PT Rogue One and the Prequel Trilogy (PLEASE TAG ALL SPOILERS)

Didnt pay attention to a change in size. How much are we actually talking about?

 

'I don't know.

 

The DS1 has gone through numerous size changes - usually back and forth between 160 km and 120 km. It became 120 km again before the reboot, and all post-reboot sources that give a number, gave that number - until the Rogue One Visual Guide came out and gave it as 160 km.

Main reason I thought it was here to stay was that Complete Locations gave a 660 km figure for Starkiller base - and the DS1 next to Starkiller Base, in the holo, looked less than 1/5 the diameter. 160km is nearly 1/4 the diameter of Starkiller Base.

 

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So, does anyone think that there is wiggle room for Bail Organa to have not been on Alderaan when it blew up?

 

I don't think so.

 

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Always a possibility, but I kinda got the impression that we were seeing him going to his death on Alderaan. There was a sort of a finality feel in his words to Mon Mothma.

 

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Or maybe we'll se him with half-robotic prostetic legs and zabrak tattoos

 

I feel like the one Jyn was in would be more of a transport maybe, and the clone one would be more weaponized and whatnot. (I don't exactly remember since I've only seen it once )

 

Oh crap, I didn't know that was

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Mustafar

. I simply thought they had created a new planet to resemble it like with the one they blew up in TFA. My mind is in complete array now with this fact!

I did instantly recognize

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Coruscant

however, and it was so nice to see.

I REALLY dug the movie, y'all. Some of the planet designs (the asteroid city, Jedah) really evoked Lucas for me and others (the beach) reminded me of some TCW planets such as Rodia. Then of course, the Death Star also produced some amazing visuals.

 

Only the dialogue between Dodonna & Leia in ANH directly refers to his fate. The wiggle room is that they believe he was there but he wasn't. Not impossible, just improbable.

 

Also in Bloodline, there's a lot of mention of how Bail was killed on Alderaan. So, yea, the only way he could be alive is if he wasn't there and didn't come back to the Alliance at all. (which would be weird )

 

Wait, when was

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Coruscant

in the movie?

 

2nd Erso flashback.

 

I don't recall. Could you jog my memory?

 

Galen is wearing an Imperial officer outfit, in his apartment talking with Krennic, and he puts Jyn to bed.

 

I really enjoy that scene. It's like nostalgia for me (being a PT fan) , of which infact is a nostalgic moment in the film itself.

MJ

 

To be honest, I'm in two minds about RO. I think it's visually spectacular (aside from two CG characters), and the acting was very good. There's also some great action, and great world building. It contains (too?) many moments of fan service, some great, some not so great. Yet, overall there's not much character development, with Jyn having the most backstory, but even she pretty much instantly goes from being an apathetic observer to full blown rebel in one admittedly well acted scene. So, while I was certainly greatly entertained, and really enjoyed being back in the OT era, I'm left wondering, if most would have rated this movie highly, if it wasn't a Star Wars movie, and didn't tie in directly to ANH. Taking away the Star Wars aesthetic, and nerdgasm moments, I think we're left with a pretty flimsy story, and pretty flat characterizations. Shouldn't we expect a little more?

 

DrDre: I'm not so sure and I'll definitely have to wait for a Blu-ray release for a more thorough examination.

Now I will say that a lot of these modern action big-franchise-big-budget movies are very well done, but most of them are done by the numbers and in an extremely safe manner (that's how I feel TFA was done). I'd say that Rogue One broke out of the mould in enough crucial places* that it didn't really seem like that sort of flick.

Spoiler: *

Mainly that:

• it doesn't have a forced romance, thought it could easily have had one,
• being bold in killing all the heroes.

But it surely helps that the acting is up to modern standards (I still maintain that none of the originals would be well received in this day and age when it comes to acting, and they definitely belong to the era they were made in) and that it ties in directly to the original Star Wars.

 

Yes, but to me the difference between TFA and RO is, that TFA to an extend is a good story retold, but IMO retold in a good way. They took the safe route for sure, but unless Episode VIII plays it equally safe, this isn't much of a problem for me. It's still a great story, and can serve as this generation's ANH, while introducing some great characters for a new generation.

However, in several ways RO plays it equally safe, but in this case to the character's and story's detriment:

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I think it has many more fan service moments than TFA. Ultimately it's story and characters are made subservient to the OT. The most glaring example of this is, that Vader's rampage aboard the rebel ship is set up as the emotional climax of the film for the audience, rather than the death of our main characters. While the Vader sequence is extremely cool, it remains little more than fan service, as he serves little purpose in this story. Ben Mendelsohn's Oscar Krennic is literally made subservient to a CG recreation of an OT character, and it appears the death of his character is overshadowed by hearing an emulation of Peter Cushing's famous line "You may fire when ready...". So, from my perspective the interesting dynamic between Jyn, Galen and Krennic is crushed beneath the weight of what's to come.

 

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I think I'd be blown away if this wasn't a SW movie. Bcs no other film series has the b**** to deliver an epic movie like this with such a big budget & kill off the entire main cast. Every single character on the movie poster. Look at the Marvel films, bruise-free action where everyone's fine in the end. So if some other big blockbuster did this I'd be pretty shocked.

As for character development & appeal, given this was always going to be a one-off self-contained movie I think they did well. Look at the friendship between Chirrut & Baze for example. In total it would've been lucky to get 5 minutes of screen-time. I totally bought their friendship & was quite moved by their deaths as a result. Jyn & Cassian...decent development. Nothing amazing but like I said, I don't think this type of one-off adventure lends itself to a tonne of character growth.

