone Wars is like 75% excellent and 25% embarrassingly bad; you can tell which episodes George Lucas walked in and said HEY GUYZ HOW ABOUT MORE JAR JAR. He’s got nothing to do with Rebels, thankfully. The art style is clunky but it’s enjoyable storytelling. Also geeky.
As one of the people here who does not primarily speak English, I usually look to the OED for guidance. They use as the primary definition as "Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets."
The future thing complicates it, but otherwise, it seems to fit the genre. But the stories are universal, and could be filmed as westerns, samurai films, or whatever. Which were the original source material.
Fantasy needs the element of magic, but the force qualifies.
And do you find it to be worth the annual $295 subscription?
That was our first thought out the theater, that it suggests a “requel” series being done in reverse, starting with Ep 3.
Something like this:
Ep 3 is Rogue One
Ep 2 the legendary Ewan McGregor Obi Wan movie
Ep 1 would be all the good bits of Lucas’s prequel trilogy edited into a single decent flick, with plenty of reshoots.
The key flaw with Lucas’s prequels is that the overexplain Anakin’s origin story. The ocean of awful pointless story lard (from Gungans to Geonosis to Trade Embargos and Tatooine visits) obscures this. My Ep 1 edit would be a bit more of an abstract establishing shot than the obvious “Fixed it” edits out there which boil it all down to that. But yes, of course, basically all of Phantom Menace has to go.
I have a hard copy. With pages and such.
What’s the first citation?
Having finally gotten to see the movie on Christmas Eve, I can now safely wade into this thread just before it closes, and agree that this was a very, very good Star Wars movie. Like TFA, this film met all of my expectations and exceeded many of them. I had not expected it to lead so directly into A New Hope that you could cut the credits from Rogue One and the opening crawl from ANH and make a single, continuous, Lord of the Rings Extended Edition-sized film. I was also not expecting everyone on Jyn’s team to bite it in the end, but the movie really earned that conclusion. I do agree that the planet pinballing at the beginning of the film feels really rushed and disjointed, but it settles down quickly enough that it ultimately didn’t detract from things too much. Ultimately, I think it’s nice that these new films are opening up more of the galaxy to us, and I’ll take a bit more planet-hopping exposition if it means we don’t have to go back to Tatooine again.
All of the continuity nods were great, especially given how directly the movie butts up against ANH. It was wonderful to see all of the “antiquated” tech make a comeback, like 8" hard disks and low-res displays and that weird spindle-reader thing that K2 and R2 use. The woman playing Mon Mothma is a dead ringer for the original actress, and she did a fabulous job in every scene. They even got a look-alike for the Santa-bearded briefing room guy. Red and Gold Leader showing up via archival footage was, frankly, delightful and kind of almost made me cry. The loss of Red 5 felt a bit too on-the-nose as a setup for Luke’s call sign, but that was really the only thing that stood out for me; even R2 and 3PO’s appearances made more sense than they did in any of the prequels. I was also blown away by CGI Tarkin and Leia - both times when they revealed them with a rear-angle shot I thought “oh, they’re doing that thing where we know who it is but they can’t possibly be in this movie so they’re doing the barely-on-camera body-double thing,” only for them to then turn, fully face the camera, and start spouting lines. The only thing that really gave them away was what always seems to give these doubles away: the lip movements are still very subtly off. Given the improvements they’ve made since Tron: Legacy, though, I wonder how long it’ll be before there’s really no way to tell anymore.
I was really apprehensive about Chirrut (the blind guy) when I first heard about him. I was desperately hoping that this would finally be a Star Wars movie about the “normal people” in the galaxy who have to get by without light sabers and crazy force powers, and his inclusion seemed like it would ruin that. I’m happy to say that I was wrong, though. I like that his character’s history - a force-sensitive guardian of an ancient Jedi temple that was destroyed by the Empire - plays on the original trilogy’s heavier implication that the Jedi are a forgotten order, hunted to extinction. And despite being force-sensitive, his abilities never cheapen any of the main characters’ struggles. This isn’t Anakin and Obi Wan plowing through literal armies of droids on their own with nothing but their light sabers and rapier wit; in Rogue One the rebels are seriously outnumbered, and it always feels like it.
My favorite: all (or nearly all) of the project code names that Jyn and Cassian rattle off in the data vault are names of EU superweapons.
Finally, one bit of cinematography glee: I really enjoyed that the cold open started with those planetary rings sliding into view, in an homage to the original trilogy’s “giant triangle entering from top of frame” post-crawl shots. It’s a simple, stupid thing, but it still makes me happy that these new directors have taken the time to include it.
Finally saw this.
I gotta echo @Israel_B.
When the prequels were announced, this was what I thought Episode III would be. The ending, at least.
And also agree with everyone who wasn’t surprised that they all died, even if they weren’t misremembering the Bothans line. I thought it had been made clear from pretty early on when the vague gist of this film was suggested (and I’ve gone out of my to avoid as much as possible).
Anyway, I liked it a whole lot more than TFA (although that got worse the more I reflected on it, I enjoyed it fine when I first saw it). But I think Edwards is a much better director than Abrams, so that doesn’t surprise me.
I’m still amused that old British 8- and 16- bit computer games reviewer Gary Whitta is now a Hollywood screenplay writer.
Could have done without bits of Garven Dreis being spliced in. Didn’t mind, but thought it was a bit silly. Not hugely in favour of fan servicing like that.
No, I get that it was always going to be about the Death Star plans. That’s not my beef. My beef is that the Death Star is operational when it isn’t supposed to be.
Well, since it is literally just about a week before the original Star Wars movie, why wouldn’t it be?
which citation?
