Rogue One Discussion Thread -- Untagged Spoilers Within

True. I meant a romantic one, but you are correct, she was motivated by the relationship with her father.
But it's that she didn't have a romantic plot that was refreshing. In many movies, men more often get to be motivated by their families, by principle, by friendship and women often get the romantic motivation. It was nice to see a woman being motivated by something else.



I don't mind everyone dying most of the time. I was happy for it in Rogue One, even though I cry every time. I think it does make it difficult to write fanfic because we know they don't have a future to write. We can write the past, and write AUs, but it is sometimes hard to write when you know they all die in the end.

 

I was VERY happy that there was no romantic sub-plot in RO and I'll even go as far as to say that the two-and-a-half-second scene in the elevator with Jyn and Cassian was unnecessary and should be cut out.

Also, I don't mind the "everybody dies" trope in general, but I agree that it was particularly well-handled in this movie and it was necessary to the overarching plot. Heck, I think I might have been disappointed if anyone survived!

 

Yeah, the whole hint at a romantic future wasn't needed and felt kinda hammered. I think the ending would have had the same impact without that hint.

And I would have been kinda ticked if someone had survived. Like dammit, I wanted my heart ripped out every-time I watch the start of ANH and while it won't be totally torn out, it will make the beginning that much sadder.

I'm kinda tempted to go see it one last time before it leaves the local theater tomorrow, I actually have only seen it the two times, but I'm busy all day tomorrow. So I might just try some questionable methods.

 

No offence when I was kidding about "no love story" and "girls" in RO.
Of course I am well aware girls do not only go to the theaters to see romance. But I know some of them (many? I cannot estimate) are likely to read romance. I can see that in a French fanfiction site where most of authors who are girls are writting love stories (with or without lemon).

 

I also liked it but it would have been nice if they hade made some of the deaths a bit ambivalent so maybe one or two of them they could return in a future story if they wanted.

 

The fact that the DS shot was out to sea, and not a planet-killer, means that its possible, just not very likely, to recover people and data files from Scarif.

I don't know why the point was made at the beginning that stormies will know when one of their number goes down, and then ignore that later in the same film.

 

In fact, I cannot remember a movie where everybody dies. It is quite unusual. Movie studios usually prefer "happy ends".
From such a perspective, Rogue One is refreshing. If too many movies were using such kind of trope, I think this would be really depressing in the end.
I do not want to be sad each time I watch a movie.

 

It has to be a situation where everybody dies doing some heroic mission that saves the galaxy/world/country. The movie 300 basically had everybody die but their deaths were seen as heroic and glorious and in the end the enemy was pushed back. I think that is the key to liking these stories. They may all die, but their mission in the long run is a success. A suicide mission that fails is a lot less appealing to me.

 

The Thing, with Kurt Russell.

An Antarctic base is an inferno. Two people left, one of whom may be the parasitic alien, and you cannot realistically see the base being able to retain enough heat when it dies down, to sustain human life.

Findswoman - I suspect the satisfaction with 'everybody kicks the bucket' for Rogue One, is more about not interfering with Legends too much, than a personality flaw.

 

I loved the dynamic of the Rebels sending backup, sending reinforcements.

The astromech-POV of starlines and reversion from hyperspace seem to be one of my enduring memories, along with fighters diving for the shield.
"Look, forget the wing reporting in business; get through that shield!"

I didn't notice that everyone was toast till some of you mentioned it here.

 

Good question! I... don't really know why I enjoy the trope in general. I too am a huge sap and cry at just about anything, but yet I like things where everyone dies, or the hero dies. Some of my favorite musicals are the ones that make me sob every time: Les Miserables, Ragtime, Hamilton I've listened to a million times by now and have yet to not cry at "It's Quiet Uptown" and "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story." We're talking full on tears running down my face while I'm cooking. Yet I listen to them and watch them over and over.

It may be because it's safe. Even things that are based in reality, the actors are characters and real people aren't dying. I see real people die quite often and can't really have much of a reaction or invest my feelings in them (though it's been known to happen). I can emotionally invest in a character and cry it out, it's emotionally safe because it's not real. That doesn't explain why I've always liked the hero dying, but I've certainly cried more about it since I started working in health care.

 

That last paragraph could be why I didn't cry at the end. The assurance that it's not real.

