Rogue One may be the worst Star Wars movie to date

[TheMysteriousGX]

Just watched Rouge One a couple days ago and it's pretty great.

Yeah, the mid-act is muddled in the same way ensemble casts tend to be, but even then I ended up liking it. Saw was as violent and extremist as you know he'd end up being if you watched Clone Wars, Cassian showed that even when a cause is just, espionage never is, the the Rebal Alliance shows why it's called an alliance with its disparate reaction to the Death Star. (I mean, when the whole of the Rebal Fleet is already outmatched before the planet killing superweapon shows up, what the hell)

Then you've got the classic commando movie structure of "character introduction-minor action set piece-major action set piece", and it's always the latter that pays for the ticket. Even after shelling out $46.50 for me and two others to see it in IMAX, I got my money's worth.

Things go well at the onset: Jon, Cassian, and K2SO infiltratethe base, the rest of the rebels infiltrate the landing pads, some fun comm misdirection happens, etc. Then small problems start cropping up, followed by big ones. Continued escalation drags more troops to the surface, draws the Rebel Fleet into direct action against the Imperials. And so, the Ghost makes an appearance, there aren't any Capital ships to defend Yavin, there's holes in fighter squadrons for opportunistic young pilots to fill, support vehicles that would logically exist but have never showen up before make an appearance, and we see a major (if hastily assembled) action by the rebellion get repulsed by an Inperial garrison and minor fleet reinforcements. Kinda highlights the power gulf between the factions.

In short, I finally have a better measuring stick for action set pieces in 21st century movies that's better than Cap 2's ship infiltration. It's like they made this movie for me specifically.

 

[happyninja42]

Just watched Rouge One a couple days ago and it's pretty great.

Yeah, the mid-act is muddled in the same way ensemble casts tend to be, but even then I ended up liking it. Saw was as violent and extremist as you know he'd end up being if you watched Clone Wars, Cassian showed that even when a cause is just, espionage never is, the the Rebal Alliance shows why it's called an alliance with its disparate reaction to the Death Star. (I mean, when the whole of the Rebal Fleet is already outmatched before the planet killing superweapon shows up, what the hell)

Then you've got the classic commando movie structure of "character introduction-minor action set piece-major action set piece", and it's always the latter that pays for the ticket. Even after shelling out $46.50 for me and two others to see it in IMAX, I got my money's worth.

Things go well at the onset: Jon, Cassian, and K2SO infiltratethe base, the rest of the rebels infiltrate the landing pads, some fun comm misdirection happens, etc. Then small problems start cropping up, followed by big ones. Continued escalation drags more troops to the surface, draws the Rebel Fleet into direct action against the Imperials. And so, the Ghost makes an appearance, there aren't any Capital ships to defend Yavin, there's holes in fighter squadrons for opportunistic young pilots to fill, support vehicles that would logically exist but have never showen up before make an appearance, and we see a major (if hastily assembled) action by the rebellion get repulsed by an Inperial garrison and minor fleet reinforcements. Kinda highlights the power gulf between the factions.

In short, I finally have a better measuring stick for action set pieces in 21st century movies that's better than Cap 2's ship infiltration. It's like they made this movie for me specifically.

Glad you enjoyed it, I don't share your thoughts on how good it was, but to each their own.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Just saying a movie is "good" or "bad' doesn't really give anyone else a metric to understand what you mean. What's good to you could be different to me.

Forgive the facetiousness, but: well duh? Hence why I think scores are inane; you can't boil art/culture down to an abstract number. Even going with the general '5 = average', that's meaningless in and of itself, because some might adore an 'average' film, whilst others might loathe it, and everything in between.

Teh internetz is so often the enemy of nuance - a film review is in the details, and in how well someone can translate the film's identity whilst being transparent about subjective biases, be it in a written or video review. If someone wishes to find out about a film's nature - read or watch a review.

I quite like Jeremy Jahns' system, but at the end of the day his actual review is the only thing that has merit, or communicates anything.

I prefer brevity when possible.

'Cept it saves no one any time whatsoever. A score is just a number - the follow-up question will/should always be 'Why did you think it was a 1/5/10?'. Brevity would surely mean ditching scores and cutting straight to the nuanced, contextual chase...

If we're blokishly setting out the SW series in terms of quality/which I like the most? It's tricky to say. Arguably, for any fan of the originals growing up, they are next to impossible to critique. They are part of your life, they are not just films. Generally, I think A New Hope's the roughest of rough diamonds - it is iconic, but historic context is needed to excuse or tolerate many of its weaker or just plain derpy elements (and these days I find the trench run a bore, and the very end an awkward cheesefest).

All I could say is that Empire's my clear favourite of the originals, and A New Hope and Jedi are about even - fairly iffy films, but mostly tremendous fun. I'd need to see Rogue One a few more times to really suss out my feelings on it, but The Force Awakens is probably my favourite after the originals (no new film could overcome/overturn a lifetime's familiarity with those three).

That means Rogue One's after TFA, with the three black sheep of the family - the dregs of the barrel, to mix my metaphors - relegated to the last three places.

