Well,since most of the main players don’t show up in the original trilogy, there wouldn’t be much need to keep 'em alive for sequels. God knows Disney has plenty of other SW content in the pipeline without making room for Jyn Erso Strikes Back.
I didn’t need any more Saw Gerrera material. I never watched Clone Wars so I wasn’t a fan of his going in; as far as I was concerned, he served his narrative purpose. But I was rather surprised at the direction the movie took. Going in, I’d thought it was going to be pure heist movie: Jyn and her handpicked gang of misfits pulling a fast one to swipe the plans from under the nose of the Empire… all on their own. I suspected none of them would survive, but I really didn’t expect the rest of the Rebel fleet to come swooping in to their aid. This stopped being a quick, dangerous cloak-and-dagger operation and became a full-fledged space battle that greatly outscaled the Battle of Yavin. I loved the desperate pacing of the last few minutes as the plans made their way to the Tantive IV, but it sure makes Leia sound utterly without any plausible deniability when Vader confronts her in A New Hope. This approach did make for an exciting climax that heightens the drama of the beginning of ANH, but doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, storywise. I’d have had Cassian fire off some kind of message to the young hothead Senator from Alderaan right after they leave on their covert mission, knowing she’s not a stuffed-shirt risk-averse bureaucrat like the rest of the Alliance leadership, asking her to send what help she can muster. And then I’d have Captain Antilles, Leia, and the Tantive IV be the only resources Leia could get there in time. The Tantive would be just small enough to approach the planet covertly, and the handoff would be similar to the end of Halo: Reach, though Leia’s getaway, as we saw in 1977, wouldn’t quite be clean, if only due to Vader’s sensing of her presence. That would eliminate the whole planetary shield thing and the resulting space battle to get it down, and might make for a less-exciting movie in terms of spaceship explosions, but would make it much more of a guerrilla operation, which the Rebels ostensibly built their entire Rebellion around. The way it is, “their first major victory against the evil Galactic Empire” seems to make the Rebellion much less likely to be underestimated.
I also found it weird that so much of the billboard and poster marketing was built around the wading stormtroopers image. I don’t know why they thought that particular image was so compelling.
It didn’t bother me that everyone died, but I don’t agree that it was “necessary” because those characters never appear again. Maybe they’re off in other secret missions. Maybe they had to go recover from their injuries. Maybe they’re hiding out because they’re too high-profile wanted fugitives.
That’s the argument I keep seeing, that they had to die because they’re not in ANH.
Well, yeah. I agree with you, but SW movies have an irritating habit of pretending the galaxy is populated by maybe sixteen humans and a billion rubber suits. It’s tempting to assume Lando Calrissian is dead simply because Billy Dee Williams didn’t show up in The Force Awakens and practically everyone else did.
That said, I found it refreshing for once to have a suicide mission actually be suicidal. Kept the stakes higher than we’ve become used to. For once the Imperial forces couldn’t quite be simply ignored, and our heroes weren’t boringly indestructible.
I think the trailer showed a Jyn with a lot more sass. I would have liked to have seen that in the movie, as it would explain more of the attraction between her and Diego Luna’s character. But then, I suppose you can only have one sassy pants per ensemble, and that was his job. ETA: but I agree that she was still a great character, I just didn’t get a strong feel for her personality beyond “Strong Lady Hero”
Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy…
I think they had to die because it makes the stakes correct at the end of the into crawl to ANH.
