Have been enjoying the new Star Wars TV series, Andor. It doesn’t feel like most other Star Wars titles in that it’s considerably more bleak and offers no direct appeal to little kids. The primary characters are still pretty archetypal, but there seems to be a bit more to chew on here than in other Star Wars iterations. It kind of gives me a Blade Runner 2049 vibe but not nearly as aesthetically cool.
I want to watch this, but I’m hesitant. I love Blade Runner 2049, but I absolutely hated Rogue One and I’m worried that this will be more of the same.
For the life of me, I honestly can’t understand why everyone seems to love Rogue One so much when it had a ridiculous plot, no characterization, no chemistry between the cast members, and then they all died in ridiculous ways. The only good thing going for it were the space battles and the fan service Darth Vader scene at the end.
Is Andor similar to Rogue One?
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an anti-Rogue One take before!
Do you like other Star Warses? Ridiculous plot is kind of table stakes for the series.
I didn’t hate Rogue One, but I also didn’t think it was the masterpiece people seemed to think it was. It was fine. But I can understand someone disliking it.
Only that it shares a character or two. I know I’ve said it a lot lately, but basically, if you took away all the star wars stuff, it would be a very solid cold war spy thriller/heist type film. And the Star Wars stuff doesn’t get in the way, the guns just shoot lasers instead of bullets, and the ships sail in space instead of the ocean.
That’s basically what made Rogue One a weird Star Wars movie, in that it was a basic WWII movie but with a thin layer of Star Wars over the top. Get the squad together, see them in action, then go try and stop the super weapon. There are many, many war movies where everyone dies at the end to accomplish the mission, so as soon as the droid dies in Rogue One I knew none of them were making it out alive, and I would have been disappointed if any of them had lived.
I have no interest in any Disney era Star Wars anymore, but if I was to rewatch any movie or show, it would be Rogue One. Probably. Not because it’s a particularly good movie, but at least it’s got something interesting going on apart from HERE MORE STAR WARS BE HAPPY
Is Rogue One some great movie? No. It really doesn’t have much to say. It doesn’t have anything really memorable to speak of. While I don’t hate any of the human characters, I don’t really care about them either. Don’t even remember their names. The movie is really about what happened, not enough about why. Probably because we all know the why already. This makes it feel more like television and less like a movie, granted with a much higher budget.
That said, I don’t dislike it. It’s fun. Good space battles. The droid is really entertaining. As a fan, I can’t hate the pandering fan-service either.
Let’s compare it to another nerdy franchise. How about the Indiana Jones also from Lucasfilm? Raiders and Last Crusade are all-time legendary films. They are so far up there that Rogue One would need a telescope to even see them. Temple of Doom is actually bad. Rogue one is not actively bad. It can wipe its feet on Temple of Doom. And since it’s not down at the level of being actually awful, I’m not going to complain about it.
I had a similar realization point during the movie - “ohhhh, that was a dirty dozen speech.”
Co-sign on all points
I love Star Wars, but more than that, I love good enjoyable movies, and Rogue One is not one of them.
The fact that no one else (or very few other people) seem to realize this makes me feel like I’m in some Bizzaro Universe where I’m out there yelling “The Emperor Has No Clothes!” but everyone else is just blissfully unaware.
The entire premise of Rogue one is that this band of misfits come together to sacrifice themselves to get the plans to the Death Star. Except the movie makes no attempt at fleshing these characters out. They have no story arcs. They have barely any interaction between themselves so they neither get to bond with each other or with the audience watching the movie. And then they die.
Having all the characters die is a bold story choice, especially for a Star Wars movie, but if the characters don’t care about each other, and the audience doesn’t care about the characters, then the fact that they all die has no emotional impact. Rogue One is a hollow movie that wants us to care that these people die, but does nothing to earn that. Other than Jyn and Cassian, I literally could not tell you any of their names. There’s Blind Stick Guy, Big Gun Guy, Pilot Guy, am I forgetting anyone? And the only reason I know Cassian’s name (Spy Guy) is because they made a TV series about him.
And not only do these characters that I don’t care about die, they die in the most boring and unheroic ways possible, one right after each other.
