Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

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  • #76
    Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

    Possibly the world's most boring villain.
    Woah, whilst I'd hoped for more from Krennic (big Ben Mendelsohn fan), I can't see anyone / anything ever out-boring the guy from Guardians of the Galaxy, a truly dire character.

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    • #77
      Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

      Originally posted by Earl S. Court View Post
      Woah, whilst I'd hoped for more from Krennic (big Ben Mendelsohn fan), I can't see anyone / anything ever out-boring the guy from Guardians of the Galaxy, a truly dire character.
      I saw the villain in Guardians as kind of a commentary on cliche comic book villains. He was a straight-faced parody of a villain -- because the story wasn't ABOUT heroes vs. villains. Part of the humor was that he took himself SO seriously and didn't realize that he was in a Marvel comic book movie.

      Whereas the Chris Pratt character "knew" he was in a comic book -- because he'd grown up with comic books.

      I thought that was meta and brilliant -- a self-aware breath of fresh air in a genre that tends to take itself too seriously. Deadpool, of course, is in a similar vein.

      I haven't seen Mendelsohn in anything else; what's he been good in? In his first scene I thought he showed great potential -- but then he wasn't given anything else to work with, IMHO.
      "People who work in Hollywood are the ones who didn't quit." -- Lawrence Kasdan

      Please visit my website and blog: www.lauridonahue.com.

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      • #78
        Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

        Cool take but GotG just didn't do it for me, I loved Deadpool though.

        Check out Animal Kingdom, great low budget Aussie crime thriller also featuring Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton, Mendlesohn is great in it, genuinely scary. Starred up also a good one of his.

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        • #79
          Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

          I saw the full film recently and on the whole enjoyed it.

          My thought dump (spoilers):

          I enjoyed it despite the script, not because of it. I enjoyed it mainly due to Gareth Edwards visuals and the geek out that I got seeing so much of the Star Wars universe brought to life in a stylish way. He certainly has a great eye for composition.

          The characters though - very forgettable. They're all so serious and, well, lacking character, especially the protagonist.

          For the record I hated most of The Force Awakens, which was a reboot rather than sequel in my eyes (I did like the first act on Jakku, but that was it). I just can't forgive the use of another death star (Starkiller Base) in that film, just criminally unoriginal. I also didn't buy the whole underlying world and premise of Force Awakens - The First Order, what had happened to all the characters since ROTJ, it just all felt ill thought out and frankly wrong.

          To his credit, Edwards builds far more believable worlds in Rogue One, Jeddha in particular was great, and at least the script is not littered with so many gaping plot holes (anyone who sits down to think through The Force Awakens realises what garbage the plot is, the film literally makes no sense at all).

          I found the third act in Roque One somewhat dull and the killing off of the characters pointless as there was little emotional investment in them. Too much of 'do A to then do B to then do C', we know the ending so it's only fun if we love the characters, but we don't. X-wings flying around in space has little appeal as we've seen that so many times now.

          Vader was great though, that castle! Wish he had better lines or more screen time.

          Krennic as a villian could have been great but they didn't make him bad enough, he should have been Nazi death camp evil, but as it went on you end up feeling sorry for the guy like he was having a bad day at the office or something. Poor guy got shot by his own weapon when all he wanted was some appreciation at work.

          All in all though, I enjoyed it as a Star Wars fan who can find pleasure in the details, but the writers owe Gareth Edwards a few beers for covering for their mediocrity.

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          • #80
            Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

            Originally posted by Earl S. Court View Post
            Check out Animal Kingdom, great low budget Aussie crime thriller also featuring Guy Pearce and Joel Edgerton, Mendlesohn is great in it, genuinely scary. Starred up also a good one of his.
            Animal Kingdom is so damn good!

            Comment


            • #81
              Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

              Originally posted by Captain Jack Sparrow View Post

              I enjoyed it despite the script, not because of it. .
              Interesting... how you felt about Rogue, I felt about TFA.

              So what makes us enjoy something "despite the script," versus when is the script so bad (in our opinions) that we can't enjoy the movie?

              For me, with TFA I didn't think much of the plot but I loved the characters. I thought the dialogue was decent.

              Whereas with R1, I thought the characters were utterly unappealing, the dialogue was portentous and cringe-worthy, and the plot was just a video game treasure hunt, plus battles.

              So I guess that means I'll forgive plot issues if you give me characters I care about and the dialogue doesn't make me roll my eyes.
              "People who work in Hollywood are the ones who didn't quit." -- Lawrence Kasdan

              Please visit my website and blog: www.lauridonahue.com.

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              • #82
                Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                I agree that the dialogue and character were dull in R1 and by extension that impacts the story to an extent, since character and story are so intertwined. However, it was still a story that made some sense.

                In the case of TFA, the characters were more lively but story makes no sense. Critically for me, the world building failed. It's never explained how the setup for the film came about (e.g. who is the First Order, the resistance etc).

                It's a fundamental flaw, in R1 the Empire is powerful and oppressive, the rebellion are the little guys, in TFA it's totally out of whack, the Republic won but there is a resistance and a First Order who seem more powerful than the Empire (given they can build wildly impractical planet sized weapons in record time and with a seemingly unlimited budget). Han Solo is back to being a smuggler in exactly the same jacket, the bad guy is another dark masked villain, it's all just too forced to enjoy.

                I mean they are searching for a map to Luke, when they have the piece with this location on it, what's up with that?

                TFA is a film with a decent first act, but it can't hold that because the story has nowhere interesting to so it falls apart soon as they leave Jakku.

