Spoilers Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Grading & Discussion

Anyone have any links to them?

 

Star Wars Radio Drama. The novelization of Star Wars. Han Solo novel "Rebel Dawn".

The LucasArts games tended to not have a major single battle for the theft of the Death Star plans, but as larger effort that for some reason the plans are transmitted to the Tantive IV in deep space followed by several abortive attempts to transfer the plans to larger Alliance warships or a number of decoys are used to evade the Empire for several hours or even days. In many of those, the player either is stealing the plans (and lives) or is send on a mission or three to ensure the plans are not destroyed, ending up with Leia's ship having to run each time, or be transferred to her ship when the larger one is disabled. Most of those methods would take away from the story of Rogue One as a unit and we'd get into a massively extended ending where we've have left the main characters behind to follow Leia around or following the Admiral or some of the X-wing pilots for the last ten minutes of the films as the plans get bounced around until they can get to Leia and she escapes only to have Darth Vader following her.

The Rogue One depiction is far more dramatic and makes it clear that Darth Vader will track her down. Also the part of it getting from the transmission to Leia takes less than two minutes which basically transitions us from Jyn Erso's tale to Leia Organa's tale via Darth Vader slaughtering Rebels adding to the cost those plans have in order to give the galaxy hope.



The only version of Return of the Jedi I've seen with ships hitting the shield of the Death Star are those that have had their special effects enhanced far more than anything Lucasfilm did.

 

Fair enough. Even those versions (from what I remember) gave Leia a plausible, if weak, cover story at least and didn't have her as part of the Rebel Fleet.

Clearly few are bothered by this as much as I am, so there isn't much use in me continuing to try to convince anyone that "it would have been better if X."

 

Everything I've ever seen or read has it that nothing of substance was altered between the theatrical release and the VHS/laserdisc releases. So feel free to over solid proof to the contrary if you can.

 

I mean I'm sure it could be even better than it was but there's no canon violations there.

 

I think the footage of Blue Leader smiling was just footage of the actor enjoying what he was doing.

There was BTS footage of him getting on the cockpit and he had the exact same expression. It just feels so genuine.

 

Honestly I'm more bothered by the fact that when we see Vader watching Leia's ship escape, the airlock they just disconnected from seems to be located at the back of the hanger, which seems like it wouldn't line up with where the Blockade Runner's airlock should be. And by "more bothered" I really mean "hardly bothered at all".

 

^ Maybe Tantive IV has multiple airlocks, and which one is used depends on the ship it's docked with.

I mean, if it only had the airlock on the top (like we see in ANH), then it couldn't dock with the ship we see it undock from in R1. And vice versa.

 

That airlock wasn't on the top, but the port side and it's pretty obvious on the model (right on the cross-piece that the sensor dish sits on top of.) There really isn't anywhere aft where an airlock could go; it's all thruster nozzles back there. Remember these ships are pretty small (only two and a bit decks IIRC) and the general layout is pretty well established.

Again though to reiterate: this doesn't actually bother me, just something my nit-picky brain noticed on second viewing.

 

IIRC, Lucas didn't actually decide that Vader and Anakin were the same person until ESB, which is why ROTJ had the whole "truth from a certain point of view" speech to explain things.

 

I understand your point of view. There are two ways to lie - to do so in an attempt to cover the truth and be believed or to simply make the opponent more mad and upset with you. A New Hope presents the lie "we are a counselor ship on a diplomatic mission" as trying to be believed as being truthful. Rogue One turns that lie into a big "FU." There is absolutely no way such a lie would be believed. "Dude, I just killed a few men from your ship and saw you leave the battle scene. Don't try to lie to me."

A New Hope having both Leia and Antillies telling the same lie makes it seem that was the agreed upon cover story if they were ever caught.

The only way to completely rationalize this is to have the Tantive IV NOT be the ship that detaches from the Mon Cal ship. Having the ship that fled the battle then hand off the plans to the Tantive would make that lie more believable.

I'm saddened that Rogue One completely contradicts part of the Radio Drama. I liked that beginning and backstory a lot. It didn't have an epic space battle where the plans were originally captured, though. I think we'd all forgotten about the opening crawl.

But no, I'm not overly bothered by the contradiction between Rogue One and A New Hope.

I think the dialog change blind Han Solo has when he's hanging upside down shooting at the sarlacc is pretty significant. OK, no it's not. It does ruin the joke, though.

In the theatrical release he says something like "It's all right, trust me." In the Blue Ray he says "It's all right, I can see a lot better."

 

We'll, you know, Sinbad starred in a movie called Shazaam at about the same time.

 

There are lots of "I remember it different from the cinema" stories about Star Wars. Very few are true.

Yeah, but Reverend was talking about theatrical vs VHS/Laserdisc. The changes from theatrical to Blu-ray are numerous and well documented. From cinema to VHS there are certainly changes, but they're usually subtle and very rarely visual.