I totally get this point of view because I wanted Rogue One to be a Star Wars movie with a WWII movie plot, and maybe it is, but it’s a BAD WWII movie. Having seen classics like The Guns of Navarone, or an even better movie, The Great Escape, there was a clear template that Rogue One was supposed to follow. In both of those other movies, they succeed because the movie spends time with each character so by the time they all die (spoilers), we care about them, and their deaths have emotional impact on each other, and also the audience. Rogue One does none of that. Who cares if everyone dies if I don’t care about any of them?
I’m not a huge J.J. Abrams fan, and I don’t particularly like the new Star Trek movies, but the first 10-15 minutes of the first NuTrek movie where George Kirk dies has more characterization and more pathos than the entirety of Rogue One. I literally could have stopped watching that movie after Chris Hemsworth dies (again spoilers) because I was so satisfied. They introduced a character (Kirk’s dad), gave us insight into his character (he’s a good guy, he has a family) and then kill him in a heroic manner (he sacrifices himself for the good of his crew). That’s what Rogue One should have been like.
In Fellowship of the Ring (which I had already read multiple times before I ever saw the movie), why do Gandalf’s death and Boromir’s death have such emotional impact? Because we have gotten to know those characters, seen them grow, and when they die, not only does the audience care, but the other members of the Fellowship care as well, because they got to know each other and bond. At no point is there a scene in Rogue One where the various characters talk to each other or get to know each other. There’s no scene of them sitting around a table shooting the shit or becoming friends. They’re essentially strangers doing a mission together, but that undercuts the entire emotional premise of the movie, both for the other characters and the audience.
I could go on, but I don’t want to rant anymore than I already have.
I’m not a big YouTube viewer, especially of hot takes and reviews of movies, but I found this video, and she basically lays out EXACTLY why I hate Rogue One and why I think it’s a bad movie. I have no idea who she is, and to be honest, the way she talks sometimes grates on me, but all her points are spot on:
I’ll finish this post by saying this one last thing:
The New Suicide Squad movie (the second one, directed by James Gunn) is everything that Rogue One should have been. In that movie, you have a bunch of weird characters come together, bond, grow as characters, in order to accomplish their mission. Not only do they care about each other, but by getting to know them, even if they are incredible weird, the audience cares about them as well. Rogue One did none of that. And I’ll end this point by saying that I don’t particularly like DC comics and I find the entire concept of the Suicide Squad to be moronic from a story-sense, yet despite all that, despite the movie having a man-Shark and a girl who controls rats, Suicide Squad was INFINITELY better than Rogue One.
But seriously, if you’ve never seen The Great Escape, go see that!
Total aside, I would have been more tense if the guns ever hit anything.
Edit: wait a minute, the whole team doesn’t die in that movie!
My bad, most of the people die in The Great Escape, not Guns of Navarone.
Please don’t take my contribution here as me defending Rogue One as a good movie. I even said:
I was just elaborating why it stands out from the other Disney era movies, maybe in the same way this new TV show stands out.
In the Disney era there have been about 1.5 movies-worth of “actually good” movie, spread out over three different movies, and zero “actually good” tv shows. As far as I see it, the rest is just surfing along on aesthetics and nostalgia. Rogue One at least had nostalgia appeal for something other than previous Star Wars movies though.
@jabrams007 totally agree, Rogue One is an unremarkable copy-paste of a WW2 team suicide mission movie with none of the charm and fanservice crammed in. Its totally a “land of the blind the one eyed man is king” situation with every other disney era star wars property just being so corporate and unimaginative that it stands out because some semblance of the old structure shines through, albeit poorly.
This is not a dig on anyone enjoying it or saying they liked it or would rewatch it, just my opinion on it.
I apologize if I gave the impression that I thought you liked the movie.
Exactly. A lot of people love the movie and many Star Wars fans put it right below Empire Strikes Back as the second best Star Wars movie of all time, which completely boggles my mind.
I’ve told people that I hate Rogue One and they look at me like I’m crazy, and I just don’t understand why people think it’s so great considering all the problems I’ve written about above, and that are discussed in that YouTube video.
I’ll echo, I didn’t like Rogue One. I watched it once and found it entirely forgettable.
Then again, I feel that pretty much all of star wars isn’t much better.
For the first time since losing the character over 90 years ago (and buying him back in the mid-2000s), Disney has made a brand-new Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short!
