Star Wars: Rogue One
Rogue One: Well, I rather enjoyed that. For one thing, it surprised me.
I did not expect all the heroes to die. I did not expect the Rebel Alliance to fuck things up really badly at least twice. I did not expect the movie to roll directly into the opening of A New Hope quite so blatantly. And I did not expect to see such skilled CGI on Tarkin and Leia (If I'd thought about it, I would have expected Tarkin to be re-cast, and Leia to be kept offscreen). I was surprised they showed us right away how morally compromised the Alliance was.
The action scenes were exciting and choreographed & edited well, so that I could follow what was going on. Most of the secondary characters got at least a little development, so I could care about their deaths. It wasn't much, but it was more than most of the secondary characters in the original trilogy, so I'll take what I can get.
The writing was actually pretty good: very few really clunkers in the dialog, and the story made some sense given the beats they had to hit. (Although I find it very hard to believe the daughter of an imperial weapons scientist would be allowed to address the Alliance Council directly -- she would have been debriefed elsewhere and never allowed to meet anyone of importance that she could name later. Hand-wave, hand-wave.)
All that said, I could have lived with a bit more humor: once KT died, there was none at all. I could also have lived with a bit less time spent in outright battle: more suspense, less dead bodies please. I would also have appreciated more time spent showing the Rebels' moral superiority over the Empire: why, exactly, were the Rebels better, rather than just less overtly genocidal? This is implicitly shown by the multi-species coalition in the Alliance Council and the presence of only white men in the Empire ranks, but I do feel like a more overt statement might have helped, especially given the ethically questionable behavior of the Rebels throughout the movie.
Oh, and I wanted more women. There was no reason at all that the strike team was 1 woman and 25 men. That's just ludicrous. At least there were more than 1 female Rebel pilots!
My friend E, who I saw the movie with, was much less happy with it than I was -- she felt that it was far too grim and depressing for a Star Wars movie, and I'm not sure I disagree with her on that issue. Yes, I knew it was war movie, but I didn't expect the body count to be anywhere near that high, and I was worried about all the kids in our matinee showing. Are they all going to have nightmares?
We ended up with a fun discussion about the engineering infrastructure of the Empire, and how it looks like there's lots of high-powered computing, but no networks at all. Because seriously, there's no reason at all someone should have to physically go out to the end of a pier 500 meters in the sky to throw a fucking switch. Except that's how George originally conceived of it, and we all have to work around that now.
Oh, and I loved the shout-outs to Rebels: I heard them call for General Syndulla -- is that Hera, or someone else? (Which reminds me: I need to watch several seasons of Rebels.)
So, in sum: definitely flawed, but I liked it, and I thought it was technically a better movie than The Force Awakens.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
I did not expect all the heroes to die. I did not expect the Rebel Alliance to fuck things up really badly at least twice. I did not expect the movie to roll directly into the opening of A New Hope quite so blatantly. And I did not expect to see such skilled CGI on Tarkin and Leia (If I'd thought about it, I would have expected Tarkin to be re-cast, and Leia to be kept offscreen). I was surprised they showed us right away how morally compromised the Alliance was.
The action scenes were exciting and choreographed & edited well, so that I could follow what was going on. Most of the secondary characters got at least a little development, so I could care about their deaths. It wasn't much, but it was more than most of the secondary characters in the original trilogy, so I'll take what I can get.
The writing was actually pretty good: very few really clunkers in the dialog, and the story made some sense given the beats they had to hit. (Although I find it very hard to believe the daughter of an imperial weapons scientist would be allowed to address the Alliance Council directly -- she would have been debriefed elsewhere and never allowed to meet anyone of importance that she could name later. Hand-wave, hand-wave.)
All that said, I could have lived with a bit more humor: once KT died, there was none at all. I could also have lived with a bit less time spent in outright battle: more suspense, less dead bodies please. I would also have appreciated more time spent showing the Rebels' moral superiority over the Empire: why, exactly, were the Rebels better, rather than just less overtly genocidal? This is implicitly shown by the multi-species coalition in the Alliance Council and the presence of only white men in the Empire ranks, but I do feel like a more overt statement might have helped, especially given the ethically questionable behavior of the Rebels throughout the movie.
Oh, and I wanted more women. There was no reason at all that the strike team was 1 woman and 25 men. That's just ludicrous. At least there were more than 1 female Rebel pilots!
My friend E, who I saw the movie with, was much less happy with it than I was -- she felt that it was far too grim and depressing for a Star Wars movie, and I'm not sure I disagree with her on that issue. Yes, I knew it was war movie, but I didn't expect the body count to be anywhere near that high, and I was worried about all the kids in our matinee showing. Are they all going to have nightmares?
We ended up with a fun discussion about the engineering infrastructure of the Empire, and how it looks like there's lots of high-powered computing, but no networks at all. Because seriously, there's no reason at all someone should have to physically go out to the end of a pier 500 meters in the sky to throw a fucking switch. Except that's how George originally conceived of it, and we all have to work around that now.
Oh, and I loved the shout-outs to Rebels: I heard them call for General Syndulla -- is that Hera, or someone else? (Which reminds me: I need to watch several seasons of Rebels.)
So, in sum: definitely flawed, but I liked it, and I thought it was technically a better movie than The Force Awakens.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.