Star Wars: The Disney Era

Movies
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Last post in the old thread.

Having seen The Force Awakens just once and Rogue One twice, I’ve realized that combined those two movies have done something I didn’t ever expect to happen: I’m not interested in or excited about future Star Wars movies!

Which is why I’m glad I went to see Rogue One at an opening night midnight screening. I’d not done that for any movie before, let alone a Star Wars movie, but I suspected that due to the annual release schedule they would lose their specialness. It turns out that more than that, the constant recycling of the same stuff over and over (worse in this regard even than the prequels!) drained then of their specialness even more effectively.

For me to get excited about future movies in a series or franchise, merely being good movies isn’t enough. They have to be the best movies that year, or at least making the list.

That’s why I’m way more excited about the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and whatever new Mad Max movie might be coming out, or whatever Wes Anderson is working on. Star Wars has a long way to go to win me over again.

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Was Rogue One a masterpiece? No. The soundtrack had no emotion. It had plot holes I could fly the Death Star through. I’m not as impressed with the CG actors as some other people seem to be. The only new character that I really liked and cared about was the awesome converted droid guy. And while I really like Donnie Yen, I really didn’t like his very stereotyped character.

That being said, a Star Destroyer crashed into another Star Destroyer. I therefore declare it the fourth best Star Wars movie. Give me some more of that sweet PEW PEW PEW!

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I will now rank my Star Wars:

  1. Empire Strikes Back any version
  2. Star Wars VHS Digitally Remastered or Despecialized or Star Wars Revisited (I’ve still never seen any Special Edition version)
  3. Return of the Jedi whatever version
  4. The first half of The Force Awakens up until the moment Han Solo and Chewie turn up
  5. My own fan edit of The Phantom Menace, though I’ve yet to finish the final version and release it
  6. Rogue One
  7. The second half of The Force Awakens
  8. Attack of the Clones
  9. That other prequel
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If you finish that fan edit, I might actually tell the kid the prequels exist one day.

At this rate she’s finding out the truth on Santa before she learns the truth on George Lucas, though.

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My thoughts on Rogue One:

-More exciting than the Prequel Trilogy.
-Not as good as the Original Trilogy (nothing can touch that).
-Better than The Force Awakens.
-Still not an outright good movie, but Disney is making progress.

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CG Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One

edit: Why does Tarkin need 4 blue pens? Two on the right and two on the left.

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Honestly I am glad that I am so oblivious in movies as to not notice things like CGI face replacement. I actually thought it was a look-alike actor on first viewing! Even on second viewing I thought Tarkin was spot-on.

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I think if you give Rogue One a bit more time, everyone will see more of its flaws like they did with TFA. Here’s a video that I pretty much agree with entirely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3gf6qyAHOw

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Tarkin was fine for me until my girlfriend pointed it out. After that, I couldn’t not notice it.

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With Rouge One I really feel that the bubble is starting to burst over Star Wars. Or at least films aimed at an older audience. There was no depth in Rouge One and little in Force Awakens I really don’t see them becoming little more than marketing tools for the next thing to throw at kids.

I was going to say that they are films aimed at the teen and under demographic but with stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy, Lego and all the other stuff coming Star Wars is going to be a another thing that will slip by. The teat of nostalgia is already starting to run dry. I do wonder what bizarre shape it will be in by the end.

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What are you talking about? Star Wars has been a marketing tool for the next thing to throw at kids from the very beginning.

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I know I know but I was trying to not acknowledge that. As a marketing tool the new films are doing great, can’t move for all the kids stuff. As pieces of cinema they are dump.

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George Lucas owned the merchandising rights to the Star Wars world from the very get go, and setting up all the business to deal with that, and setting up his own production companies to stay out of the control of hollywood, was what kept him so busy that he wasn’t around to direct Empire Strikes Back.

