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I think Empire is great, but it wouldn't have had the impact it had if it wasn't for the original.
This is of course true. But in very early (circa 1980) interviews with George Lucas, when he was still saying he planed for a trio of trilogies, he stated that he visualized and wanted each individual film to be able to stand alone, and be appreciated on each of their own merits.
Of course this was a Long Time Ago ...
Before the dark times.
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A spoiler lite (no more than we already know from this thread really) review from BMD: Clicky
I hope that CGI Tarkin isn't as distracting as they're saying.
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Yeah...I totally disagree with this.
A film being the first doesn't necessarily mean it being the best and STAR WARS doesn't start getting interesting until about 40 min into the movie.
STAR WARS may have introduced the characters to us but EMPIRE DEFINED those characters and fleshed them into who who we know them as today.
Most of Han Solo's best lines and examples of his wit are in EMPIRE.
We're told that Solo is a great pilot in STAR WARS but we actually see how good he is in EMPIRE. That dip and then corkscrew away from not one but TWO Star Destroyers almost causing them to collide into each other still gets me giddy. The ensuing Asteroid chase is still one of the most underrated sequences in any Star Wars film.
Everything in EMPIRE works. The slow, inevitable courtship of Han and Leia. Luke's training on Dagobah and the deeper understanding of what he's about to face when he confronts Vader. The Emperor tasking Vader with bringing in or destroying the son of Skywalker. The very idea that this is a movie where the heroes are constantly on the run or at a disadvantage of some sort.
EMPIRE is just the better written and more importantly the better CRAFTED film. You could easily sit down and watch EMPIRE without having seen STAR WARS and still understand all of the relationships and enjoy the film. I don't know if the same holds true for JEDI.
EMPIRE for the win I think. At least for me.
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Let me just clarify.
I LOVE STAR WARS. Especially my six year old brain.
But I LOVE EMPIRE as a film AND with my nine year old brain.
ALSO: I dont know how anyone can say that STAR WARS had the best space battle. AS maligned as JEDI is sometimes, it clearly has the CRAZIEST space battle in any of the STAR WARS movies. The stakes are crazy high and the heroes are just screwed from the moment they jump out of hyperspace.
"Wait...the shield is still up?!?"
"WTF?!? is that the entire Imperial fleet?!?!"
"HOLYS**T YOU MEAN THAT THING IS OPERATIONAL?!?"
And from then on it's literally the rebels just trying not to get fricking slaughtered and take as many of the Imperials as they can with them.
I LOVE that battle.
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Only bad part was that they didn't go through every member of red, gray, and green group.
Baronaremhashevaum said to post that Jimmy Kimmel is hosting the cast of Rogue one tonight!
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I like your jibe ShinHakkaider.
But on some numbers,
"WTF?!? is that the entire Imperial fleet?!?!"
Actually less than two full Sector Battle Groups, some 44 Star Destroyers, the Executor, Imperial (Imperator) Class I and IIs, and a handful of Interdictor Cruisers.
That's 44 out of roughly 25,500+ Star Destroyers. Then there are 100 times that many other smaller combat craft, and 10's of millions of TIEs. It's a BIG Galaxy after all.
So hardly the entire Imperial Fleet. Closer to .1 percent.
Still The Empire outgunned the Rebellion by a factor of 1,000 to 1 at Endor, before taking to account The Death Star.
Conclusion
Any accounts of the Rebel victory must be unsubstantiated propaganda then.
"HOLYS**T YOU MEAN THAT THING IS OPERATIONAL?!?"
Oh ... it's beautiful!
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Wise.
Should the attack fail the rebellion would live on.
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You can stop a signal, but you can't kill an idea.
As much as I love me some EU novels... I don't feel they ever did justice on how the Rebellion was able to take power. Given how much firepower the Imperial Navy/Army had behind it, there is quiet literally no way the Rebellion could have won without the major in-fighting fallout behind Imperial forces following the death of the Emperor and Vader.
This is really the only realistic way to account to New Republic's rise to power. They kill off the Emperor and then sit back while all the Grand Moff's destroy each other in the scramble to fill in the power vacuum created by that loss. Or there were en-mass desertions from the Empire to the New Republic forces following the Emperor's death.
