Rogue One Spoilers Discussion: I Am With You, Jyn Erso

[ljkeane]

I just got back from seeing it. I thought it was great, definitely better than the overly derivative The Force Awakens and, obviously, miles better than the prequel trilogy.

Anyway:

TESB

ANH

RO

ROTJ

TFA

The prequel trilogy in whatever order you care to put them in.

[dbunting]

6 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I just got back from seeing it. I thought it was great, definitely better than the overly derivative The Force Awakens and, obviously, miles better than the prequel trilogy.

Anyway:

TESB

ANH

RO

ROTJ

TFA

The prequel trilogy in whatever order you care to put them in.

My list pretty much mirrors yours. I would have a hard time putting Rogue ahead of ANH just because it was the original.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Not sure I could rate it higher than Jedi.. as much as the Ewoks bother me, Jedi has many moments of pure quality that Rogue One kind of doesn't. 

[Astromech]

I'm curious as to interpretations of Baze's death? I initially thought for some reason he was trying to reach the shuttle Bohdi was on that had just previously exploded. Maybe ensuring the signal was sent. Maybe it was simply the shuttle being so prominent in the shot behind the deathtroopers which led me to think so. On reflection, he seems to simply avenge Chirrut's death by killing all the deathtroopers.

[ljkeane]

23 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Not sure I could rate it higher than Jedi.. as much as the Ewoks bother me, Jedi has many moments of pure quality that Rogue One kind of doesn't. 

I don't know, I thought pretty much the whole last third of Rogue One was great and it had it's moments in the first 2 thirds. Plus, you know, Ewoks. I'm not to fussed on the RO/ROTJ order though but I do definitely prefer it to The Force Awakens.

[ab aeterno]

21 minutes ago, Astromech said:

I'm curious as to interpretations of Baze's death? I initially thought for some reason he was trying to reach the shuttle Bohdi was on that had just previously exploded. Maybe ensuring the signal was sent. Maybe it was simply the shuttle being so prominent in the shot behind the deathtroopers which led me to think so. On reflection, he seems to simply avenge Chirrut's death by killing all the deathtroopers.

My impression was that he'd decided to trust the Force again, so he wasn't afraid to die. He knew he was going to die anyway, so he let it happen, but didn't stop fighting. 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 minute ago, ljkeane said:

I don't know, I thought pretty much the whole last third of Rogue One was great and it had it's moments in the first 2 thirds. Plus, you know, Ewoks. I'm not to fussed on the RO/ROTJ order though but I do definitely prefer it to The Force Awakens.

What Rogue One really lacks however is a heart and a sense of emotional attachment. Its a pretty cold movie. Jedi isn't though, there is a lot of power between the relationships, especially Luke and Vader. The final scenes between them are maybe the best in the series. 

For that I'd rate Jedi higher.

[williamjm]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One thing that really struck me was Chirrut Îmwe's constant recitation of "I am on with the Force; the Force is with me".  

It echoed (to me) the Orthodox Christian monsatic practice called "hesychasm" of constantly reciting the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me and save me, a sinner".  I have to wonder if that is where the filmmakers got that idea:

It also reminded me a bit of the "I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer..." mantra from Dune

[polishgenius]

3 minutes ago, williamjm said:

It also reminded me a bit of the "I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer..." mantra from Dune

 

Well, 'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate' is a pretty obvious attempt by Lucas to make his own 'fear is the mindkiller' so that's fitting.

[Astromech]

20 minutes ago, ab aeterno said:

My impression was that he'd decided to trust the Force again, so he wasn't afraid to die. He knew he was going to die anyway, so he let it happen, but didn't stop fighting. 

Yeah, I think they all accepted the mission as a suicide one. The death scenes of all the main characters seemed to have a strong level of resignation. It almost became comical.

[All-for-Joffrey]

2 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

What Rogue One really lacks however is a heart and a sense of emotional attachment. Its a pretty cold movie. Jedi isn't though, there is a lot of power between the relationships, especially Luke and Vader. The final scenes between them are maybe the best in the series. 

For that I'd rate Jedi higher.

Exactly. In fact I'd go further and say this is why Rogue One doesn't top any movie in Episodes IV-VII in my book. 

On RoTJ specifically, I still don't understand why it ranks so low on people's lists. I get that the Ewoks bother people, but it doesn't change the fact that the rest of it was an emotionally powerful, really well done piece of cinema. It's my second favorite Star Wars after Empire. 

 

Quote

Well, 'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate' is a pretty obvious attempt by Lucas to make his own 'fear is the mindkiller' so that's fitting.

 

I suspect that Lucas's concept of the Jedi is basically a less manipulative, less morally questionable Bene Gesserit knockoff. (Though he did make them more Bene Gesserit-esque in the prequels -- whether he meant to or not.) I mean, he clearly lifted a lot of concepts from Dune for A New Hope. 

[Fez]

24 minutes ago, All-for-Joffrey said:

Exactly. In fact I'd go further and say this is why Rogue One doesn't top any movie in Episodes IV-VII in my book. 

On RoTJ specifically, I still don't understand why it ranks so low on people's lists. I get that the Ewoks bother people, but it doesn't change the fact that the rest of it was an emotionally powerful, really well done piece of cinema. It's my second favorite Star Wars after Empire. 

