Rogue One Vs The Force Awakens

[Set Harth]

no transmissions were made

That presumably referred to outgoing transmissions on the part of the Tantive.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That presumably referred to outgoing transmissions on the part of the Tantive.

Yep, since it's in the context of the report to Vader about what happened to the plans, viz. they're not aboard the ship, no transmissions were made, but an escape pod left the ship without any life forms.

 

[fireproof78]

To a point they may be justifiable. While I can accept maybe half of Red and Gold Leaders, Mon Mothma, General Dodonna, Bail Organa, Princess Leia, Tarkin, Darth Vader, Mustafar, some random Clone Wars vehicle, the Ghost, General Sedulla, Chopper, Artoo, Threepio, (apparently) Wedge's voice, and the two cantina dudes (I'm probably missing a few), once you put them all together? In my opinion, it was just TOO much in one movie!

You have three characters (the cantina dudes and Bail) who are just in the movie to appear, wave and go off and get killed or have their arm cut off. (And the cantina dude cameo is TERRIBLE anyway. And no I don't have a problem that they were on Jedda before it exploded. It's fine if not terribly convenient.) You have the droids which is about the worst placement of a cameo of all time with a pathetic line from Threepio. Why weren't they just on the Tantive IV? Mustafar was cool but the scene would have worked just fine elsewhere. Mon Mothma's stuff could have been handled just fine by Dodonna or Bail Organa (I admit it was nice to see him). I love the references to "the Force of Others" and "the Whills." That stuff was really cool. The rest of the cameos are just fine.

Oh.

Except one.

People will vehemently disagree with me but why is Darth Vader even in this movie except to have a (admittedly cool but pointless) fanwank moment at the end of the movie that causes more continuity errors than it cleans up? I have never had such a love/hate relationship with a single scene in a movie.

As a general thought experiment, I agree about many of the cameos, though in the film while I watched it, it made sense to me. However, the Mustufar scene was just much for me, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed the "Force of Others" and "the Whills." Those were good nods.

Also, you're not alone on the Darth Vader scene. I find it cool but utterly pointless and frustrating. So, I'm with you.

 

[Crewman6]

It seems like many in this thread don't seem to understand what "fan service" and callbacks really are.

I'm talking about pointless, inorganic appearances and references to things that have no place in the story and exist merely to push nostalgic memberberry buttons in the audience. While TFA shamelessly trades on familiar story points and images, I'm not even specifically talking about those things. We could - and have - talked for a whole year about how shamelessly derivative elements of TFA were in the broad sense, but I'm talking instead about specific, individual moments that exist for no other reason than to evoke the reaction of, "oh, hey, I remember that" and that serve no other purpose.

It isn't "fan service" to have Bail Organa, Tarkin or Mon Mothma in Rogue One. They are integrated, organic and, generally, essential elements to that particular story.

Bail Organa, for instance, goes all the way back to the original Star Wars. While unseen and unnamed in that first movie, he's the catalyst for the whole story, sending Leia on the mission - with the DS plans - to find Obi wan. He's been involved with the plot of Rogue One for forty years. Frankly, even if Bail never appeared in the prequel trilogy at all, it would have been erroneous not to include him in Rogue One. Fans would be saying, "WTF, where's Leia's Dad? We know he sent her with the plans in the first place, he BELONGS in this story."

Ditto Tarkin. He ran the Death Star. Rogue One is all about the Death Star, mere days before we see Tarkin strutting about it like the lord of all creation. He necessarily had to be in Rogue One in some form or another. While I may agree that I think the film should have taken a "less is more" approach and used him more sparingly than it did, the fact remains that if Tarkin didn't appear in some form (whether CGI, hologram or through re-casting), it would have required at least an awkward bit of exposition to explain exactly where he was.

Vader also belongs in the story, at least to a limited degree, and I think the film found the right balance by using him only briefly (whatever your opinions are on the infamous final scene.)