I hope that CGI Tarkin isn't as distracting as they're saying
Is all of Tarkin CGI?
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Vendor - Fantasiapelit Tampere
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Saw the movie. Really liked it! Action scenes were possibly the best in the series that don't involve lightsabers. K-2SO stole the show, as did Chirrut Imwe. All the actors are really good.
However, there were few wonkier parts that I didn't like.
Also, there were parts where the nods and cameos from New Hope felt bit forced. And Saw Gerrera died too soon, and while the scene was cool I waited more from him.
Otherwise, really solid movie.
I saw it in 3D. I wish I didn't. Clearly post converted, often with big blurry objects in the foreground totally unsuited to 3D. Usually problems with the 3D being darker.
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I saw it in 3D. I wish I didn't. Clearly post converted, often with big blurry objects in the foreground totally unsuited to 3D. Usually problems with the 3D being darker.
Yeah, Jurassic Park in 3D was pretty bad. The image was grainy and they even added objects into the movie to show the 3D effect.
For once being the cutting edge company for special effects, ILM has fallen behind the times.
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If they were shot in 3D to begin with and are natural 3D as opposed to "IN YOUR FACE" 3D, they are very good. It's like looking out your window and watching things happen.
I liked the Hobbit movies in 3D, but the Green Lantern movie gave me a headache (and no, it was not because the movie was bad).
Wish I had a 3D TV at home.
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My review:
When is a Star Wars movie not a Star Wars movie? That's a difficult question to answer. For hardcore fans, the franchise has always been about the depiction of a vast galaxy with lots of stories to tell about characters and worlds unrelated to the Force, the Empire or the Skywalker family, across comics and video games and animated TV series, but for casual movie-goers it's a more complex question. Rogue One is the first live-action Star Wars film not to be about the Jedi or the machinations of the Skywalker family tree, but it still has X-wings, TIE fighters, droids and villains with perfectly-clipped English accents. Disney seem to be kidding themselves that they are taking a risk with this movie, although it's still a fine slice of action blockbuster entertainment that will have adult fans and kids queueing up to see the movie in droves (although no-one is expecting it to repeat the business of last year's The Force Awakens, it should still be one of the biggest films of the year).
Those same kids may be leaving the cinema in floods of tears though. I've seen some people saying that Rogue One is the "darkest Star Wars film except for Sith and maybe Empire". That's lowballing it. Rogue One is easily the most ruthless and bleakest Star Wars movie to date, dispatching characters with such murderous and sometimes offhand efficiency that even George R.R. Martin might rise an eyebrow at it. An insurgent bombing of an Imperial convoy in a desert town feels rather uncomfortable to watch given contemporary events in Syria and the concluding tropical battle, which starts off feeling like a cheerful CGI shoot 'em up before (in one of director Gareth Edwards' more subtle and brilliant moments) shifting gradually into Apocalypse Now, becomes increasingly uncomfortable to watch. For a franchise whose numbered entries have sanitised their violence (the dismemberment of Anakin in Sith being the only real previous moment of visceral horror in the series), Rogue One has no problem with pushing the boundaries of what kids will tolerate. If possible, I would advise a parent preview of the film before deciding if you want young kids (say under 10) from seeing it.
The movie tells the story of a group of original characters who, it is established, are the ones who hear about the Death Star and eventually steal the plans that allow Luke, Han, Chewie, Wedge, Biggs and company to blow up the station at the end of the original 1977 film, A New Hope. It's a film that therefore exists in a somewhat schizophrenic state: on the one hand, as an original piece with new characters it has the chance to do things that are brave, original or even experimental, but it has to also closely coexist with the established continuity, particularly A New Hope, which may be the most scrutinised and iconic SF movie of all time.
