Rogue One Is R1 Your New Favorite?

This!

 

Not my favorite overall, but exponentially more enjoyable for me than the ST films. Honestly, without RO I think I would have just given up completely on Star Wars at this point. But RO was so good that I hold out some small amount of hope that it wasn't a fluke.

 

I said the same in another thread! If Only Gareth had done the ST!
And preferably with Lucas' scripts.

I thought Rogue One was awesome. A great story. Great characters. Note a great female character also. Epic action, great plot, and emotional film.

I thought it is the best new Star Wars film since ROTS personally yes.

 

No, but as others have written, it's presently the one redeeming effort of the Disney era. The only post-ROTS SW film that left me exhilarated, rather than deflated.

Ironically, RO is by far the lowest-rated of the three new films, even though it boasts the most memorable bevy of characters, the best-rendered action sequences, and the most emotionally resonant scenes. Which leads me to wonder: what do the critics know?

 

Nothing beats the OT, and I highly doubt anything will.

However, I will give R1 this. For a movie that is completely pointless and treated as somewhat of an afterthought to serve as a place holder between the main episodes, the film turned out to be a very nice companion piece to A New Hope. More than any Star Wars film post OT, this film really felt like an EU book come to life, everything down to the anagram looking names. It took what we already knew from the OT and expanded on it to create a story that was interesting and a little different from the norm for Star Wars.

At the time, I said all I wanted out of the movie was "Dirty Dozen in Space" and I felt like I got that and then some. I liked the way the film looked too as this was the dirtiest looking SW film since the OT, so it had more of a "lived in" look to it that SW was originally known for. It felt like watching a classic old school war movie, but with Star Wars iconography, and I enjoyed it tremendously overall. Even things that people griped about, like CGI Tarkin and Leia, I was at least somewhat OK with because to me, you can't have a Death Star backstory movie without Tarkin and ending on Leia in the Blockade Runner makes sense, so I'll take it.

Actually, in a weird way, R1 is a better Episode III than Episode III was. The original idea behind the opening crawl and Blockade Runner chase as the open was to call back to the old serials of yore, Flash Gordon and the like. Sometimes, you'd come into the theater having missed the earlier entry, so the one you watch picks up right where the last one left off, and the crawl is a quick way to catch everyone up just in case they missed it. This was Lucas' way of paying homage to that experience but also dump people right in the middle of the story without having to worry too much about exposition, and it worked well. Obviously, none of the Star Wars episodes (except now for VIII) pick up right where the last one left off and that whole idea sort of morphed into "That's just what Star Wars does", but it is neat to now have the cliffhanger we missed that lead into Episode IV, haha.

I know some people found the characters to be boring, but for the most part, I liked them. They had a rag tag bunch of nobodies appeal. This felt like a movie about the names on a war memorial that you would probably think "I wonder what these people did to get on this memorial". Chirrut and Baze's friendship was cool, and I liked Jyn enough, and I'm a big droid buff, so K-2SO was cool. I liked most of the characters, so it wasn't an issue for me. And actually, after giving it a rewatch, I've come to like Cassian more too. His hardened edge makes him a bit harsher around the edges and more willing to do unsavory things for the cause, which probably could have been expanded on more, but it still worked for what we had.

And building on how it is a companion piece to A New Hope, it was nice to see things like Red 5 get bumped off to make room for Luke and explain how such an obvious weakness got build into the Death Star in the first place.

Did everything work? Well, the mind squid thing was a stupid plot point that went nowhere, and Saw Guerrera, despite being a neat idea for a character, is a bit confusing in execution. I also could have done without the Ponda Baba/Dr. Evansan cameo as that felt super forced (the moments I hated most in Force Awakens were pulling out Luke's training remote and the chess board on the Falcon. Member that guys! MEMBER!). All the other callbacks or connections seemed to fit, at least a little bit. Leia has to be there at the end. Vader and Tarkin need to be there to A) Show where Krennic falls in the Empire hierarchy and B) Connect to IV. 3PO and R2 have to be around since they are going to be there at the start of IV. But the Ponda Baba/Evansan one felt super super forced, and was completely unnecessary. And there was way too much planet hopping in this film too. Most Star Wars films have what, 3 major locations? This one was just bouncing from planet to planet to the point that it got a little jarring, especially early on.

Taking it all together though, for a film that never needed to exist, it gave me more than I ever could have hoped, and I give the movie a ton of credit for that.

 

Rogue One feels, to me, like a Blake's 7 story set in the Star Wars universe. The only difference is that, if it were Blake's 7, the archive files would have been moved somewhere else long ago, leaving an empty room, making our anti-heroes' deaths pointless.

 

Well that sounds depressing. I will remember never to see that.

 

I honestly love the film and it is certainly a favourite. It actually nicely bridges ROTS and ANH nicely too. And if you had to pick up one film to watch as a standalone, then it works well too!

 

This film is the only film since ROTJ that truly captured the look and feel of a SW film that was layed down by the OT! It goes far beyond just being set in the same era as well...

 

No. It's the only Star Wars film that left me feeling "meh". From an objective POV I know it's a better made film than TPM and AOTC, but those films at least evoked reaction in me. With the exception of K-2SO (best droid ever?) and the Vader hallway scene, the film was like a glass of tepid tap water for me. It's the only SW film I don't own, or intend to own, and I have no intention or desire to.

Yet I've never wanted to like a Star Wars film more. I'm fine that my views of TPM and AOTC have deteriorated over the years. But I can't seem to shake the desire to want to like Rouge One. Likely because I keep seeing people online (nobody in my real life talks about RO ever) swear it's the best SW, a rival to the OT, and I JUST. DON'T. GET. IT. But I really, really want to grasp how it's possible a portion of fandom can elevate this film so damn high.

So I will eventually take a second look, and solely because you people just love it so much.

 

If you've only seen it once, it's not surprising that you haven't warmed up to it. I didn't care much for the characters the first time I saw it, but I liked the final battle enough to go back and watch it again. Rewatching it, knowing more about the characters and their backgrounds and motivations, I care about them more every time I see it, and it gets more personal and more powerful. Give it another chance.

 

^I second this. I didn't care much for R1 at first viewing either, and I wasn't looking forward to it when it was first released. I did like it more after the second viewing. Enough that I really wish they split R1 into two films instead of limiting it to one.

 

I'm definitely going to try again.

I did some time last year, but I got about 5 mins in and just thought "I really don't care". Hoping to press in and hopefully really "get it".

 

Wouldn't that have been something! There was a lot of stuff cut so I imagine this would have been a possibility...

 

It was a trilogy swished into one film. The characters deserved more space.

 

in the top 5 but not my favorite. It loses points because if you haven't seen the OT it makes no sense what so ever. It IS exactly what I wanted from a non saga film. It felt like a good EU book on the big screen.

 

Cant wait to find out what happens in the sequel!!!!

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You'll have to wait until May '77.

 

I heard some guy named Luke blows up the Death Star. Sorry for the potential spoiler.

 

Didn't you know? In 2027 that was made non-canon, when the Heir to the Empire movie was announced.

 

And gets to kiss the chick in white at the end of R1 I bet!

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Who hasn't seen the OT at this point?

 

Plenty of people, but mostly those who have absolutely zero interest in science fiction in general.