                I could go on and on, I genuinely think TFA is worse than some of the prequels. It's light on story and frankly for me, it ruins ROTJ. It's not at all how I would have seen that saga continuing and it could have been done so much better.

                R1 has lesser ambitions but doesn't mess things up as badly.

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                • #83
                  Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                  Originally posted by LauriD View Post
                  So I guess that means I'll forgive plot issues if you give me characters I care about and the dialogue doesn't make me roll my eyes.
                  This works in the other direction too, though. The loathsomeness of characters can well and truly foul up a movie, even if all else is good.

                  While I certainly concur with the plot-based criticisms of TFA, for me it was the characters who primarily ruined it -- Rey in particular, whom I found to be utterly vile and aggravating. (But I covered all of this in the TFA thread and do not wish to rehash it.)

                  I have not yet seen R1 (largely because TFA left such a bad taste in my mouth), but when I hear that these characters are "boring," I think, "That's not necessarily a bad thing. Because boring is a darn sight better than unbearably annoying."
                  Last edited by karsten; 12-22-2016, 01:59 PM.

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                  • #84
                    Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                    Originally posted by LauriD View Post
                    I saw the villain in Guardians as kind of a commentary on cliche comic book villains. He was a straight-faced parody of a villain -- because the story wasn't ABOUT heroes vs. villains. Part of the humor was that he took himself SO seriously and didn't realize that he was in a Marvel comic book movie.

                    Whereas the Chris Pratt character "knew" he was in a comic book -- because he'd grown up with comic books.

                    I thought that was meta and brilliant -- a self-aware breath of fresh air in a genre that tends to take itself too seriously. Deadpool, of course, is in a similar vein.

                    I haven't seen Mendelsohn in anything else; what's he been good in? In his first scene I thought he showed great potential -- but then he wasn't given anything else to work with, IMHO.
                    Mendelsohn is amazing in Bloodline on Netflix.

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                      The main problem with these stand-alone films is that they turn minor or trivial aspects of the SW universe into big ones, thus diminishing the importance of the events in the original trilogy. Not everything that happens in this universe can be important, because if everything is important, nothing is. There's no reason to make the stealing of the Death Star plans as monumental as the destruction of the Death Star itself.

                      Lucas started ANH when he did because he knew that the stuff that happened before that wasn't too important (this was before he planned the prequels). The stealing of the Death Star plans could have been as simple as a couple disloyal Imperial officers making off with a disc and handing it over to the rebels. Now Disney had to make a big production of it with huge battles, exploding planets, Vader getting personally involved, etc.

                      So next we're getting a Han Solo film with Lando and Boba Fett as supporting characters. Great, so now we get to learn that Han winning the Millennium Falcon from Lando had massive repercussions in some way and how the rivalry between Han and Fett is part of some much larger conflict, with those events set in motion years before the events of ESB somehow... obviously by the emperor or Vader or someone.

                      Because storytelling in Hollywood is now completely contrived. Nothing happens naturally or by accident. The "plots" of all major films today are built on plans within plans, with everything and everyone interconnected, like the crap they pulled with Spectre and how everything that happened in the previous few Bond films was because Blofeld was pulling the strings. I'd wager most screenwriters, even the most successful ones, don't even know what a plot is anymore.

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                      • #86
                        Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                        As an OT Star Wars fan, Rogue 1 was the best Star Wars movie since the OT for me. But I'd still rate it 6/10 only.

                        TFA was poor IMO, on par with TPM to me. The story being bad and completely unoriginal is one thing, BUT it completely VOIDS all the magnificent EU books and comics created by so many great writers (i.e. Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy)

                        SPOILERS

                        Disney had TONS of material to draw from and the best they could churn out was that TFA crap. Horrid. Rogue 1 was more serious but very dark- A big turnaround from the tone of TFA. Many casual fans I spoke to said they didn't like Rogue 1's dark ending (where everybody dies). So is Disney shifting their Star Wars franchise toward the young generation (feel good films) or older fans (darker & more serious)? Seems like they can't make up their mind.

                        On another note, anyone notice that the good guys in the show are all females and minorities? And the baddies are all white guys? The PC-ness in films now is really in your face now (and coming from a minority guy).
                        Last edited by Goliath; 12-22-2016, 10:32 PM.

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                        • #87
                          Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                          Happy Holidays you haters

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                          • #88
                            Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                            Originally posted by Goliath View Post
                            On another note, anyone notice that the good guys in the show are all females and minorities? And the baddies are all white guys? The PC-ness in films now is really in your face now (and coming from a minority guy).
                            Yeah, it ain't exactly subtle, especially when you read the comments from the writers on twitter.

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                            • #89
                              Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                              Originally posted by Goliath View Post

                              On another note, anyone notice that the good guys in the show are all females and minorities? And the baddies are all white guys? The PC-ness in films now is really in your face now (and coming from a minority guy).
                              Given that women and minorities are still grossly under-represented in Hollywood films, I'm not only fine with that, I applaud it. It's not like they're going to stop making movies with white male leads, and it's nice to see more balance and representation. Doing it in a high-profile movie like this one sends a message -- and I think that's a good thing.

                              A little "in your face" is good for the soul -- if you feel "left out," think how it's been feeling for women and minorities for the past 100+ years.

                              I don't care for this particular film, but I appreciate its good intentions.
                              "People who work in Hollywood are the ones who didn't quit." -- Lawrence Kasdan

                              Please visit my website and blog: www.lauridonahue.com.

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                              • #90
                                Re: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

                                Originally posted by LauriD View Post

                                A little "in your face" is good for the soul -- if you feel "left out," think how it's been feeling for women and minorities for the past 100+ years.
                                Exactly -- "when you're used to privilege equality feels like oppression."

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