Rogue One Does Rogue One "improve" with multiple viewings?

Ignoring the thinly-veiled racism in this post, this really isn't rebutting what I said.

 

It's a pretty logical progression, actually.

1. Jyn is disillusioned by her Imperial father and being abandoned by Saw. And so now she's just out for herself.
2. Mothma gives Jyn the opportunity to be free. She takes it.
3. In Jedha, Jyn learns that her father has been secretly working for the Rebellion, and that Saw was trying to protect her from opportunists in the Resistance. That's a major blow against her cynical selfishness. She now has a purpose beyond herself - steal the Death Star plans and help destroy it.
4. The Empire blows up an entire chunk of a planet, including her former guardian, with a massive planetoid weapon. She barely escapes with her life. How could this horror not affect her view of the fight against the Empire?
5. Jyn is now determined to reunite with her father, bring him to the Rebellion base, and help bring down the Imperial weapon..
6. Her father dies due to Rebel bombs, but his dying words are "destroy it." That clarifies her purpose even further. However she might feel about the Rebellion's tactics, the Empire has a planet-killer, and she's going to honor the legacy of her father's sacrifice and help destroy it.
7. Jyn pleads with the Rebel Council (and insults them a few times during her plea), and they fail to act. She's disappointed, but then again, never had much faith in them.
8. Cassian, who has been progressing in parallel from a loyal footsoldier in a cause to more of an individual thinker with a conscience (the exact opposite of Jyn's progression from individual thinker to committed to a cause), then commits to Jyn's vision.
9. Jyn completely defies the Rebel leadership, and sticks to her promise to her father to destroy the Death Star. She's not a loyal Rebel here. She's a rogue rebel with a cause. Driven by her goal to help destroy the Death Star by seizing the plans.

That character progression is very realistic. In fact, I've personally watched hundreds of disenfranchised young men and women follow a similar trajectory in government and military service.

 

Gigoran Monk, you are the best person on this forum! Your posts are the most insightful ones, thank you for being you!

 

I don't deserve that at all, but thanks!

 

No you don't. Because everyone knows I'm the best person... in the world.

 

You are definitely the best person named Darth Chiznuk that I know.

 

Who is this Darth Chiznuk person you speak of. Never heard of him.

 

Honestly I tend to think that one of the more obvious expressions of sexism onscreen these days is that female characters end up being "badass" as their defining feature rather too often when the reality is that pretty much every iconic male blockbuster lead down the years has been more than that, it just feels like a cheap defence for lazy writing to me.

The trailers did have me worried that Rogue One might suffer the same problem with Jyn being "too cool for school" but luckly(well not luck I spose) I don't think this was the case and whats more I think the film was very aware of what it was avoiding. Most obviously for me the escape scene on Wombi is I think played very much against expectation, to start with when the Rebels blow up the door to the transport Jyn isn't a stoney faced bassass she puts her hands up in shock/self preservation as normal people would and then even more obviously when it looks like she's going to be showing us what a "badass" she is instead she gets slammed on her back by K2.

Whilst the character does obviously deliver some putdowns earlier in the film much more focus is one her own damaged state which makes her much easier to relate to on the same level as say Luke in the originals. I would say as well it does directly address the characters self obsessed nature Big Bad Yoda Daddy mentions, in the scene after Eadu its not just one way traffic as even though she does obviously have a point about Cassian's actions he clearly has a point about her previous self absorbed selfishness. I think that ontop of Galens dying words and having seen the DS in action that explains the jump to her helping the Rebels, at the end of the Eadu transport scene she isn't just wallowing in grief but a good deal of guilt as well.

 

Just to add to what Gigoran Monk said, something that has to be said about Jyn is that this is a young woman who has been wronged and betrayed too often. I think Jyn naturally cares very much about people, and she's worked out that caring = getting hurt. So at the beginning of the film, she appears to care only about her freedom and has the act down as well. She speaks dismissively of her father and Saw, both of whom abandoned her in some sense. You say she reminds you of an angsty teenager -- I work with them too and is this not what they do: pretend not to care about the things that in fact matter most to them? Once Jyn confronts Saw and sees her father's hologram, that much becomes clear. She drops the act real quick, especially considering the urgency of Galen's intel.

If people struggle to understand Jyn, then I feel like I struggle even more to understand why people dislike her. Bodhi, the child she saves on Jedha, the Guardians -- Jyn instantly forges connections with total strangers and will just as instantly defend them. (It takes a bit longer with Cassian, for various reasons.) I don't find it perplexing at all that she would end up all gung-ho for the rebellion. Billions of lives across the galaxy are at stake, and she sees it as her purpose to undo her father's crimes so that she can absolve him in history and her own eyes. This is a powerful character motivation, and certainly not everyone in the rebellion had as compelling a reason to fight. She's a character who is just so full of heart, and honestly, I never thought I'd find that as wonderful as I do. If that makes her an angsty teenager, then maybe there's something worth seeing in every moody kid after all.

 

Honestly coervus I think part of the issue is that people have become used to a lot of blockbuster characters operating on quite a simple level. A character will conform to a pretty simple archetype that will define almost everything we see them do before suddenly turning on the head of a pin as an "arc".

That Youtube review claiming a lack of "arcs" in Rogue One that's been posted here a few times does obviously come to mind for me, the reviewer noting Jyn's selflessness in saving the child as a sign the character "had no arc". In reality as you note its that the character has an arc that's more complex than simply being entirely selfish before becoming entirely selfless, rather its the arc of someone who clearly does have strong empathy for others from the start but has become highly guarded and disillusioned with larger causes.