And mind you, I'm the person who can't watch the beginning of Scarface, when they're cutting that guy alive with a chainsaw and similar things, I run away from extreme, gratuitous violence.

 

I didn't like the scene where the Rebels tried to justify why they wanted to join Jyn's gang.

Bit too mawkish.

Maybe the everybody snuffs it trope was to clear out everyone who felt bad about opposing the Empire. You had none of that self-doubt crap in the OT.

 

I think I don't object to "everybody dies" stories because I like stories that elicit a strong reaction from me, and an "everybody dies" story or more generally a tragedy will do that. The thing of course is that it has to be handled properly -- the deaths (or the suffering) must serve a purpose in the story, either to build the characters' arc, or to examine their impact on one or more other characters, or to expose the characteristics of a certain situation, etc. In the case of Rogue One, I thought it an absolute narrative and dramatic requirement that all the characters are killed, and one thing that really worked for me is that this was acknowledged in-story as well (for instance when Jyn sees Cassian fall in the data vault and keeps climbing instead of rushing to the rescue, or when Baze sees the shuttle explode and deduces that Bodhi is dead as well as Chirrut, and that there's no way out).

 

This why horror movies where everyone dies have never worked for me. Actually, horror movies, in general, have never worked for me. Fatalism or Nihilism for its owner sake is lifeless.

 

I think the target market for horror films are boys under 12 and their grandfathers. Perhaps an odd Goth chick.

 

Horror movies have their place just like science fiction movies. This kind of attitude commonly existed toward science fiction movies only thirty years ago from the general population, and it's not a good perspective. Horror has its place as a legitimate genre, even the ones that are purely made for shock value and in pursuit of the almighty dollar. (I'm not a fan of gorn, but I can handle films with a high quotient of violence if the story justifies the use of it. So the Hostel series is right out, but I do like Clive Barker's work...although the only two legitimate Hellraiser films for me are the first ones. The sequels after those are the cash cows).

Fatalism and nihilism are both philosophical doctrines. They can be held as personal belief systems which should not reflect poorly on the owner of said systems (dual holder here ).

The concept of the "everybody dies" ending in films and plays goes back many, many years as well. It's sometimes necessary to write the story in such a way that every character has to die in order to import the meaning of the story better to the audience. Although I guess that doesn't work for Hamlet (or its 20th century counterpart, Guildenstern and Rosenkrantz Are Dead). Take a look at this list from TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KillEmAll. There are some very good films and plays in there that has the "everyone dies" ending. Changing it to make one or two characters live is...cynical, in order to have an excuse to wring out more material from the characters. That's the reason why Rogue One's ending has to exist IMO.

(And I was a half-Goth chick back in the day who wanted to look like Siouxsie Sioux...there's my Gothy bonafides, yo ).

 

I see what you are saying, leiamoody. However, I was expressing a personal opinion. I'm not bashing the philosophies as much as saying they don't work for me in life or in the media I prefer to consume. That does not mean that I think that an everyone dies scenario is invalid. Again, if the story rightfully demands everyone die in the pursuit of laudable goal, I can dig it. I guess in Saving Private Ryan, there had to be a survivor. The story pretty much demanded it.

 

Well, that's like your opinion...yeah, I'm not doing that Big Lebowski quote, it's played out.

In terms of what works for you and what doesn't...everyone wears different kinds of shoes. No biggity.

 

No biggity, indeed.

 

Regarding the original question on why I enjoy the "everybody dies" motif. I'm not sure why, but I've always just liked them. It isn't that common of a theme, but it is SO POWERFUL when it is used and it makes sense (as in the case of really violently themed movies like Scarface or Cabin in the Woods - which is a bit of a satire of the modern horror movie - or war movies like RO). One of my favorite TV shows, Six Feet Under, ends with clips of all the main characters' death. It just shows the reality of life our society considers "taboo". I also just like tragedies in general.

I'll be totally honest, I was raised in a bit of a morbid environment. My father would always sing The Hearse Song (so much so that my sister and I started humming it at his funeral). Perhaps it's my religion (not in a "you are going to die so prepare your soul" type of way, more of a "death is not the end") or my philosophy, but death is the one thing that connects us all.

I mean, I can ramble on (and if anyone wants to continue this elsewhere, I'd be up for it), but getting back on the topic of RO, the deaths served a purpose both in the movie, and in the real world (Disney basically saying "we are not afraid to get dark with this" and that anthologies will truly stand alone).