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

[DonIago]

Unless Tantive IV launched later and subsequently docked with the larger ship.

Hm...perhaps they'd been informed the battle wasn't going well and that someone needed to get away from the battle with vital information, so they altered course to the battle instead of going to Tattooine?

Disclaimer: Only seen the film once.

 

[Ithekro]

I think the Rogue One plan Jyn's group had was that the Rebel soldiers would keep the Empire distracted and away from their cargo shuttle. Jyn and company would go in, steal the plans (hopefully unnoticed) make it back to the Shuttle and take off as if they were trying to get the shuttle away from the Rebel attackers. The soldiers might be left behind to die in this plan, or they might stage it so they can also get away, but I don't think they had too much of a plan for that due to the necessity of getting the plans of the Death Star into Alliance hands.

Once the fleet arrived and the shield was closed, they couldn't get out, so Jyn's group had to improvise a way to get the plans out to the Fleet. It was about this time they figured they were all going to die, but the plans had to get out or other planets would get the Jedha treatment or worse.

 

[USS Firefly]

Maybe the location of Yavin 4 and Scarif are close by?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Well, except there wasn't all that much time to do it.

Rogue One had already engaged the Empire, and had been fighting long enough for word to get back to Yavin. The first wave of Rebels arrived soon thereafter, with the Admiral amongst them. Yet we saw C-3PO and R2-D2 bitching about it as ship after ship had already taken off to join the battle.

Considering the time it takes to travel there via hyperspace as well, there just wasn't enough time for them to get onboard.

Obviously there was time to get on the ship. Do you know how we know this? Because they got on the ship.

 

[Ithekro]

Hyperspace seems to be really really fast. What was once considered to take hours or days now seem to take minutes. The report gets to Yavin about rebels on Scariff, and not too long after that the Rebels are arriving including fighters from Yavin base. Some trooper shoves 3PO into a transport of even directly into the ship and they take off to follow the fighters, they'll get there in no time even though Yavin is on the other side of the galaxy from Scariff.

The trip to Alderaan was thought to take several hours in the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, but probably it only took a dozen or two minutes based on what we see them doing. Obi-wan is giving Luke a brief leason in how to use a lightsaber and trust the Force. R2 and Chewie are playing a game to pass the time. Han was checking to make sure he lost the Imperials, then wonders back to take some credit (no one there cares), followed by them approaching Alderaan by the end of the scene. It isn't long after they entered hyperspace that Alderaan is destroyed by the Death Star. That the local trooper managed to make a report about the ship blasting its way out of the Tatooine blockade to the Death Star is also something.

 

[Skywalker]

Hyperspace, like warp drive, is as fast as the plot requires.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Fleets are faster than single ships because they network their navigational computers.
It's like hyperjumps in BSG.
The jump itself is near instant, but the farther they go and the less known the jump Route is, the more individual jumps they have to make, because accuracy of the destination goes down.
That's why Han complained about not making the jump blind, and his comment about the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs is related to that.
Less actual distance traveled.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

So... why did the fleet take so long to arrive at the second Death Star?

 

[Ithekro]

The time it took them to get down to the rear entrance, distract the guards, and get inside to be captured? So ten - twenty minutes?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

So... why did the fleet take so long to arrive at the second Death Star?

I don't know? I pulled that out if my ass.
The waitress took so long at the pitstop at space Starbuck's?

 

[Skywalker]

Went and saw this again today with some family. I think I actually liked it even better the second time. I still feel like it jumps around a bit too much in the first half hour or so and could have been streamlined a bit (like they probably could have just cut the part with Cassian's source telling him about Bodhi's defection and the Empire's planet killer and instead opened with Cassian leading the rebel troops who rescued Jyn, with him explaining that stuff after the fact). But overall it really is a lot of fun and while most of the characters are pretty thin, they're all performed well and fun to watch. And the third act is still amazing. I might have to go see it again sometime soon.

 

[Reverend]

Went and saw this again today with some family. I think I actually liked it even better the second time. I still feel like it jumps around a bit too much in the first half hour or so and could have been streamlined a bit (like they probably could have just cut the part with Cassian's source telling him about Bodhi's defection and the Empire's planet killer and instead opened with Cassian leading the rebel troops who rescued Jyn, with him explaining that stuff after the fact). But overall it really is a lot of fun and while most of the characters are pretty thin, they're all performed well and fun to watch. And the third act is still amazing. I might have to go see it again sometime soon.

