Rogue One Is Rogue One an 'Adult' Star Wars Film?

Snax Rebo

That is why I am a much bigger fan of Cinemasins. Jeremy & Co. don't take themselves so seriously. And it's rants against how unoriginal Hollywood as become makes me stand up in my chair and applaud!

 

I politely disagree.

I never liked the "clickbait" channels. RLM always stood out to me because of how unique they are, so I'll always love their work.

 

They are all clickbait channels including RLM. Just to me Cinemasins is the best of the lot.

 

I love Cinemasins. And HISHE, although technically not a review channel, but does hilariously address some of the shortcomings of a movie in a not so serious away. He did make a nice review of Rogue One though.

 

Can't argue there.

 

an.

 

To be fair it started out talking about RLM's opinion of the film and how that related to the discussion. I do actually think there opinion sums up the idea that often its actually adults who are less in favour of blockbusters having depth to them, the divide between "serious cinema" and "entertainment blockbuster" tends to build up for a lot of people as they age and the more fantastical elements of the latter mean there less willing to be seen taking it seriously.

I think that sums up a good deal of the difference between TFA and Rogue One for me, the former like so many modern blockbusters I think actively works to undermine its own credibility to play into the audiences desire to not be seen taking "geekish" stories and settings seriously. Even as someone who thinks there quite flawed the view that the prequels suffered from taking themselves too seriously was I think always misdirected, I think they suffered from a lack of personality in the characters but that's a very different issue IMHO. The OT has personality but outside perhaps of the Ewok section(even then it never went meta) I don't think it ever looked to actively undermine its setting/story that was always taken very seriously.

 

In this new era of SW films I think only time will tell, and we will just have to wait and see what tone the ST and the other Anthology movies take. From the two that are out so far, I would say yes, because again, going back to a point I made previously, after having watched RO and then going back and watching TFA, sometimes I can't help but think how childish TFA is. I try not to, but if I'm just being honest and unfiltered without thinking about it, I just can't help it. With so much of the character development and relationships between characters throughout TFA, you can practically watch it as if you are watching an animated film. And I say this with specific regards to now having seen RO, where prior to that I would probably still say that TFA is a really great SW film and gets into the grittiness they were trying to achieve. I'm not saying TFA isn't a great SW film, and I still enjoy watching it, I just see it differently now in comparison to RO.

 

It's an adult film if you believe Jyn and Cassian had enough time during the elevator ride.

 

You're welcome!

 

Well, the leads are quite different. Jyn Erso and most of her allies are pretty jaded people who've seen (and done) a lot of nasty stuff. Rey and Finn are innocents in many ways and have a lot less baggage (and the baggage they have is more of what's happened to them, not things they've done). That will affect the tone of the movies.

 

But even taking it further than Finn and Rey, look at Kylo Ren, the supposed big baddie of the ST. Honestly, he doesn't seem all that big and bad anymore in comparison to the hard realities and hard characters we see in RO. Think if Saw's mercenary group encountered Kylo, for example, do you see those guys being remotely intimidated by him? This privileged spoiled brat trying to be evil and unforgiving. They would probably laugh their asses off at him and make fun of him and just keep on their way.

You could do further character comparisons. Krennic being a far more savage military director than Hux could ever wish he could be. Any one Death Trooper who makes Captain Phasma look like child's play. Any of the rebel fighters, in the words of Cassian, these hardened spies and saboteurs who have done terrible things in the name of the Rebellion, making Poe Dameron look like nothing more than a boy scout.

I'm not trying to sound so harsh about the characters from TFA. But it's honestly how I see it now. Which again, all goes back to my original point, where I just can no longer see TFA as being any kind of gritty SW film as a direct result of now having seen RO. I would say Episodes 8 & 9 have a lot to contend with now if the makers of the ST plan on it being taken seriously in direct comparison to RO.

 

Yes. Kylo Ren is a Force user, doesn't show mercy, and welds a great deal of power within the First Order. I think Kylo Ren encountering the Saw's group would go just about as well as the Rebels trying to capture Vader in the Vader Down comic book. Even if Kylo Ren isn't up to Vader's standards yet, he's still one nasty barve. There's also the whole patricide thing and the hints from the moviemakers that we're seeing Kylo Ren's origin story as to how he becomes the master villain.

Poe Dameron and the Sacred Village denizens would testify otherwise.