Against the odds, the film does - more or less - succeed at doing what it sets out to do. Our core team of saboteurs and mercenaries consist of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) and Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). They are uniformly excellent, as you'd expect from seasoned hands (the newest performer here is Jones, who still made her screen debut twenty years ago as a child actress), and they all get their moments in the sun. The interplay and connection between the characters is pretty compelling and it's a shame that we're not going to see more adventures with them: Disney has ruled out a direct sequel to Rogue One and it sounds like the next few Star Wars movie are going to take place in the post-Force Awakens era or be more prequels set before Rogue One and focusing on the backstories of Han Solo, Lando Calrissian and (possibly) Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The story slots into place rather neatly before the events of A New Hope (days, if not hours, separate the two) and helps clear up a few niggling continuity issues from that film, namely what happened to the Rebel fleet in that film, how did Princess Leia get the battle plans and just how stupid were the Death Star designers? It turns out they weren't, the designer was a Rebel sympathiser who deliberately built a weakness into his plans which, thanks to security-mandated compartmentalisation, no-one else was senior enough to spot. No wonder George Lucas is reportedly a fan of the movie, as it helps retcon a few of the (admittedly minor) issues from the original movie out of existence.
More problematic is that the film needs to deal with the fact that some major characters are shared between it and A New Hope, and many of those actors are now dead or forty years older than they were when they made that film. A mixture of solutions are deployed. Darth Vader, for example, is simply a new actor (Game of Thrones's Spencer Wilding) wearing the suit with James Earl Jones back to do the voice work. Mon Mothma and General Dodonna are lookalikes, with actors Genevieve O'Reilly and Ian McElhinney (also late of Game of Thrones) replacing Caroline Blakiston and Alex McCrindle. In a clever move, director Gareth Edwards used alternate takes of the X-wing and Y-wing pilots from the Battle of Yavin from A New Hope to directly drop some of the established pilots from that battle into this engagement (which makes perfect sense). More controversial is the decision to use CGI to recreate Grand Moff Tarkin, played by the late Peter Cushing. His first appearance comes reflected in a starship window and if they'd stuck to that approach and kept his appearance to a cameo that would have been fine. Instead, having the very-clearly CG Tarkin wandering around and interacting with other characters drops us very firmly into the uncanny valley. Fortunately it's only really a couple of scenes that this impacts, but it's still weird and feels a bit inappropriate.
One of the film's biggest issues is the odd structure and pacing in the final act. The film doesn't climax so much as end abruptly on a rather bleak and horrible note, with the writers and director Edwards content to let A New Hope take over in providing catharsis or a resolution to the many storylines in motion. In this sense the film feels like it maybe gives too short a shrift to its compelling own cast of heroes and reduces them to, from the POV of the entire saga, also-rans. It's a movie that short-changes its own cast of characters in order to set up another one you've already seen, which is certainly a valid direction to take, just a rather odd one. This more notable with the villains, with Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn struggling manfully with variable material) being very a clearly a C-lister compared to Tarkin and Vader, despite having vastly more screen time. Whenever he wasn't on screen, I tended to forget he even existed.
Ultimately, Rogue One (****) is a successful movie, even if it's more of a modest diversion from the main focus of the series rather than an original piece of film-making. There's some excellent space battles (and it's undeniably thrilling to see the original X-wings, Y-wings, TIE Fighters, Corellian Corvettes and Star Destroyers mixing it up), some impressive stunts and some superb acting from a bunch of contemporary actors all at the top of their game. There's some musings on the morality of warfare and how far the desperate Rebels are willing to go to achieve their ends which add a little more depth to proceedings. The CG resurrection of long-dead actors I could do without and the film crashes rather unsubtly through the barrier between "subtle homage" and "fan-service" a few too many times, but overall this is an entertaining and worthwhile film that experiments moderately with the Star Wars formula whilst not straying far from the series tropes. But on final reflection I have to say I found The Force Awakens a more emotionally satisfying film with a proper beginning, middle and end, despite its derivative re-use of plot elements from other films in the saga, whilst Rogue One ultimately can't quite deliver on its initially more interesting story and more satisfying action beats.
You lost me at the Syria comment, other wise not a bad read.
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Vendor - Fantasiapelit Tampere
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My review:
** spoiler omitted **...
I agree almost 100 % with this review.
I liked the Hobbit movies in 3D, but the Green Lantern movie gave me a headache (and no, it was not because the movie was bad).
now you're just being silly.
Okay. Going to see Rogue one.
May the force be with you.
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MOVIE WAS F~#+ING AWESOME (if dark)
Y wings RULE!!!
