Rogue One The Official "List Your Complaints about Rogue One" Discussion Thread

Han Solo: It is for me, sister. Look, I ain't in this for your revolution, and I'm not in it for you, Princess. I expect to be well paid. I'm in it for the money.
Princess Leia Organa: You needn't worry about your reward. If money is all that you love, then that's what you'll receive.

Sorry, i couldn't resist

 

Did you walk out of the film? You seemed to have missed the second half where Jyn lets go of her bitterness and sacrifices herself for a higher cause than self-preservation. A lot of people actually found her character compelling as evinced by the effect her demise had on them. Most people were moved by the reconciliation of father and daughter midway through the film. There a few, like you, who wanted a more traditional Star Wars heroine, but as I said above the saga benefits from having different character types. (Which is why I hope Rey becomes more distinct as the series goes on, and becomes more than just Luke 2.0)

 

And he even tries to recruit Luke shortly before the final assault. He gets reprimanded by his first mate, but we have little else to go on. His intervention later is a complete surprise and quite exhilarating, but you have to look closely for the signs that the Corellian mercenary is changing stripes.

 

I did... I like the fact that she wasn't a by-the-book heroine. I also love the fact Cassian shot someone in the back (actually two people) Luke is still the best all round hero for these films and that is fine...doesn't mean we cannot get emotionally invested in some of the other characters

 

Tarados, yes I see what your saying there. You make a good point.

I think there is room for both types of movie in this universe, and It supports the the reasoning behind spin off movies. So I think it they have approached the format correctly. Not everyone will be up for a visceral SW experience.

One thing is for sure, humour needs to be present in any format


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Jyn was very likeable to me. And beyond saving little girls, she had nice personal exchanges with her father and former guardian, Cassian, K2SO, Baze and Chirrut (as well as a small moment with Bodhi) that I thought fleshed out her humanity (and warmth) quite well. She wasn't "dour" for the entire film, as hyperbolic detractors contend.

IMO, she was the most likeable lead in SW yet. I like Rey in the ST and Luke in the OT, but I relate to Jyn more.

And please don't brandish screenwriting 101 manuals. Those are for amateur screenwriters, and should only be seen as rules of thumb, not ironclad requirements.

 

Freedom of speech is actually a two-way street. I get to have an opinion just like everyone else.

 

The message from Galen to his daughter Jyn is very emotional and very powerful, it's very, very well done. As far as Saw getting that message, so what? The message is meant for Jyn.

 

Amateur screenwriters? Fair enough, but I trust amateurs like Syd Field over random internet message board users on effective commercial storytelling.

Look, I respect others opinions, but to me Jyn fell flat as character. Was she terrible? No, I just feel like they could have done a much better job at helping audiences emotionally invest and root for her. She had the same problems many of hollywood female "badass" protagonists have these days. Cold, dour, and having a very vanilla and safe personality and an even more hokey turn into the inspirational speech mouth piece in the third act. I can see why critics had issues with Felicity's performance and why the general consensus is audiences had a hard time connecting to the ensemble as a whole. Bodhi/Jedi Monk were actually more relateable in my opinion.

 

Why do you think Bodhi was a villain at all? He was a pilot... just a normal guy

 

Hm....it appears I have posted here before, but I cannot find what I complained about.

Needless to say..



Krennic's cape looked like a sheet.

 

Actually, the movie was well liked by audiences: it has a Cinema Score of A and a Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score of 88%, and has been nominated for various fan awards (Ms. Jones, in fact, was the recent recipient of the Empire award for favorite film actress). This would unlikely be the case if people didn't care for the characters. Those who say otherwise are in the minority.

What would you have done to make Jyn Erso more likeable? I don't understand how you can criticize the writers for giving us a "vanilla and safe personality" and at the same time say Jyn Erso was too cold or dour. Isn't making her less than heroic at the beginning a risky path to take with a character? If the writers were playing it safe, we would have gotten a character with no flaws, but Jyn does have flaws. And if her moments with her father failed to move people, well, I'm not sure what else they could do to draw your sympathy. Jyn Erso was a product of what happened to her as a youth and of the dark times she lived in, to present her in another way - say, as a swashbuckling female version of Han Solo - would have been the lazier approach.

 

I can tell you my problem with the characters, they tell you more than just show you. they dont let them breathe or give them enough to chew on. Cassian has the most interesting story arc but the problem is it just starts and stops. his speech to jyn on the ship was awesome, how he has been in the fight since a child and doesnt pick and choose when to follow orders, he just follows the orders,but the next time we see him he is directly disobeying orders to blindly follow jyn who he himself just put down. thats a big jump of logic and faith. The movie to me doesnt earn the sudden switch for the characters. they all act one way then another really fast. I also had a problem with how they tried and used the force in this movie, but thats just a personal opinion. Also think fans give it way too many passes on fan service that a lot didnt give to TFA. I feel like its the director's fault and not the acting bc every edwards movie has the same problem with wooden acting and cringe worthy dialogue. here are some excerpts

from a review of edward's godzilla

With Edwards’s reboot of the 1954 Japanese classic (last rebooted in a mediocre 1998 updatestarring Matthew Broderick), the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. “Godzilla” not only has more monsters — three, to be precise — but they’re way more interesting than any of the human characters.
First mistake: killing off Juliette Binoche before the butter has even congealed on my popcorn. Second mistake: casting Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn, and then giving them nothing to do.
The script is derivative and oddly humorless, and the characterization is weak: Fine actors like Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe have nothing to do but spout exposition, while a bland Taylor-Johnson is miscast as the square-jawed hero. It’s always fun to watch scaly, skyscraper-size behemoths lay waste to civilization, but a bit more human drama would have been welcome.