Hux was the one who proposed using the Death Star to destroy Hosnian Prime, so he's about as trigger happy as Krennic was, so no shortage of savagery. Hux also has a higher rank than Krennic (Hux is one of the leaders of the First Order military, Krennic was just managing a war project and under Tarkin's rule) and, unlike Krennic, actually had respect and success. Krennic literally spends every scene he's in being metaphorically kicked between the legs with steel-toed boots; Tarkin steals his glory, Vader calls him for an audience just to tell him he's in disgrace and needs to fix his mess, he gets hoisted by his own petard, etc. From the Catalyst novel and the Rogue One novelization, we know that Krennic's only wish in life was promotion in the millitary; basically, Krennic wanted to be Hux, not the other way round.

Phasma is a pretty steely operator, considering her carrying out the mass execution order in the movie's beginning without remorse. Also, had the Death Troopers been in the First Order military, Phasma would've been their commanding officer.

True, but they have a different job. Poe's not a spy like that. It takes all kinds in a war.

I don't think TFA is supposed to be gritty; it's not a war movie, but an adventure story. The Star Wars movies had had a variety of tones with different levels of grit and levity and that variety makes for nice changes of pace. Heck, the original Star Wars movies are considered great and none of them have the same level of grit as Rogue One.

 

WebLurker:

As I was writing that I also thought in my head that perhaps the First Order is still trying to catch up to the savagery the Empire once was.

You make a fair point that it is still an origin story right now for Kylo. But still, Kylo bringing down an old man and his unarmed father is about all we see him do, I'd say he's trying too hard at best. Yes he is a force user, but I don't think being a force user is enough in and of itself. He loses a fight against two novices in Finn and Rey. We also see him throw massive childish tantrums over not getting his way. He wears that mask for seemingly no reason other than to appear darker and more evil, Poe wasn't really all that afraid of him when confronted by him and even kinda talks **** to him. Not to mention, he comes from about the most privileged background anybody could for the SW universe, so at this point, he's really just a spoiled rich kid trying to go bad, and I can only hope his turn to the dark side turns out to be more than having some daddy issues. Compare that to Vader who was born a slave and suffered massive personal tragedies in his turn to the Dark Side.

Phasma loses all credibility when she becomes the punch line for Han and Finn. And, okay, maybe Krennic wasn't as brutal as I might have described him as, that was a bad comparison. But Hux is also trying way too hard to be this evil dictator. I have a feeling his position in the First Order is a privileged one as well.

As a side note, when I look at both Kylo and Hux, I can't help but think of the character JP from the movie Grandma's Boy every time I see them. I had that thought when I first saw TFA, and that was way before seeing RO, so now after seeing RO, it kind of makes it even more comical. YouTube that reference if you don't know what I mean.

Kylo, Phasma, Hux, Poe, Finn and Rey, the whole lot of them, when you take a step back and look at it, the whole thing right now is just being run by kids basically.

I get your other point that the ST is adventure films and not meant to be gritty. I was just saying that as a direct result of having seen RO, that it's hard to take the ST all that seriously anymore. It's more about my view of RO, which is in my opinion a far superior SW movie than TFA, rather than trying to be an objective analysis of the ST.

 

Rogue One is naturally somewhat different to the main saga films I would say in that its basically a story where your lead characters come from the background setting. You look at the OT and I think theres always a bit of a divide between Luke/Han/Leia/3PO/Lando/etc and the background setting, the leading characters are a bit more larger than life and often have some humour to them where as the setting is for the most part rock solid in terms of gravitas.

TFA I think goes the opposite direction, for one thing I think the leads clearly become even more larger than life than the OT(outside of the Ewok section which again is I think pretty close to Abrams style) but much more noticeably the whole setting becomes much more cartoonish. Gleeson is a very good actor but really his Hux is just silly, compared to Krennic or indeed any of the major Imperials in the OT he's a foaming cartoon Nazi.

As you say Rian Johnson I think does have his work cut out bringing SW back down to earth and injecting some weight to it again or else I suspect the ST will be a Marvel style diversion that doesn't keep a lasting popularity.

 

MotivateR5D4

I could see how that might work. After all the idea of the First Order is that it's the Nazis if they built a new reich after fleeting to Argentina.

And order the massacre of the Sacred Village in the beginning. The reference material also establish that he had quite a few Jedi kills on his record (or at least his fellow Jedi students). And certainly a key part of Kylo's characterization is that he wants to be the next Darth Vader, the biggest, baddest dark sider of them all, but can't quite cut himself off from the light (at least prior to murdering his father). However, I'm still not sure, even that considered, if he's quite the incompetent needed for a Rebel cell to find him a joke.

He actually beats Finn when he decides to stop playing. I also think that his severe injuries create special circumstances for Rey's win. I was more thinking about him before then, like when he was on Jakku or Takodana. That's him at his best, what anyone wanting to attack him would need to contend with.