My disappointment with both Rogue One and The Force Awakens isn’t that they are kids movies, or not aimed at me, it’s that they were somehow even worse about sucking at the teat of nostalgia than the Prequels. Everyone complained that Lucas didn’t understand what everyone liked about Star Wars, but at least he had the balls to invent EVEN ONE new looking space ship to use in the movies.

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Is it wrong to just want more battles with X-wings and Tie Fighters? If that’s wrong, I don’t know what’s right :-p

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Which funnily enough made Empire the best of the trilogy, Lucas didn’t even do the screen play, people could suddenly act where as in A New Hope, they were just reading lines or yelling unintelligibly or explaining what was happening to the viewer indirectly (C3PO). Also light saber fights didn’t look like 2 grandpas waving around their canes.

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IMO after second watch, Rogue One could have succeeded way more if it had either been more of an espionage thriller or more of a straight military Sci Fi story. It had just hints of that and hints of a classic adventure story and hints of sone kind of ensemble heist movie, but it just hints at them all and fills the rest with fan service.

Straight up if they just made it a war movie, with grit, it would have worked great.

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The lady with the Top 10 video did a really good job with her video. I agree with most points, but not all. I still feel it’s a solid B-grade movie, better than the average action movie slop, and if this is what Disney’s Star Wars sausage factory of annual releases looks like, I’m going to keep giving them money.

On the whole, I think the movie could have been much better if it was a grittier war movie, or a slicker heist movie. I also would have liked more separation from the fan service. I groaned when fucking Dr. Evezan and Ponda Boba show up to bump shoulders with Jyn and Cassian. I don’t want or need that. Putting Red Leader and Gold Leader in the space battle? Now that’s a good use of fan service that makes sense!

I also groaned every time they showed a rebel sentry watching ships take off, or showing a rebel intelligence person intently listening to a transmission. We get it! You’re on Yavin and you made it look just like Episode IV! You don’t have to keep showing that.

There were telltale things like… the camera held on a bottle of blue milk just a little too long. Like they really wanted to make sure we saw “hey everyone, blue milk just like Aunt Beru used to have!”

And I’ll keep complaining about the score. If they brought the house down with music it could have elevated moments to the point I wouldn’t care as much about a weak character or plot hole.

Seriously, that “Top 10 Worst Reasons you Liked Rogue One” video is absolutely worth watching. I hate to take the negative angle, but here’s my list of points I don’t actually agree with. It’s a short list, so this lady and her video are very on point:

Disagreement 1: She calls the self-sacrifice from Galyn’s wife worthless but I don’t agree. It made sense to me and I thought the opening scene was very strong.

Disagreement 2: She didn’t regard the simple, easily-identified weakness of the Death Star as a plot hole in A New Hope, so no credit to Rogue One for closing it. I thought it was a good explanation. I agree though that Rogue One opens up just as many plot holes with the stupid hologram that doesn’t just quickly convey “HERE’S THE WEAKNESS, WHOEVER IS WATCHING.”

Disagreement 3: I agree that having Vader in the middle was 100% pointless and really hurt the film. Having him in the end was take it or leave it for me, but I don’t agree with this analysis of the audience feeling “Darth Vader is awesome and great!” hero worship of Vader. His display of power is to make you afraid of him.

Having Vader present in that battle absolutely makes sense as part of the larger star wars story. He commands the baddest super start destroyer. If the Rebel fleet amasses and reveals itself, you call homeboy up and get his ass there ASAP! I can agree he didn’t need to be on camera though, as that weakens Rogue One’s existence as a standalone movie. It fell on its face in a few areas regarding that goal.

I’m trying to remain critical of these Star Wars movies while also fully admitting: I enjoyed both The Force Awakens and Rogue One. When I saw Phantom Menace, I went from Star Wars nut to having boxed up my things for over a decade. Seeing these two movies, I say “oh that’s not so bad. They’re at least enjoyable for what they do well.”