Mon Mothma - similar deal. Her presence in SW goes back to ROTJ and she was the damn leader of the Alliance. no reason NOT to use her in Rogue One, especially since we already have an actress who does a great young Mothma and already appeared (in deleted scenes) in the franchise. Sure, they could have used the recast Dodonna, but that would have been more distracting, since we would have been only more aware of the difference between him and the original actor, whereas seeing a younger Mothma than we're used to is easier to buy.

The only truly awful bit of Rogue One fanservice is the Evanzan/Walrus man bit, which is truly terrible, distracting and pointless. But TFA has many such moments, like Finn activating the chess board, Finn staring at the training remote for about an hour, Han talking about trash compactors and so forth. Dumb, distracting and shameless, all of 'em.

I'll admit that the Gold and Red Leader pilot appearances are kind of half and half. Sure, they aren't essential to the story and they certainly exist to evoke a rush of memory and nostalgia. But they are also completely appropriate to the time and place of the story. Did the movie need them? Strictly speaking, no. But showing different characters with those same positions would have been wrong or would have required them being killed off or something to clear the way for the classic Gold and Red Leaders to appear only (days?) later in ANH.

Just as R1 can't be faulted for organically using elements from Star Wars that would necessarily be part of its narrative, I'm also not going to take points off from TFA for just having Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie and the Falcon in it. (Even though the movie tries desperately to evoke nostalgia at nearly every turn through the recycling of images and story points from the OT.) I'll even give TFA its useless cameos by Akbar and Nien Numb since, sure, I guess it's certainly plausible that they'd be working with Leia later on.

But all this carping about Rogue One's "callbacks" is absurd. Yes, there is one truly awful and needless cameo. The rest is almost all not just organic and appropriate to the story/time period/setting but in many cases absolutely required for it.

 

[Smellmet]

It seems like many in this thread don't seem to understand what "fan service" and callbacks really are.

I'm talking about pointless, inorganic appearances and references to things that have no place in the story and exist merely to push nostalgic memberberry buttons in the audience. While TFA shamelessly trades on familiar story points and images, I'm not even specifically talking about those things. We could - and have - talked for a whole year about how shamelessly derivative elements of TFA were in the broad sense, but I'm talking instead about specific, individual moments that exist for no other reason than to evoke the reaction of, "oh, hey, I remember that" and that serve no other purpose.

It isn't "fan service" to have Bail Organa, Tarkin or Mon Mothma in Rogue One. They are integrated, organic and, generally, essential elements to that particular story.

Bail Organa, for instance, goes all the way back to the original Star Wars. While unseen and unnamed in that first movie, he's the catalyst for the whole story, sending Leia on the mission - with the DS plans - to find Obi wan. He's been involved with the plot of Rogue One for forty years. Frankly, even if Bail never appeared in the prequel trilogy at all, it would have been erroneous not to include him in Rogue One. Fans would be saying, "WTF, where's Leia's Dad? We know he sent her with the plans in the first place, he BELONGS in this story."

Ditto Tarkin. He ran the Death Star. Rogue One is all about the Death Star, mere days before we see Tarkin strutting about it like the lord of all creation. He necessarily had to be in Rogue One in some form or another. While I may agree that I think the film should have taken a "less is more" approach and used him more sparingly than it did, the fact remains that if Tarkin didn't appear in some form (whether CGI, hologram or through re-casting), it would have required at least an awkward bit of exposition to explain exactly where he was.

Vader also belongs in the story, at least to a limited degree, and I think the film found the right balance by using him only briefly (whatever your opinions are on the infamous final scene.)

Mon Mothma - similar deal. Her presence in SW goes back to ROTJ and she was the damn leader of the Alliance. no reason NOT to use her in Rogue One, especially since we already have an actress who does a great young Mothma and already appeared (in deleted scenes) in the franchise. Sure, they could have used the recast Dodonna, but that would have been more distracting, since we would have been only more aware of the difference between him and the original actor, whereas seeing a younger Mothma than we're used to is easier to buy.

The only truly awful bit of Rogue One fanservice is the Evanzan/Walrus man bit, which is truly terrible, distracting and pointless. But TFA has many such moments, like Finn activating the chess board, Finn staring at the training remote for about an hour, Han talking about trash compactors and so forth. Dumb, distracting and shameless, all of 'em.

