Books A/V STAR WARS: ROGUE #$^$%&ING ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

Even if you've never heard of them before, this is something totally new and different. Can't you at least go into that open-minded?

 

This reminds me of the Narnia series. Anyone read through all 7 of those? The last one went off the deep end with the ultra-religious, punish-all-sinners message. The lighthearted fairytale aspect was completely nil. But no one bases their opinion of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe off of that.

Come to think of it, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's last book ended sort of like that too. Adams had some major personal issues when he wrote that one and it's a total downer to read.

So yeah -- with long series you tend to run the risk of something good going sour. Even with a single author.

I guess it's like a metaphor for life.


SO YEAH ABOUT THAT ROGUE #$^$%&-ING ONE......!

 

Yeah, new faces aren't a negative, but if this is just a new take on the Death Star plans, that isn't necessarily appealing to me.

 

yeah it should be a film sequel to the NJO

 

Understandable, given how you feel about the new vs. old stuff, but at least this is something we've never seen before–a live-action SW movie that's grim, soldier-focused. Is that even a little appealing to you?

 

I know it's very appealing to me. I'm actually more excited for Rogue One more than I am for The Force Awakens and I am extremely excited for TFA.

 

I'm really quite close to being excited; cautiously optimistic about Edwards and Jones, but the writers seem a little iffy - the single big thing I'm uncertain about is the implication of the name.
If this is somehow a Rogue Squadron film, I'm worried how they'll do justice to it - I'm so familiar with Wedge, Hobbie, Janson, the others and their backstories that I find myself unconsciously assuming that this film will be about the Tierfon Yellow Aces.
I'm generally against recastings. Some franchises can do it easily, but Star Wars has always had this odd "historical drama" feel to it that makes recasting such familiar faces seem horribly wrong. Faces we saw more briefly, like Porkins and even Wes and Hobbie I'm fine with if they're good castings, but if there's gonna be a film featuring Wedge I'd want it to be Lawson as Admiral Antilles. If the story involves the founding of Rogue Squadron but doesn't include those characters, on the other hand, it'll be sad to see them marginalized in this canon, especially when I've dreamt of seeing them on the big screen for so long. The era is problematic for either scenario.
If the film doesn't involve Rogue Squadron at all, it'll just be an unoriginal and confusing name, but I'll get over it easily if it's a good enough film.
They couldn't have picked a more impactful name for the first spinoff than one with the word "Rogue". It's just frustrating that the era and implied focus on ground troops raises so many red flags.

 

Well, even Abrams wanted Lawson as Admiral Antilles. Just that Lawson didn't want Lawson as Admiral Antilles.

In short, get set for Jonah Hill as Porkins and Channing, Lord Tatum as Hobbie.

 

SOLD

 

Yeah, my expectations of Lawson coming back are not high - he doesn't work on projects he's not really interested in. If however, the script was good enough and someone Lawson respects were to direct (Branagh, Boyle, etc), I'm sure he would come back.

 

That's not really the impression I've gotten from what he's said, honestly - he seems disinterested at best in Star Wars as a whole.

Which is a shame, because as I think was pointed out earlier in this thread, he's one of the OT actors who really looks the way his character should now.

 

Totally agree about the looks. It's uncanny.
I seem to recall he shares his nephew Ewan McGregor's poor opinion of the prequels, and he doesn't much care for Hollywood productions. I can understand if he resents Star Wars a little for so dominating his popular perception, over what he sees as his more serious work. He also has nothing to prove as an actor - talented people come to him with offers, and he rarely goes as far as London for a job, since that would mean leaving his family for months at a time. Why do that when he has rewarding work at home?
All that taken into consideration, it's worth remembering that he's not averse to genre films - his recent performance in The Machine was pretty great. He also has come back to Star Wars in the not-too-distant past, voicing Wedge for Rogue Leader in 2001.
For me, at least, getting Lawson back in a future episode or spinoff, or making guest appearances on a show would be a top priority. Besides the fanservice he's a fantastic actor and an asset to any production.

 

That's a reach at best. I suppose we'll know when we see the surrogate role.

The guy's on friggin' New Tricks, it's not as though he's Daniel Day-Lewis when it comes to picking roles.

I agree entirely though in terms of how damn good he is, and it's always going to be a bit of a pang to realise that he's not a part of this because it's something I was looking forward to when it was announced.

But please, let's never ever speak of Boyle doing a Star Wars film. It'd be a disaster.