 

I really enjoyed the movie. There were only a few things that bothered me, but not enough to drop it below an A+.

1. The Uncanny Valley. I don't know if I'm just really susceptible to it or not, but all the de-aging in the movie -- particularly with Tarkin and Leia -- was really bad. It took me right out of the film every time they were on the screen. I would have much preferred if they had just cast someone who looks as much as Cushing as they could and just allowed the audience to accept it (they would have), much like what they did with Mon Mothma. And as for Leia, she would have been just fine with the teasing aspect of it, not revealing her face at all. But like I said, i think I might just be particularly susceptible to the Uncanny Valley or something as a lot of people seem to be raving about it.

2. Cassian. I just didn't like him at all, and his thick accent didn't help. I didn't even particularly see the point in most of his actions in the movie; they could easily have been filled by any other character for the most part.

3. The pain that was Che Guevara. Sorry, I mean Saw Gerrera. Maybe everything that makes him interesting and useful to the story is sitting on an editor's floor somewhere, but as it stands, he's right up there with Cassian as "useless tool who didn't need to be there." And that's a shame because I really like Whitaker in pretty much everything he does. But here? He was just a shitty version of Grievous, who was already a shitty character.

4. K-2SO dying. Whaaaaaa! He's the closest we've gotten to HK-47 in the movies, dammit, and I want to see more!

5. This one is more of a pet peeve than a real criticism, but the pilot who was laughing with the Rogue One guys when he hit the AT-ACT the first time. Why the hell was he cheering with them?

Otherwise I pretty much loved it top to bottom. No big surprises for anyone who's not a kid and is familiar with the franchise, but the same would be true of Empire if I had seen it for the first time this week, too. Especially if I had viewed the episodes in numerical order rather than chronological. Still not sure which one I'd put as #1 on my personal list of favorites, but it's definitely in the top two.

 

Awesome movie. No complaints.

1. Actors were cast who resembled Tarkin and Leia, then CGI on that performance. This was the furthest climb up and out of Uncanny Valley I've ever seen. Add to that it was a major part with sustained quality. The coy reveal of Leia had me thinking they wouldn't pan up, but then surprised me when they did, and I was impressed and in no way disappointed.

 

I didn't have a problem with either Tarkin or Leia. Yes, they didn't look quite "right" in some scenes, but face it, Peter Cushing himself didn't look quite "right"... and Fisher had those coke eyes.

Anyway, the CGI worked for me. I believed I was watching Cushing and Fisher for the limited time the characters were on the screen.

 

Why is that so hard to believe? Besides, that particular lie just so happens to be mostly true. It *is* a consular ship and they *are* on a mission to take a dignitary to meet a diplomat to discuss matters of state...Antillies just omitted that the dignitary is a wanted fugitive and the matters of state are "war with the Empire".
Having said that I wouldn't be surprised if Leia was the only one who knew they were picking up Kenobi. All Antillies needed to know was "we're landing outside Mos Espa, the Princess has a mission and we're to wait for her to come back."

Here's the thing: there were a dozen or more CR90 corvettes running around in that engagement, most of them look identical and the Tantive IV was out of that hanger less than 60 seconds before they jumped. It's not unreasonable to hope the Devastator didn't have time to scan them, thus giving plausible deniability.

It just so happens that Vader doesn't feel like abiding by the rules of due process because he knows full well it's the same ship. Moreover they know he knows but the point of lying isn't to convince him, it's to keep up the facade as long as possible, both to slow the Imperials down and there's the slim hope that they can spark an outrage in the Senate.
That last point may have been valid since Palpatine dissolved the senate like a day later. Coincidence, or did they not buy Vader's bullshit?

 

Finally saw it yesterday, and as a Star Wars fan I liked it and enjoyed it very much.

However, I don't know if the movie would be particularly enjoyable otherwise, the characters are paper thin, there isn't much of a plot, so the final battle though impressive, is strangely empty of any emotional weight, even the personal confrontation between Jyn and Krennic doesn't really feel personal.
The whole battle looks really good though.

I managed to avoid any spoilers going in, so I was actually surprised Mickey allowed them to kill off everybody. Gotta give them props for that even though the rest of the movie was pretty safe in not straying too far from expectations.

I can't shake the feeling there could have been a much better movie here if only a little more thought had been put into developing these characters, but when it comes down to it I had a fun time so I don't really want to pick it apart... maybe in a few days when the first impression settles

 

I'm aware (though they weren't "look alikes," they just had the same general face shape to which the CGI could be mapped over). But the last part is the issue for me.

I just have to disagree. If anything, they rammed into its depths at top speed. That's the thing about the Uncanny Valley; the harder you try to get out of it, the deeper you end up going more often than not.

 

My only issue with all of that is... when and how did R2 and 3PO get onboard? They were clearly on Yavin after the Admiral had already left to engage the Empire.