I remain hopeful that The Force Awakens was Disney’s grand effort at reviving a franchise that people were very much ready to love again. So they remade A New Hope for a new generation, and it held the movie back in areas, but I still liked it and I understand the decision, so I’ll give it a pass. Here, maybe they felt the need to wean themselves off of main-line Star Wars. What I really want is true standalone stories from far-flung parts of the galaxy. Maybe we’ll eventually get that.

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[quote=“Matt, post:18, topic:110”]
On the whole, I think the movie could have been much better if it was a grittier war movie, or a slicker heist movie. I also would have liked more separation from the fan service. I groaned when fucking Dr. Evezan and Ponda Boba show up to bump shoulders with Jyn and Cassian. I don’t want or need that. Putting Red Leader and Gold Leader in the space battle? Now that’s a good use of fan service that makes sense!
[/quote]I forgot about that part until you just mentioned it. Bleh.[quote=“Matt, post:18, topic:110”]
Disagreement 2: She didn’t regard the simple, easily-identified weakness of the Death Star as a plot hole in A New Hope, so no credit to Rogue One for closing it. I thought it was a good explanation. I agree though that Rogue One opens up just as many plot holes with the stupid hologram that doesn’t just quickly convey “HERE’S THE WEAKNESS, WHOEVER IS WATCHING.”
[/quote]I agree that this is a plot hole. However, there is an explanation for it that makes sense.

It’s not enough to just have a hologram of yourself saying “shoot the exhaust port!” The death star is huge. Which exhaust port? There’s only one. You need a very detailed and accurate diagram to show you. You couldn’t put that in a crappy fuzzy hologram.

So why not send the plan itself? It’s small enough to fit on what looks to be a PSP UMD. It can also fit in R2D2’s memory banks. The pilot could have carried that out easily. Also, he designed it, so he has access to the plans. A copy of the plan must also exist at his facility and not just at the archives where the battle takes place. Because computer security is probably actually good. They would see he copied the plan to an external storage device in the logs, or the computers would prevent it from happening.

It’s not a great explanation. I still think it’s a major plot hole. Still, it’s better than most.

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[quote=“Apreche, post:19, topic:110”]
On the whole, I think the movie could have been much better if it was a grittier war movie, or a slicker heist movie. I also would have liked more separation from the fan service. I groaned when fucking Dr. Evezan and Ponda Boba show up to bump shoulders with Jyn and Cassian. I don’t want or need that. Putting Red Leader and Gold Leader in the space battle? Now that’s a good use of fan service that makes sense!

I forgot about that part until you just mentioned it. Bleh.
[/quote]When I walked out of the movie I didn’t even get to the car before I asked friends “how did Dr Evezan and Ponda Boba get to the Cantina if they were probably in that city when it blew up?” Apparently, as detailed in the Tales From the Cantina book, that is their schtick. They appear in all crazy situations but always slip away before the read stuff goes down. I guess they are like Forest Gumps of Star Wars. So I guess it’s a total fan service nod to the people who know this about them?

I wonder how those “Tales of…” books hold up. They were my favorite way back in the day. I’ve been craving that non-Skywalker side story action for a long time.

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The message wasn’t “hit this exhaust port” but “I’ll explain to you what is going to be unstable in the very core of the death star, and you guys will have to find out a way to make it blow with whatever weapons or skills you may have.”

I’m sure there were other ways to destabilize the reactors, not just that port. Maybe a saboteur getting into the control rooms, or a bomb somewhere else inside.

I think that’s why, in A New Hope, the Empire hadn’t already closed off the port, and doesn’t immediately see what is happening when the rebels do attack. There is a short scene where Tarkin is told “we’ve analyzed their attack, and there is a danger”. Even after the attack began on that very port, it took a team to work out why it might be dangerous!

Overall, I’m worried there might be a movie to explain some of the backstory of Rogue One to explain some incongruities it has. And then another movie to explain some of the incongruities IT has. Then it’ll be prequel movies for incongruity straightening all the way down.