That scene where Cassian murders his asset rather than risk him being captured is vital to understanding his motivations and character arc. If you cut that, you don't have much of a reason to understand why he struggles with his orders to execute Galen and why he's so desperate for it all to have amounted to something. All you get is him referring broadly to undefined horrible things he's done for the Rebellion. We really needed to see what he's capable of in order for it to be credible he's lying to Jyn and is willing to kill her father without him seeming like nothing more than a cold blooded assassin.

You're not wrong about it jumping around a lot and I initially had similar thoughts that it could have benefited from a little streamlining. But on further reflection, structurally there's no other way to do it without introducing some massive coincidences, like say the contact and Jyn both being on the same planet, or even have them both on Jedah. The latter would actually cause more problems than it solves since Jyn has to go to Yavin 4 before Jedah and it would clash with her backstory with Saw. The only way around that would be to have Mon Mothma meet her on Jedah, which introduces even more complications.

Think of it in terms of a WWII movie or even a Bond or Indiana Jones movie. There's usually a lot of globe trotting in the first act and I think it only seems jarring in Rogue One because (aside from Yavin 4) they're new locations we're not familiar with.
Let's look at the sequence of locations: from the flashback on Lah'mu to the prison on Wobani, then the Ring of Kafrene and back to Wobani, Yavin 4, Jedah, Eadu, Yavin 4 again and finally Scarif.
Now let's pretend it's a WWII movie and we can substitute them for real locations: Lah'mu becomes say an island off Crete, Wobani is somewhere in Poland, the Ring of Kafrene is Casablanca, Yavin 4 is London, Jedah is occupied Paris, Eadu is a deuterium refinery in Norway and Scarif is some nameless atoll in the Mid Atlantic.

All of a sudden, there seems to be more purpose and context behind these locations and it would seem strange if any of them were skipped over or combined.

 

[Ithekro]

I was reminded of the Revenge of the Sith novel and Darth Vader's confrontation with the Separatist council on Mustifar. While you don't get it in the film, Vader is giving one liners as he kills some of them, especially Gunray. One liners that fit perfectly with his joke to Krenic while choking him. And oddly when I was reading them a decade or so ago, I thought those lines in the RoTS novel sounded perfectly like Darth Vader. A certain mix of truth of the situation and dark matter of fact humor.

 

[Skywalker]

That scene where Cassian murders his asset rather than risk him being captured is vital to understanding his motivations and character arc. If you cut that, you don't have much of a reason to understand why he struggles with his orders to execute Galen and why he's so desperate for it all to have amounted to something. All you get is him referring broadly to undefined horrible things he's done for the Rebellion. We really needed to see what he's capable of in order for it to be credible he's lying to Jyn and is willing to kill her father without him seeming like nothing more than a cold blooded assassin.

Yeah, while I was writing my post I did think about that particular moment immediately after Cassian murdered his asset, the look on his face that clearly shows he's not happy about having to do such things but feels like he needs to for the Rebellion. You are right about it being an extremely important bit of characterization for Cassian, and it's one that shouldn't be lost. Just having Cassian talk about it wouldn't be as impactful.

You do bring up a good point about it maybe seeming jarring to me because they're mostly new locations. I wonder if I'd have felt the same if Cassian had met his asset on, say, Nar Shaddaa (which, while technically it would be new to the movies, is a very familiar location for fans of the EU).

 

[kirk55555]

I just came back from seeing the movie. I'd give it an A-. I enjoyed it the whole way through. the story was good, the action was great (the space battle and Vader's fight scene were especially great) and the main cast was good. I'd been spoiled about Tarkin and Leia's digital cameos, and while they were a bit uncanny valley I think they were acceptable and I'd be up to seeing something like that again. Vader was really cool in his two scenes, some people don't seem to like him joking but I thought it fit the character well.

I'd say the biggest flaw of the movie was probably that the main cast was underdeveloped. Don't get me wrong, they were all entertaining and memorable enough, but they could have used more and besides Jyn and Kennic I couldn't even remember their names while I was watching a movie.

I like how the ending of the movie directly goes into Episode IV, that was pretty cool. I also liked all the little references in the movie. The rebels references were cool, Saw being in the movie worked well, Red/Gold leader obviously being the same characters as the Episode IV versions were a bit surprising but were great little references, and the R2-D2/C-3PO scene was neat. The only thing that felt a bit too much was the Tatooine Cantina people (the ones Luke gets into an argument and Obi-Wan cuts the arm off of) felta bit too "small universe" to me, but since that doesn't generally bother me I didn't find it very distracting, just something I noted.

So, overall, this was great. I'd put TFA a bit over it, but this was still a great start to the spin off movies, and a truley great addition to the Star Wars franchise.