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Yeah, I really don't get people saying this film is dark or bleak. I mean, sure, for a Star Wars film it doesn't shy anyway from the fact that death is a thing that happens in a war, but other than that it's no more darker than most "edgy" Hollywood war films. The fact that we know that the good heroes are destined to succeed pretty much removes any really bleakness to me.
That said, I watch shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones so my definition of dark and bleak might be a bit different.
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Yeah, I really don't get people saying this film is dark or bleak. I mean, sure, for a Star Wars film it doesn't shy anyway from the fact that death is a thing that happens in a war, but other than that it's no more darker than most "edgy" Hollywood war films. The fact that we know that the good heroes are destined to succeed pretty much removes any really bleakness to me.
That said, I watch shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones so my definition of dark and bleak might be a bit different.
I watch those shows too.
I would say that the film does help sell A NEW HOPE a bit better. In ANH a bunch of X-wing and Y-wing pilots die by the only ones we really care about are Biggs, Red Leader and maybe Porkins. Otherwise the only person who dies in the film that anyone cares about are Luke's aunt and uncle (who are in it for 5 seconds and he gets over it pretty quickly) and Obi-Wan (who is only sort of dead-ish). ROGUE ONE makes it clear that a lot more brutal sacrifice was involved and needed so Luke could take that shot.
Yeah, I really don't get people saying this film is dark or bleak. I mean, sure, for a Star Wars film it doesn't shy anyway from the fact that death is a thing that happens in a war, but other than that it's no more darker than most "edgy" Hollywood war films. The fact that we know that the good heroes are destined to succeed pretty much removes any really bleakness to me.
That said, I watch shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones so my definition of dark and bleak might be a bit different.
I watch those shows too.
** spoiler omitted **
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The Y wings were bombers. Happy?
Also one of the death of the best character in the movie was not hand grenade related
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The soundtrack was probably the worst part about the film. You could tell he only had a month to make it.
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Just saw it. I muffled my common sense and suspended my disbelief, and all was well. The very first scene with C.A. highlighted that the tone of this movie was going to be a bit different. Most of the actors did a good job, the scenery was nice, and there were no cutesy droids. Hey, maybe it is possible to have Star Wars, despite distasteful memories of TFA.
Then Tarkin appears on the screen, and for a split second I thought they found an actor that looks almost like Peter Cushing. Immersion completetly lost. I felt anger. About half of the rest of the movie I was left wondering .
Necromancy is bad.
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The Y wings were bombers. Happy?
YUSSSSSSSSSSS
Yeah, I really don't get people saying this film is dark or bleak. I mean, sure, for a Star Wars film it doesn't shy anyway from the fact that death is a thing that happens in a war, but other than that it's no more darker than most "edgy" Hollywood war films. The fact that we know that the good heroes are destined to succeed pretty much removes any really bleakness to me.
That said, I watch shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones so my definition of dark and bleak might be a bit different.
I watch those shows too.
** spoiler omitted **
I just saw it now. The first 2/3 of it was kind of out there. At first, it had, but didn't have that Star Wars feel to me.
However, the third act is phenomenal. I like it better than The Force Awakens simply due to the third act.
I actually thought at least one or two of the main cast would survive. They could do a sequel of getting the DSII plans and having one or two to connect the movies wouldn't have been a bad thing...so yes...I was surprised that it was a TPK.
I'd rather SW VIII follows more in line with the third act of Rogue One than the third act of the Force Awakens myself.
However, I think the Force Awakens probably had a more solid first and second act.
The soundtrack was probably the worst part about the film. You could tell he only had a month to make it.
Seconded. The soundtrack pretty much stunk in much Rogue One, at least in my opinion.
The action sequence toward the end involving the boarded ship made all my SW dreams come true.
Also, yeah I needed to hear the Imperial March and all I got was some sideways version of it...
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During the data breach scene there were several code names in the Imperial archive.
Four of them were different aspects of the Death Star, all from Catalyst.
They were named Stellar Sphere, Pax Aurora, Mark Omega, and Celestial Power.
The four aspects that they relate to are an advanced turbolaser project, advanced shields (Stellar Sphere), the hyperdrive/power for the station, and Galen's crystal research (Celestial Power). In the movie there was also Dark Saber and of course Stardust.