I'll admit that the Gold and Red Leader pilot appearances are kind of half and half. Sure, they aren't essential to the story and they certainly exist to evoke a rush of memory and nostalgia. But they are also completely appropriate to the time and place of the story. Did the movie need them? Strictly speaking, no. But showing different characters with those same positions would have been wrong or would have required them being killed off or something to clear the way for the classic Gold and Red Leaders to appear only (days?) later in ANH.

Just as R1 can't be faulted for organically using elements from Star Wars that would necessarily be part of its narrative, I'm also not going to take points off from TFA for just having Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie and the Falcon in it. (Even though the movie tries desperately to evoke nostalgia at nearly every turn through the recycling of images and story points from the OT.) I'll even give TFA its useless cameos by Akbar and Nien Numb since, sure, I guess it's certainly plausible that they'd be working with Leia later on.

But all this carping about Rogue One's "callbacks" is absurd. Yes, there is one truly awful and needless cameo. The rest is almost all not just organic and appropriate to the story/time period/setting but in many cases absolutely required for it.

Well said, totally agree on all points. Rogue one just by its very definition has to have some old characters and references in it (bar the aforementioned walrus dude, which didn't bother me that much) TFA did it for nods and winks and nothing else. The last jedi had better be more original or I can see me being more interested in the anthology movies, which is ridiculous when you think about it.

 

[Venardhi]

Bail Organa, for instance, goes all the way back to the original Star Wars. While unseen and unnamed in that first movie, he's the catalyst for the whole story, sending Leia on the mission - with the DS plans - to find Obi wan. He's been involved with the plot of Rogue One for forty years. Frankly, even if Bail never appeared in the prequel trilogy at all, it would have been erroneous not to include him in Rogue One. Fans would be saying, "WTF, where's Leia's Dad? We know he sent her with the plans in the first place, he BELONGS in this story."

It IS fan service to have him quote a line from ANH in one of his two scenes, in a scene that was 100% setup for the audience to go "OH! He's talking about Leia! He's going to send Leia!"

Ditto Tarkin. He ran the Death Star. Rogue One is all about the Death Star, mere days before we see Tarkin strutting about it like the lord of all creation. He necessarily had to be in Rogue One in some form or another. While I may agree that I think the film should have taken a "less is more" approach and used him more sparingly than it did, the fact remains that if Tarkin didn't appear in some form (whether CGI, hologram or through re-casting), it would have required at least an awkward bit of exposition to explain exactly where he was.

We didn't need to see the Death Star at all. Krennic was hamstrung as a villain by making his story all about Tarkin and Vader and not about anything to do with the protagonists.

Vader also belongs in the story, at least to a limited degree, and I think the film found the right balance by using him only briefly (whatever your opinions are on the infamous final scene.)

Also had nothing to do with our protagonists.

Mon Mothma - similar deal. Her presence in SW goes back to ROTJ and she was the damn leader of the Alliance. no reason NOT to use her in Rogue One, especially since we already have an actress who does a great young Mothma and already appeared (in deleted scenes) in the franchise. Sure, they could have used the recast Dodonna, but that would have been more distracting, since we would have been only more aware of the difference between him and the original actor, whereas seeing a younger Mothma than we're used to is easier to buy.

No problem here.

The only truly awful bit of Rogue One fanservice is the Evanzan/Walrus man bit, which is truly terrible, distracting and pointless. But TFA has many such moments, like Finn activating the chess board, Finn staring at the training remote for about an hour, Han talking about trash compactors and so forth. Dumb, distracting and shameless, all of 'em.

Finn's fumbling around with familiar props in the Falcon is no more eye-roll-inducing than an analog version of the game being played on Jedah or reused footage of the Death Star firing sequence. Threepeo and Artoo showing up for no reason was far worse though.