These are the same problems I have with rogue one, all action with no emotional punch.

 

You haven't been watching Marvel films then.

I would say as well that "humourless" has become something of a questionable criticism. By modern standards something like Raiders of he Lost Ark would be "humourless" because its not ramming clumsy metahumour down your throat throughout 90% of the runtime.

 

I think you missed a key detail. Cassian doesn't jump from following orders to disobeying orders. In that confrontation with Jyn, he is hotly reacting to her accusation precisely because he just disobeyed orders for perhaps the first time (by not shooting Galen), and despite acting on his conscience (or acting in solidarity with Jyn), he is harshly put down by Jyn for lying to her, and putting her father in danger. So despite doing the right thing, ethically, Galen still dies and Jyn still blames him.

So the switch wasn't sudden at all. Cassian disobeys orders by not shooting Galen, hotly reacts to a truth bomb from Jyn (while clearly, based on his defensiveness, understanding how right she is) and then comes around to support her after the Council scene because he's already started on the path towards more ethical action (and towards Jyn herself).

That's the beauty of this relationship. Jyn makes Cassian question his "necessary means for the benefit of the common good " approach, while Cassian makes Jyn question her excessively individualist approach. Cassian becomes more ethical in his actions for the Rebellion, and Jyn learns that fighting for the Rebellion is worthwhile. In essence, they need each other to be fully ethical people. And even though they don't kiss on screen, it's clear that were they to have survived, a life partnership was the logical result.

 

Godzilla does I think have to overcome the fundamental problem that its lead characters are giant monsters which does naturally make developing the human characters rather less easy. Jacksons got around this by having his Kong significantly humanised to the degree he could interact with the human cast dramatically but here things are a bit more separate.

This whole "screenwriting 101" style of reviewing we see from the likes of Stuckman for me is as has been mentioned way to simplistic for my tastes, again I think this is reviewing pitched deliberately low for mass appeal looking more to stroke peoples egos by throwing there opinions back at them rather than to inform.

Again I think the big issue is that TFA was pretty much the promised land for this kind of film reviewing, Granted I do think Abrams is operating at somewhat of a higher level than the reviewers but his film sums up so much of what they've been arguing in favour of for years and years, for it to be anything less than a stone cold classic would be an admission of failure. Rogue One on the other hand obviously does not follow there esposed guidelines for a blockbuster and such a film being well regarded is viewed as a threat to there viewpoint, the same with a lot of there followers IMHO.

 

TFA played things much safer than RO. It had recurrent characters, the plot followed a fairly well worn path, the character development was well implemented but fairly rote, the good guys were good, the baddies very bad, there was a kid appeal character in BB-8, the story was criticised for following previous SW stories too much but if anything it was retreading a fairly standard hero's journey type plot - as did ANH, hence the similarities. It was very well made and performed and directed, it took a formula and executed it perfectly.
RO in contrast had only one character with any meaningful screen time who had been in any SW film before - and he was a villain, not even the main villain at that. The heroes were much more flawed (realistically so but still...) and the overall tone was much darker and more cynical. The funny droid died. The main heroes died. Most of the supporting cast died.

None of this makes either film better than the other objectively but they were going for different things and judging either by the other's criteria or expecting there to be a one size fits all template of reviewing that suits all films equally is a fallacy. The late Roger Ebert was renowned for judging a film's quality on how well it did what it was trying to do, not by running through a checklist of points, but not many other big name reviewers do the same.

 

I don't really get complaints about Jyn's demeanor. It seemed consistent with her upbringing. Raised by guerrilla warriors to being an inmate in an Imperial prison, ain't likely to turn one into Shecky Greene.

It's a bit different for a Star Wars heroine, I guess. Between Padme & Leia's royalty and Rey's scavenger backgrounds, we've never really had a female lead as a born and bred soldier. Ironically, despite the character being a kind of "feminist statement", I found myself more attracted to her. I kinda wished I could give her a cookie or something to make her smile, given the crappy life she had.

 

Honestly my main fear before seeing the film was that Jyn would end up as a stereotypical modern "too cool for school" wisecracking badass character so it was a great relief to find her much more down to earth. A lot of the problem I have with TFA is that Finn and Rey feel like they've been droped into the plot, there personalities simply do not feel natural to me, more like modern blockbuster archetypes

I don't want to sound too down on this style of film making, obviously it can be very entertaining when done well(Guardians of the Galaxy, the first Avengers, etc) but TFA comes across as a rather less interesting example of it for me kind of trapped in the middle between it and a more serious setting and really doing neither especially well. That's disappointing for me in SW as you are talking about a setting that does obviously have lots of potential to be done straight, its not a cartoonish comic setting that's best treated lightly.

Now even as someone who does find the PT is very flawed set of films I just think the whole RLM/Stuckman mindset is totally wrong, it wasn't ambition and a serious setting(actually I find the setting significantly less serious than the OT) that hurt those films it was IMHO Lucas being out of the game for too long showing weakness in scripting/directing. There advocating blockbuster 101 as the only answer is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, losing what made SW special in the first place.

 

OK, Iceland/Lah'mu was VERY cinematic, and nice to look at, but any reason why Krennic set his Imperial shuttle down like a half mile away from the Erso's home?

Besides giving everyone time to hide that is?

And no one could follow Jyn's footprints in the soft soil all the way to the cave? They just 'gave up'?

Jyn climbing a ladder...in the dark...in the rain.

 

Diego Luna didn't get to touch Jabba.

 

That's just nitpicking. It's not that big of a deal. If Krennic landed closer and caught all the Ersos (including Jyn), there wouldn't be a movie, would there?