 

Exactly. There’s a demand for cartoonish, “broad” characterization from a lot of genre film audiences. Rogue One just doesn’t operate that way.

The case of Jyn saving the little girl is simple. Jyn was essentially that little girl once, as we just saw in the prologue about 20 minutes earlier...Jyn has an instinctive empathy for her. It makes perfect sense.

 

Judging by the little we saw of Galen and Lyra as parents, they were good people. It's apparent to me that they raised a good daughter and taught her to do the right thing. But in her time with Saw and after, she was hurt repeatedly, and she understandably chose to stop caring. During the movie we watched her remember what it was like to care and act for the better good, and witnessing her father's death in a righteous cause was what finally brought her back to herself. It wasn't so dramatic a change as Vader turning away from the dark side, but it was definitely similar, IMO.

 

11-4D you have to admit that some of the acting in the original Star Wars movie wasn't all that great plus a lot of lines were/are clunky. And as far as character arcs go Luke didn't even have one.

 

Luke definitely had a heroes journey in the first movie. I don’t think characters are great because of how well acted they are anyways. The Big Three are all great characters, in the first two movies at least.

 

I had time to watch RO again this morning; yup, it's still improving with each viewing.

 

Yesterday I put the Rogue One DVD on my computer just to check a scene with the death troopers (damn you Rebels). I ended up watching the rest of the movie.
And when it finished, I put the blu-ray on my TV and watched the whole movie again.

Still awesome.

 

It’s the best. I no longer hesitate to say that. I love you ESB and ANH, but I’m seeing other people now. Well, mostly just Rogue One.

 

Opposite direction for me. I actually appreciate my previous least favorite more after trying a couple of times to watch Rogue One again.

 

I watched ANH also again when I finished the From a Certain Point of View book, and it was great. I thought I had reached a saturation point with my OT movies rewatches but all it took was one book to reinvigorate my desire to watch the movie again.

I’m still not at the point where I watched Rogue One too many times to be tired of the movie, but wouldn’t it be great if they released a similar book for Rogue One? I wonder how that could improve the viewing and my love for the movie, more than already is.

 

And ezekiel22x

My favorite thing about watching ANH after RO is just how much more depth there is to the former now. The fact that we saw these incredibly brave people all sacrifice themselves to get the DS plans, and then they end up in the hands of some bored farm boy, is just beautiful and almost tragically comic, in a way. War-weary Jyn’s rediscovery of hope in RO is manifested, after her death, in the form of a young farmhand who knows nothing of war. I love that. Like Frodo acquiring the Ring.

Though now when I watch ANH, I can’t help but internally yell at Luke. “You better be careful, kid! You have no idea what a sacrifice so many Rebels made to get that information to you!”

In any event, if future spinoffs are even half as good as Rogue One, the galaxy will start to really flesh out in a very satisfying way.

 

Glad it works for you! I've been there before when a new film makes you appreciate the OT in a new manner. Pretty awesome.

R1 is not such a film for me, though. One thing I've always loved about ANH (and which was maintained even with the PT) was how Luke's personal story is the doorway that leads to the larger Empire vs. Rebels conflict explored in depth. I love how the Empire almost feels like a distant problem at the beginning of the film given how much ANH willingly slows down to develop Luke's Tatooine slice of life. I dig that it helps me to really feel the distance between the PT and OT, and how even when the Empire does first touch Luke's life in a horrifically tragic manner that there still is a sense of distance and a route out of conflict for Luke if he were to choose that path. It's an intimate focus, and having a sprawling war film as a bridge, with full blown, all out battle, destruction, and death...just feels superfluous to me. I prefer those events alluded to rather than depicted, especially when the depiction is (imo) limited to bland action without the strong character foundation I usually find in SW.

 

Here we go again about the character development of Rogue One. Seriously whenever I think of Star Wars, character development is not the first or even the second thing that comes to mind. The characters DOES have to be likable and in Rogue One they are. I don't need to know what Jyn, Cassian and the rest of the gang did out in their backyards as children. Rogue One is the first real, true Star WARS film.

 

Fair enough. However, I don’t see how Jyn’s experience as a young girl, her relationship with her father (and Saw), and her relationship with Cassian, aren’t at the very least just as strong a character foundation as we saw with the main lead in ANH. Luke’s an idealistic farmboy whose parents are killed and he therefore follows in the footsteps of his Jedi father and confronts the Empire. That’s his development. Jyn is a cynical orphan whose mother was killed and whose father abandoned her to work for the Empire (though secretly to undermine it), who ends up carrying on the legacy of her father (once she learns of his covert play) by taking action to destroy the Death Star herself, after he is killed. I fully understand not appreciating the more naturalistic and less pulpy/ humorous style of Rogue One. That’s a legit difference based purely on taste. But this idea that the main OT characters in ANH had more development than those in Rogue One is, I think, objectively not quite right.

To be clear, I’m absolutely not suggesting that you must like the film. Some of my closest friends don’t really enjoy it.

I’m simply saying that the characterization is not at all outside the norm of SW characterization, whether you like the film or not. Star Wars has always been very economical with character arcs.

 

I think it's because we never really we what kind of relationship Jyn had with her father or with Saw. Saw apparently raised her like a daughter, but the movie didn't even hint at that. The first we see of Jyn and her family are them on the run, and for me it's seeing what I'm missing out on when characters are split up that brings out the emotion. Had the movie started off by showing them acting like a real family, it'd be a different story for me.

Same with the whole Rogue One team. I don't know what I'm missing once they're dead, so I don't feel much.