I'll admit that the Gold and Red Leader pilot appearances are kind of half and half. Sure, they aren't essential to the story and they certainly exist to evoke a rush of memory and nostalgia. But they are also completely appropriate to the time and place of the story. Did the movie need them? Strictly speaking, no. But showing different characters with those same positions would have been wrong or would have required them being killed off or something to clear the way for the classic Gold and Red Leaders to appear only (days?) later in ANH.

I didn't mind the Space battle sequence for the most part or their appearances. If you aren't looking for it even a fan might not notice the archive footage showing up there.

Just as R1 can't be faulted for organically using elements from Star Wars that would necessarily be part of its narrative, I'm also not going to take points off from TFA for just having Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie and the Falcon in it. (Even though the movie tries desperately to evoke nostalgia at nearly every turn through the recycling of images and story points from the OT.) I'll even give TFA its useless cameos by Akbar and Nien Numb since, sure, I guess it's certainly plausible that they'd be working with Leia later on.

But all this carping about Rogue One's "callbacks" is absurd. Yes, there is one truly awful and needless cameo. The rest is almost all not just organic and appropriate to the story/time period/setting but in many cases absolutely required for it.

The RO script is built around including as many familiar elements as possible to tell a story that many of these elements were ancillary to at best. TFA is a straight-up continuation. That is the difference. The main saga is about the Skywalkers. For better or worse. Not including Leia and Han and Luke would have been even more distracting.

 

[fireproof78]

It seems like many in this thread don't seem to understand what "fan service" and callbacks really are.

I'm talking about pointless, inorganic appearances and references to things that have no place in the story and exist merely to push nostalgic memberberry buttons in the audience. While TFA shamelessly trades on familiar story points and images, I'm not even specifically talking about those things. We could - and have - talked for a whole year about how shamelessly derivative elements of TFA were in the broad sense, but I'm talking instead about specific, individual moments that exist for no other reason than to evoke the reaction of, "oh, hey, I remember that" and that serve no other purpose.

It isn't "fan service" to have Bail Organa, Tarkin or Mon Mothma in Rogue One. They are integrated, organic and, generally, essential elements to that particular story.

Bail Organa, for instance, goes all the way back to the original Star Wars. While unseen and unnamed in that first movie, he's the catalyst for the whole story, sending Leia on the mission - with the DS plans - to find Obi wan. He's been involved with the plot of Rogue One for forty years. Frankly, even if Bail never appeared in the prequel trilogy at all, it would have been erroneous not to include him in Rogue One. Fans would be saying, "WTF, where's Leia's Dad? We know he sent her with the plans in the first place, he BELONGS in this story."

Ditto Tarkin. He ran the Death Star. Rogue One is all about the Death Star, mere days before we see Tarkin strutting about it like the lord of all creation. He necessarily had to be in Rogue One in some form or another. While I may agree that I think the film should have taken a "less is more" approach and used him more sparingly than it did, the fact remains that if Tarkin didn't appear in some form (whether CGI, hologram or through re-casting), it would have required at least an awkward bit of exposition to explain exactly where he was.

Vader also belongs in the story, at least to a limited degree, and I think the film found the right balance by using him only briefly (whatever your opinions are on the infamous final scene.)

Mon Mothma - similar deal. Her presence in SW goes back to ROTJ and she was the damn leader of the Alliance. no reason NOT to use her in Rogue One, especially since we already have an actress who does a great young Mothma and already appeared (in deleted scenes) in the franchise. Sure, they could have used the recast Dodonna, but that would have been more distracting, since we would have been only more aware of the difference between him and the original actor, whereas seeing a younger Mothma than we're used to is easier to buy.

The only truly awful bit of Rogue One fanservice is the Evanzan/Walrus man bit, which is truly terrible, distracting and pointless. But TFA has many such moments, like Finn activating the chess board, Finn staring at the training remote for about an hour, Han talking about trash compactors and so forth. Dumb, distracting and shameless, all of 'em.

I'll admit that the Gold and Red Leader pilot appearances are kind of half and half. Sure, they aren't essential to the story and they certainly exist to evoke a rush of memory and nostalgia. But they are also completely appropriate to the time and place of the story. Did the movie need them? Strictly speaking, no. But showing different characters with those same positions would have been wrong or would have required them being killed off or something to clear the way for the classic Gold and Red Leaders to appear only (days?) later in ANH.