True. He's not exactly emotionally mature, although I'm not sure that it hinders him much in battle.

It does also offer protection.

Wasn't Poe more or less bluffing? Kylo basically curb-stomped him from beginning to end.

However, Kylo is a foil for Rey and Finn. From their backgrounds, he had every reason to be the next great hero, while they had every reason to be the villain's followers, or at least only out for themselves. However, Kylo Ren is the one trying to be the bad guy, while Finn and Rey are the heroes of the story.

Kinda? Her reasoning for cooperation basically comes down to "you will fail to win, so why should I let myself be killed for no reason?" Granted, her confidence in her soldiers turned out to be misplaced, but, watching the fight, the First Order would've won if Han and Chewie hadn't bombed the oscillator facility, so her thinking wasn't too far off. (I think the thing with Phasma was that she was always intended to be a minor character, but the adds used her so much that fans went in expecting to see a major villain who was going be cool and bad***, which wasn't the point. It will be interesting to see how the character is handled in the future.)

I think it is indicated in the tie-ins that Hux did have an Imperial pedigree. Hux did have that hammy speech in his movie, but that did seem to be more for the troops. In his other scenes, he seems much calmer and a lot closer to Krennic in nature.

I'll have to look that up.

Kylo and Poe are in their thirties and Hux is a few years older (from Aftermath: Life Debt and Shattered Empire). Not sure about Phasma. Finn is about twenty-three and Rey is nineteen. Also, Rey, Finn, and Poe aren't leaders but followers in the grand scheme of things. Kylo, Phasma, and Hux maybe important First Order leaders, but answer to Snoke, who was alive since the prequels (according to the novelization).

Fair enough.

 

I think the more apt word we're looking for is maturity. From a moral and thematic compass, yes it is somewhat more mature than most of the other films, but not the most mature of them all.

The most mature film is ROTS, which is family friendly for the first half before plunging into full on trauma for the second half.

 

ROTS comes off as ridiculous where as I could take Rogue One seriously.

 

No way. ROTS is, IMO, one of the least mature Star Wars films of all. It has horrendous slapstick mixed with cartoonish moral dilemmas (going "dark" is like flipping a light switch), including the sudden and ridiculous turn of Anakin. Not to mention Grievous and that whole subplot, which read like a Roger Rabbit character popping into the GFFA for a spell. Rogue One is a million times more mature, in terms of its themes, characters and world, than ROTS. IMO, of course.

ETA: This gif captures ROTS's alleged "maturity" for me:

 

Not to mention,



There's a difference between mature and pointlessly edgy.

 

Yes, the choreography is over the top in that shot, but the context of that scene is what counts.

ROTS is mature in that it is about failure of both individuals and institutions on a profound and devastating scale.

R1 essentially just extends the OT themes of unity and family and transmits them into self sacrifice, which is admirable, but not quite breaking new ground.

Yes, the deaths of the heroes in R1 are meaningful, but I prefer the deaths of the Jedi in ROTS, because their sacrifice occurs within the context of a meaningless war, and that is truly traumatic.

 

I agree that the bolded, were it to be presented with depth and maturity, would have been brilliant. However, it's a theme that's presented with the maturity-level of an internet troll, and the subtlety of a block of hardwood to the face. The execution is so poor, one can only suspect that Lucas didn't fully grasp the themes he was presenting.

RO is about sacrifice, yes. But it's also about the complex moral landscape of principled opposition, and the conflicts that creates among the well-meaning. And those themes are presented beautifully (visually), with subtlety, and in a way that simply feels true to life. The occurrences in ROTS feel like they happened in an oddball history textbook with bad illustrations written by someone who didn't really understand the political and personal dynamics at play during the historical period he was covering. Like a frenzied "conspiracy theory" vision of history. Devoid of the truth of why humans do what they do.

 

I'd say Star Wars has always been about broad strokes before subtlety, so I wouldn't think that Lucas ever wanted the films to be necessarily true to life. I think the complaints of lack of motivation or carefully planned beats leading up to the tremendous second half of ROTS are also misplaced. Say what you will about the execution of the prequel trilogy, it is indeed imperfect, but the fundamental narrative components are, in my mind, correctly placed in each of those films to lead into that payoff. Let's also not forget that ROTS is also about the destruction of a family in its infancy, the most heartbreaking casualty of all, only to be made whole again by the end of ROTJ.

On the other hand, while I appreciate the thematic ideas of R1, I've seen those themes done before, and the execution comes up short. The rapport between the Rogue One crew only works halfway, so while I'm touched by the sacrifice of the characters, I'm never fully moved by it.

Different strokes for different folks.