 

[Shawnster]

Hyperspace, like warp drive, is as fast as the plot requires.

Are there any on-screen canon references to distance in the Star Wars universe? If not then we really don't know how fast hyperspace travel is. Except that the Falcon is supposed to be fast a point-five past lightspeed.

So... why did the fleet take so long to arrive at the second Death Star?

Who says it took long? It didn't seem to take hardly any time for them to jump from Sullust to Endor.

 

[Skywalker]

Are there any on-screen canon references to distance in the Star Wars universe? If not then we really don't know how fast hyperspace travel is. Except that the Falcon is supposed to be fast a point-five past lightspeed.

In Attack of the Clones, Padmé stated that Tatooine was less than a parsec (which is about 3.26 light years) from Geonosis. She and Anakin seemed to get there fairly quickly.

And in The Force Awakens, while a specific distance wasn't spoken, the map projected by R2-D2 and BB-8 showed us a specific path through the galaxy from D'Qar (where the Resistance was) to Ahch-To (where Luke was), and the Millennium Falcon's trip through hyperspace between the two locations only seemed to last a few moments, though I feel like that was just dramatic license.

 

[LJones41]

I went to see the movie for a second time. I still enjoyed it, but the last act is still a problem for me. I realized that a lot of people loved it, but I could not help but feel that the whole Battle of Scarif was a bit too much, considering that this whole thing was supposed to start as a covert (and unsanctioned) military intelligence operation. A part of me cannot help but wish that Jyn Erso's goal to steal the Death Star plans had been a planned operation from the beginning. I also wish that they had ended the story without a large-scale battle that involved the entire Rebel fleet (is that right?).

 

[Ithekro]

The original film kind of locked them into have a major battle using spaceships from the opening scroll of Star Wars in 1977. There was no way around that. During that battle, rebel spies stole the plans for he Death Star.

While prior to this film it was usually envisions as a load of X-wings attacking some Imperial base with maybe a few freighters and the Tantive IV being used as the get away ship, since no one really suspected the Rebellion to have the fleet yet, though General Motti's line about the Rebels being too well equipped (and therefore a danger to the Star Fleet) I suppose suggests the Rebels have some serious firepower outside of just X-wings and Y-wings. Enough to take on a Star Destroyer at least.

 

[Reverend]

I've been thinking a bit about the use of Mustafar as the location for Vader castle/sanctum. On the one hand, sure, part of it would be linked to this being the site of the most physically agonising moments of his life and where Padme died (or so he believed.)
If it we were just going by RotS that would be enough, but there's an episode of TCW that has me wondering if this place had greater meaning for the Sith even before Vader's duel with Kenobi. It's the site of Sidious's secret lab where he carried out experiments on infant Jedi hopefuls, in what we can only presume led to the likes of the Inquisitors. Possibly not a coincidence that in Rebels Kanan is said to refer to this place as "where Jedi go to die", which I interpret as foreshadowing of Vader's dominion here and probably where the inquisitors are trained and conditioned, most likely under Vader's direct supervision.

Could this planet be like Dagobah? A natural nexus of the force, only tilted or somehow corrupted to the dark side? Did the ancient Sith have a presence here? It seems the LFSG aren't done with this moon yet.

Speaking of moons (not space stations! ) I've seen references to Jedah as a moon. Did I miss something? I don't recall seeing a larger primary, either in Jedah's sky or the wider shots from space. Mind you, I could say the same thing about Endor...

You do bring up a good point about it maybe seeming jarring to me because they're mostly new locations. I wonder if I'd have felt the same if Cassian had met his asset on, say, Nar Shaddaa (which, while technically it would be new to the movies, is a very familiar location for fans of the EU).

Of course it's subjective, but I found on second viewing that it seemed to flow much better once I knew ahead of time what was going on.

P.S. Random side note, I'm sure I'm just slow and everyone else came to this conclusion right off the bat, but I was wondering to myself why they didn't include Wedge in the final battle along with the likes of Red & Gold leader. It's just now occurred to me that he was probably left out because of his "Look at the size of that thing!" line in ANH. Had he been at Scarif he would already have gotten an up close look at the Death Star before they pulled out.

I also noticed in some behind the scenes footage that for the Yavin base scenes they did appear to have lookalikes of Biggs & Porkins. I can only assume the reason they didn't end up using Biggs is because they still have an eye towards the cut Toche Station scenes still being a thing that happened and if so, then Biggs wouldn't have defected until *after* Rogue One. Indeed, he probably got to Yavin less than a day ahead of Luke. As for Porkins...I don't know, maybe to avoid the inevitable jokes?