 

DrDre: I see your point.

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I think it comes down to the audience's expectations and director's intent.

I certainly wasn't awed by that Vader scene as much as a lot of people seem to have been, so I was definitely still feeling the sacrifice of our heroes. But if I step back and look at it, then I can't help but agree that Vader's scene ultimately does (at least slightly) overshadow what should have been our heroes' moment and climax of the film.

 

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Yeah, it's a balssy move to an extend, yet not entirely unexpected. Given that we knew where the story would end, I expected most wouldn't survive the film.

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I think there was enough development for the last act to work, and have an impact, but only just. I liked the friendship between Chirrut & Baze, but ultimately we learn very little about their motivations or background. They're "Guardians of the Whills", a term that's never really explained. It's not really made clear why they help the rebels in the first place. A ton of people are arrested by the Empire every day. Why would Chirrut choose to help our protagonists? It seems only, because the story requires it, which IMO is never a good thing. There's no scene, early in the story, where Chirrut explains, he believes The Force has a purpose for Jyn, or something like that. It could have been a nice moment of character development for Jyn as well, where we learn more about her motivations or lack thereof at this point in the story. It could be a good stepping stone to the scene, where she sees the hologram of her father, and made her transition from a loner to a rebel less sudden. This is one of the major problems of the Jyn character, namely, that up to the point where she sees the hologram of her father, she doesn't really have one. She's tough in a fight, but aside from the prologue, there's not a single scene, where we learn anything about who she is, and what she stands for. It's not until she reunites with Saw Gerrera, that we learn she doesn't have much purpose in life, only to be given one a few minutes later.

It seems Jyn's main purpose in this film, is to be a catalyst for the events of ANH. This is a weakness IMO, as the events of ANH thus drive the characters and story of RO, rather than the personal tale of Jyn, her father, and Krennic driving the events of ANH. In my view, the theft of the Death Star plans should have been a by-product of the arc of our main characters, not the central theme for the story to confidently stand on it's own.

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I think the latter was actually easy to accomplish, by not killing off her father until near the climax of the film, and thus making the search for her father Jyn's main purpose, leading to a final confrontation between Jyn, her father, and Krennic.

As it stands the confrontation between Jyn and Krennic doesn't make much sense. Rather than shooting Jyn on the spot, like all the other rebels, he asks her who she is, like she means something to him. This would have made some sense, if Krennic and Jyn had spotted each other from a distance at the site of Galen's death, but in the film it becomes another example of the story driving a character.

 

What exactly is the timetable for the transition from Republic to Imperial military equipment after ROTS in the Disney Canon?

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It seems that the opening scene takes place quite soon after ROTS. Jyn is just a toddler in the flashback to her family's time on Coruscant during the Clone Wars, and she's only a few years older when Krennic abducts Galen from the ringed planet Lah'mu.

However, by this time, Krennic's Death Troopers wear armour that's more like the ANH-era Stormtroopers than the Phase II clone troopers. If the scene takes place that soon after ROTS, it may make sense for it to resemble the latter instead, with kama skirts, RC-style lit visors or some other holdovers of the clone troopers' institutional heritage. It might have even made sense to get Temuera Morrison to give them voices in this scene, rather than that babble from their helmets. The shuttle used by the Death Troopers is a good design, but it doesn't look like it fits in the timeframe of the immediate post-ROTS era.

The Legends EU depicted a very sudden transition to ANH-style military equipment in about 18 BBY, with no "Phase III" trooper armour and no transition models between the Eta-2/Alpha-3 and TIE starfighters or between the Venator-class and Imperial-class warships. If the new Canon depicts the same, that would be a big missed opportunity, IMO.

On the other hand, the Death Troopers do at least have helmets resembling the 'Bad Batch' clone commando nicknamed Wrecker. IIRC, Galen's Republic military uniform in the Coruscant flashback is like what Tarkin and the bridge crew wear at the very end of ROTS, which was the basis for the Republic military uniforms in TCW.

Another slight oddness is Jyn having a toy stormtrooper. Not only is it a bit early, but Galen and Lyra seem so partisan that they wouldn't let their child play with such a thing (or even a toy battle droid, given their backstory with the CIS). A toy clone trooper, maybe. Or even a completely non-militaristic toy, given that Galen is a pacifist.

These are only slight issues I had, though. On the whole, in a plethora of ways, R1 did a fine job of credibly placing itself in the SW setting.

 

An interesting thing about RO is that it does something no other "Star Wars Story" are going to do -it glues the trilogies together by creating a new trilogy inside the saga -lets call it "The Death Star Trilogy" -it's created by the episodes III -ROTS, III.V -RO and IV -ANH and tells the story about the how the darkness of the Empire falls over the galaxy and how the first faint light of the dawn apears.

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Part 1: ROTS -The Death Star is born and the democracy dies. Part 2: RO -The Death Star takes its first steps and becomes the terror weapon ewerybody knows, but it unites a rebel movement on the brink of falling apart. Part 3: ANH -The Death Star shows its full potential but gets destroyed by the now united rebels.

 

I thought that was TFA's biggest problem, retelling ANH which to me was the ultimate in lazy fan service and lazy writing as well as artistic cowardice. Made it so I didn't care about the story and made the GFFA seem tiny. Also it was a very bland and poor retelling IMO. Really drives home the point that some fans want the same thing over and over, endless fighting between the rebels and empire. Also felt TFA's characters were flat and hollow and both it and R1 seem to be trying to copy Hunger Games popularity.