 

Well, true enough. DDL works the Sundance circuit, it's a very different world from a well-respected Scottish thespian living in a quiet town and working on whatever stage and screen projects interest you withing a two-hour commute, profile and budget be damned.

Oh come on, the man has one big flop on his resume. Admitedly, it is a very big flop, but the majority of his work has shown him to be one of the most versatile directors around. It's like he's made a mission of making one film of each and every genre.
I'm not fond of the auteur-ish 'Star Wars, but in the style of Director X' approach - I'm not thinking Star Wars meets Trainspotting or Sunshine here. As a director-for-hire working on a good script, with his usual impeccable audio and visual team, I think we could get something really memorable.

 

DDL doesn't work the Sundance circuit, he works the DDL circuit, i.e. periods where he become a carpenter or whatever for no reason. More to the point, Lawson isn't that picky in regards to content if he's a regular on New Tricks, and I don't even mean to disparage that but it's fairly meat and potatoes stuff. Given that prospectively Lawson's stuff would have been solely in the UK I think it's genuinely that he was uninterested in being in a Star Wars film, regardless of who was making it. Maybe Rian Johnson can make overtures.

As for Boyle, my reluctance is that his third acts are almost always problematic, with an exception being 127 Hours where it was completely excised (and yes a director has influence over a script) his style outside of Shallow Grave is a very active, unmotivated "feel our way through" style that really wouldn't fit in a main-line Star Wars feature (Anthology though? Sure why not), and his genre work has largely been problematic with those problems being how they handle the given genre. Three of his four best films are not genre works (Trainspotting, Slumdog, and 127 Hours) and Shallow Grave is a dark, claustrophobic thriller. It'd be like if an early-90s Oliver Stone took on Star Wars - it'd be a fascinating result but totally wrong at the same time.

Branagh would be more promising, but again there's a lot of unmotivated visuals from his latest work and there's always this nagging aspect where he's never come close to topping his debut feature, which is 25 years old. LFL have really made a marked departure from Marvel's selection criteria for directors... they haven't gone for genuine guns for hire like Branagh is at the minute, but either someone who can take on a more senior, broader stewardship role (Abrams) or much younger talent who have generated excitement with very limited budgets (Edwards, Trank, Johnson).

That being said I'd be all for Branagh if he could go back to the Henry V style... given that he used Star Wars and Kurosawa as his boiler-plates there.

Sorry to extrapolate a tangent there.

 

I sure hope Rian is pursuasive enough to get Lawson into 9. It just wouldn't be a climactic final battle without Wedge.
As sacreligious as it seems, if he won't come back they could get one of the voice actors who's done him well and at least have Wedge make a cameo in the battle chatter.

Great analysis of both Boyle and Branagh there. I should say that Trainspotting, Slumdog and 127 Hours may not be "genre" as in "sci-fi/fantasy" but they certainly are niche genre films; a drug addiction biopic, a Bollywood musical / Guy Ritchie crime film, and a wilderness survival true story respectively. He likes to challenge himself with different genres and the restrictions they bring, so I think he'd be up for working in a franchise like Star Wars with the right offer.
Personally, I could see Boyle doing a similarly niche Anthology film - I agree with you that he'd be less suited for a major Episode. Something featuring the underworld of bounty hunters and information brokers, or a film about the intelligence agents of the galaxy might be an interesting playground for him.

If there's going to be a Jimmy Smits Bail Organa film, they could do worse than Branagh to portray royal Alderaanian culture and the tension between them and the authoritarian regime they must feign loyalty to.

 

I don't think Ewan has a poor opinion of them; he loved being in them and wants to come back. He just doesn't take them very seriously.

 

Much like everyone else should.

 

He has a poor opinion of certain SW fans, that's what he has! IIRC, he called them "******s".

 

No, he despises the fans who'll trample over people, including children, to get his autograph to sell online. Other than that, Ewan has never said anything bad about the SW prequels. As stated, he actually enjoyed it, and is open for coming back for an anthology film.

And maybe he is. He was just cast in Disney's Beauty and the Beast movie, so maybe there's a deal in place to film a Kenobi movie afterward.

 

Thus I said:

 

Those fans are ******s.

 

Oh, pardon! Must've missed the "certain fans" in your post!

 

Thing is that isn't something we haven't seen before. Yeah, there hasn't been a big screen Star Wars version of it, but that doesn't make it something original in terms of plot or setting. That doesn't mean it can't be good but we have definitely been down this road before.