Just as R1 can't be faulted for organically using elements from Star Wars that would necessarily be part of its narrative, I'm also not going to take points off from TFA for just having Han, Leia, Luke, Chewie and the Falcon in it. (Even though the movie tries desperately to evoke nostalgia at nearly every turn through the recycling of images and story points from the OT.) I'll even give TFA its useless cameos by Akbar and Nien Numb since, sure, I guess it's certainly plausible that they'd be working with Leia later on.

But all this carping about Rogue One's "callbacks" is absurd. Yes, there is one truly awful and needless cameo. The rest is almost all not just organic and appropriate to the story/time period/setting but in many cases absolutely required for it.

For me, callbacks and fan service are more frustrating when they are distracting. The nostalgic feelings are going to occur for many, just due to the material being presented. I found RO trading far more in the nostalgic feels for me (Pondo Babba, Mustafar, 3PO and R2-D2, as well as Red and Gold Leader). TFA, for all the plot points, had characters that I truly engaged with. Even with the callbacks, there were just brief moments of "Ha-ha" and then I moved on.

I generally disagree that there is only 1 RO callback that was awful. I think there were a couple, as mentioned by @Venardhi, and others that distracted me. Overall, I think I noticed it more in RO.

 

[Set Harth]

It IS fan service to have him quote a line from ANH

Which line?

 

[Venardhi]

"He served me well in the Clone Wars." Not a direct quote, but close enough.

 

[tomalak301]

I think it might be time to think about seeing Rogue One again. I was excited for Rogue One before it came out, but after I saw it, I was almost conflicted. I just didn't connect to the characters and the beginning felt as disjointed as Batman Vs. Superman was. Still, there was a lot to like about it, and the final battle sequence is something I would put up against any other sequence in Star Wars.

With that said, Force Awakens I connected to Rey and Finn more and it was nice to see Han and Leia, and Luke at the end. I got more enjoyment out of it, even though I have to say I was watching it on Starz a few times and I didn't get that same enjoyment. That's why I think I want to see Rogue One again. I've see FA multiple times, it almost seems fair to see Rogue One again to see if my feelings change, especially after hearing about it and talking about it.

 

[Campe]

Other than the fan service, I think the lack of relatable characters is what bothered me about Rogue One. Rey, Finn, Poe, BB-8? They were characters I could get behind. They were all entertaining and interesting. I cared about what happened to them. I cared about how they got to this point.

There's not enough in Rogue One to care about the majority of these new characters. Obviously, going forward in the timeline is kinda difficult with these characters. Admittedly I'm interested in where Chirrut and Baze came from, but Bodhi is pretty much just there as a plot device to get the team from Point A to B, and Jyn and Cassian are boring. K-2SO's background was pretty well-laid out in the film and Krennic and Galen's backstory is laid out in that prequel book.

Give me something to clutch onto. Make me care that these people are dying. That's something I personally just felt was lacking here. I mean, even Chirrut and K2, who are my favorite characters in this one, didn't make me feel even close to the loss when we Han fell from that walkway. That's important.

Again, just my $0.02.

 

[Ithekro]

Likely that is due to the stories being very different in style. TFA and the main line stories is character based. RO is an event based film. Sort of like a historical drama. Where the event is the most important part of the film, not the character who we see the events through. While you can build characters in an event based film, sometimes they are just there because they were there and have to do something because they did. That's the style I'm seeing with RO.

 

[Crewman6]

The RO script is built around including as many familiar elements as possible to tell a story that many of these elements were ancillary to at best. TFA is a straight-up continuation. That is the difference. The main saga is about the Skywalkers. For better or worse. Not including Leia and Han and Luke would have been even more distracting.

Okay, looks like we have a little common ground and areas of polite disagreement, but this assessment is so absolutely bonkers and backwards that it made my head spin.