So I suppose there are really only two effective eras for me; the originals, and then the new ones. Empire's the pick of the oldies, and so far TFA's the pick of the new'uns. I'm not keen on the idea of a Han Solo standalone at all, so I'm skeptical about the Anthology entries, but confident about the mainline series/trilogy.

In short, I finally have a better measuring stick for action set pieces in 21st century movies that's better than Cap 2's ship infiltration. It's like they made this movie for me specifically.

Each to their own, of course, but I think The Winter Soldier's an incomparably superior film on pretty much every count.

I really enjoyed Rogue One, and look forward to seeing it again. But it had nothing to compare to that opening mission in Cap 2, or the Bucky fight on the highway (and for me, Civil War arguably bested that with the phenomenal sequence where Cap and Bucky escape down the staircase. not sure anything in Rogue One matches the airport scene, or the final confrontation, either).

I saw it a couple of days ago, and only one sequence really stands out - Vader's, and that was bordering on being insultingly short and also rather pointless (in that there was no connection to the actual protagonists, it was just 'here's Vader being a badass for a bit').

That said, I did love how Rogue One takes us right up to where A New Hope starts. Well, iffy Leia cameo (and smash-cut to credits) aside.

 

[Veylon]

I just saw it. It was very badly in need of an editor, both on the script and on the film itself. There were too many characters and too many places visited to do any of them justice and it suffered heavily - more than TFA - from unnecessary cameos. I enjoyed it, it felt right most of the time, the action sequences were great, but it lacked the tough love that A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back had to turn it from a good movie into a great movie. The filmmakers couldn't let go of the reliance on the original franchise and the focus wasn't quite tight enough on who we had. I wasn't disappointed because I thought it would be worse, but it's a shame because it could've been better. I hope a fan somewhere can whack the unnecessary bits off and deliver a modestly superior version.

 

[Delicious Anathema]

As someone who doesn't like Star Wars very much, I thought it was ok and I think I liked it better than Ep.6, though the strong female lead stuff is getting to the point of being a clich

 

[Hawki]

I liked it better than Ep.6, though the strong female lead stuff is getting to the point of being a clich

We've had a grand total of two Star Wars films released in cinemas that have a female lead. That's two out of nine.

That's hardly approaching cliche territory.

 

[WindKnight]

Really enjoyed it overall, so much better than the prequels, though some of the cameo's got a bit silly (almost rolled my eyes at the two characters Jen had a run in with on Jedah).

 

[Delicious Anathema]

I liked it better than Ep.6, though the strong female lead stuff is getting to the point of being a cliche

We've had a grand total of two Star Wars films released in cinemas that have a female lead. That's two out of nine.

That's hardly approaching cliche territory.

Two in a row, and I mentioned cliche as in movies in general, not just SW. Ghostbusters is ridiculous.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I just saw it. It was very meh. Like, worst than TFA levels of meh. It never descended into outright badness, but rarely was anything other than mediocre.

 

[Hawki]

I liked it better than Ep.6, though the strong female lead stuff is getting to the point of being a cliche

We've had a grand total of two Star Wars films released in cinemas that have a female lead. That's two out of nine.

That's hardly approaching cliche territory.

Two in a row, and I mentioned cliche as in movies in general, not just SW. Ghostbusters is ridiculous.

Two in a row, as opposed to seven in a row? So, "strong male lead" is fine, but "strong female lead" is a threat to manly men and their masculinity everywhere?

Not even touching Ghostbusters since the Internet decided that an eclipse had come and freaked out appropriately.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I'm probably a bit late on this but:

No, Rogue One really isn't anything special. It's not terrible and for what it's worth, it's probably the best Star War Prequel made so far but Force Awakens, for all its faults, is a far better or at least far more engaging movie. As vague as that sounds, FA had a lot more personality. It had more likeable characters. More memorable dialogue. More memorable individual scenes too. In my defense: I'm not the biggest Star Wars Fan and Rogue One was nothing if not a movie for fans. And I'm sure for fans there's a lot in there to like. I thought there was something very satisfying to see all the events leading into Episode 4 falling into place but it just lacked that sense of actual emotional engagement. I didn't feel like the characters were very well fleshed out, for a movie that felt so long it had a severe lack of meaningful character interaction. It just lacked those small moments that let the character play off each other.

I mean, it certaibnly also had its qualitites. It went to great lenghts to recreate the look of a late 70s Science-Fiction movie. It had a lot of really rad action scenes. If they took the last 30-45 minutes and release them as a short movie to act as a kind of prologue to A New Hope I would have thought it was pretty cool. But it didn't really keep my interest for the more than two hours it ran and I came out of the theatre pretty unimpressed.

To its credit my dad, who is actually an OG Saw-the-original-trilogy-as-a-kid Star Wars fan saw it with my and absolutely adored so I stand by what I said: It's a Star Wars movie for diehard fans and I can, if nothing else, respect Disney for appealing to those specifically rather than going for mass appeal. And, I mean, at least it's different. So maybe Star Wars wont stagnate the way the Marvel movies did.