TFA is designed on every single frame to include as many familiar elements from the original Star Wars as possible. It's reverse engineered to be a shameless evocation of SW at every single turn. The entire story is a shadowy reflection of ANH hope from beginning to end. A lonely young desert dweller stumbles onto a plucky droid carrying an important bit of software the baddies are desperate to get their hands on, culminating in an attack on (yet another!!!) Death Star with the fate of Leia and her scrappy resistance fighters hanging in the balance.

I'm amazed you weren't struck by lightning. Rogue One is about a billion times more "original" than TFA, with its callbacks and evocations either absolutely essential to the story or passing moments of window dressing (whether annoying or not.)

You couldn't tell Rogue One's story without evoking ANH, since it literally takes place moments before that original film begins.

HOWEVER, you could have told an Episode 7 sequel movie completely without ripping off major any ANH plot points, images and ideas at every single turn. Sure, you'd (arguably) need Luke, Leia and Han (though you could certainly jump forward an entire generation or two and not have them appear at all), but you sure as hell don't need desert-dwelling Rey, BB-8's "secret plans" mission, Starkiller base or any of the other hundreds of elements that were either directly cribbed from ANH or otherwise completely engineered exclusively to produce memberberry nostalgic dopamine hits.

The problem with TFA isn't that it's a "continuation"....it's that it's a "continuation" that circles back over so much familiar ground. One step forward, two steps back. "Empire" was a continuation of "Star Wars", but it wasn't just telling the same damn story over again. Even ROTJ, with its recycling of the Death Star plot element, felt like a much more organic continuation. TFA is 30% sequel, 70% remake.

Wow. Just...wow.

 

[Campe]

Absolutely you could tell TFA without the callbacks to the OT. And while it may have worked for me, I can understand why it didn't work for others. They were trying to make people remember the times of old and for some they evoked it too closely.

My problem when it comes to fan service is that while I can accept one movie harkening back to what made me love Star Wars, two films steeped in that was a little too much.

Three?

Well, if The Last Jedi has as much fan service as both The Force Awakens and Rogue One have? I might be done with Star Wars. We need original tales that don't rely so heavily on those three films that made us fall in love with this galaxy far, far away.

 

[fireproof78]

There's more originality to TFA than it is given credit for, and the place it shines the strongest is characters. I have a much greater appreciation and connection with the characters from TFA than RO. That's neither good nor bad-it's just my way of connecting with the film.

RO had a far more military feel to it, which, frankly, is not appropriate to the first film of the Sequel Trilogy. There was an overall darker tone to the film that, honestly, I don't know if I would keep watching the ST if that continued. As it was, TFA was more dark than I expected, and relied heavily on both fan service images, as well as war time images. It's an interesting blend of the two that I, personally, find engaging.

Now, I've seen enough reviews of TFA to know that not everyone enjoyed the style. That's fine, but, as I said above, call backs don't bother me until I go, "Oh, that's cool. They recreated 'X'" which takes me out of the film instead of engaged in it. TFA had brief moments but overall, I was engaged with the characters and wanted them to succeed.

 

[Venardhi]

Wow. Just...wow.

My problems with RO are foundational. TFA has a handful of scenes and elements that will keep me from ever enjoying it as much as the original trilogy, but it is miles better as a whole. RO's overt callbacks and fanservice are just the sprinkles on top of the ill-conceived self-referential sundae.

Structure, character arcs, themes, you know. . . that storytelling stuff.

 

[Sybok Was Wrong]

Whoever doesn't enjoy the cameo of Walrus Man and his deformed friend has no sense of fun.

 

[Campe]

I'm sorry. That is the most moronic cameo of all time. It felt like, "Hey! Hey you! Yeah, Star Wars fan! You remember that thing that was hilarious in the bar in the original Star Wars? Op, here it is again! Laugh! No really, laugh!"

So forced.

Pardon the pun.

 

[Venardhi]

What it comes down to for me is "Does this scene/character/etc. justify its own inclusion in the film and further the story being told or is it here only because the fans will get a kick out of it/it is totally badass?"

 

[Tosk]

That is the most moronic cameo of all time.

Boba Fett in A New Hope was worse.