 

Its not just the Ewoks. In fact, I barely care about the Ewoks. There's a host of reasons I always thought RoTJ was much weaker than ANH or ESB, and why I happily put both TFA and RO above it. In no particular order, the biggest to me are:

1. Luke and Leia being siblings coming out of nowhere and retroactively creating quite a few plot holes. It also causes Leia's character to be greatly shortchanged, because all of a sudden she should also get to deal with the fact that Darth Vader is her father but she never really does. Only Luke does.

2. A solid third of the movie being spent at Jabba's palace for no good reason. Luke could've resolved the situation in his first scene. Instead the story moves at a crawl until the Empire finally shows up.

3. Being kid-friendly far moreso than the first two movies were. Part of that is the Ewoks. But bigger issues are things like Han and Lando losing pretty much all scoundrel-ness and becoming boy scout rebel leaders, and the movie ending in a giant party (Kasdan's vision of Han dying and Luke walking off alone into the sunset at the end both sound a lot better to me. And I find it interesting that both those ideas ended up in TFA).

4. Half of the big showdown just being a repeat of the first movie (though to be fair, this is also a weakness of TFA) and the Emperor's plan not making any sense. He could've set a trap for Luke and the rebels without actually placing himself or the new Death Star in any danger at all.

5. The Endor battles (land and space) at the end are fine, but that's all they are. They don't look as good as Hoth did in ESB or Scarif did in RO, and there isn't the sense of scale, wonder, and importance that ANH had.

I liked ROTJ, and I still put it far above ROTS (the only prequel even close to being worth watching), but its got some serious issues.

[Sivin]

Going to see it again in Imax with company.

Here's hoping for more love.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

1. Luke and Leia being siblings coming out of nowhere and retroactively creating quite a few plot holes. It also causes Leia's character to be greatly shortchanged, because all of a sudden she should also get to deal with the fact that Darth Vader is her father but she never really does. Only Luke does.

This reminds me of Star Wars when Leia's whole planet is destroyed but the emotional effect of Luke losing a guy he met last week is played as the main emotional beat. 

4 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

What Rogue One really lacks however is a heart and a sense of emotional attachment. Its a pretty cold movie. Jedi isn't though, there is a lot of power between the relationships, especially Luke and Vader. The final scenes between them are maybe the best in the series. 

For that I'd rate Jedi higher.

I totally agree. No scene in Rouge One hit me as hard as the "he was armed only with this" Vader/Luke scene in ROTJ coupled with their last conversation. 

But also I was a lot younger then. And I had a lot of time between "episodes" to form my own "head-cannon." Even if most of it was subconscious. There was never any chance that I'd care about any of the Rogue One characters as much as I once cared about the OT characters. So in that sense it's kinda an unfair comparison. 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

2. A solid third of the movie being spent at Jabba's palace for no good reason. Luke could've resolved the situation in his first scene. Instead the story moves at a crawl until the Empire finally shows up.

Part of that slowing to a crawl though was Luke fighting the fucking Rancor. I'm pretty biased since I saw it as an 8 year Star Wars fan, but Jedi was my second favorite movie in the series. They really got monsters right, something both RO and FA failed at. Hopefully there's a great monster or two in the next episode.

 

1. ESB

2. RoTJ

3. ANH

4. FA

5. RO

 

 

[ab aeterno]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

This reminds me of Star Wars when Leia's whole planet is destroyed but the emotional effect of Luke losing a guy he met last week is played as the main emotional beat. 

 

7 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Part of that slowing to a crawl though was Luke fighting the fucking Rancor. I'm pretty biased since I saw it as an 8 year Star Wars fan, but Jedi was my second favorite movie in the series. They really got monsters right, something both RO and FA failed at. Hopefully there's a great monster or two in the next episode.

To link these two together, Luke's grief had nothing on Malakili's.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

16 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One thing that really struck me was Chirrut Îmwe's constant recitation of "I am on with the Force; the Force is with me".  

It echoed (to me) the Orthodox Christian monsatic practice called "hesychasm" of constantly reciting the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me and save me, a sinner".  I have to wonder if that is where the filmmakers got that idea:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm

 

It reminded me of a Buddhist Mantra. And Chirrut seemed to resemble a Buddhist Monk. Or maybe that was just Donnie Yen.

Either way, I like how they protracted the Force like something to actually have faith in, rather than just a source of superpowers for a select few.

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, Fez said:

5. The Endor battles (land and space) at the end are fine, but that's all they are. They don't look as good as Hoth did in ESB or Scarif did in RO, and there isn't the sense of scale, wonder, and importance that ANH had.

I disagree on this part. The space battle in RotJ is the best space battle ever depicted on screen (the next best are probably from BSG or B5). The use of models gives it a real sense of scope and weight without being completely overwhelming to the point of being nonsensical (like the one at the start of RotS). TFA and RO both scale back that problem and have decent CG space battles, but neither are remotely on a par with RotJ.

Actually the next-best space battles in the saga are probably from The Clone Wars, where they usually make each engagement very clear and focused on what is going on.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 hours ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

It reminded me of a Buddhist Mantra. And Chirrut seemed to resemble a Buddhist Monk. Or maybe that was just Donnie Yen.

Either way, I like how they protracted the Force like something to actually have faith in, rather than just a source of superpowers for a select few.

I've heard Hesychasm called "Zen Christianity".

[dbunting]

To me there isn't this emotional connection to the characters because we just met them. It's not like we had three previous movies to get to know Han before he died, so of course the impact is different. So we just met them and they are all dead now, no emotional investment will ever be made, it doesn't change that the story wasn't written for 8 year olds, which IMO is where ROTJ started going wrong and the prequels absolutely went wrong. 

Everyone has their own taste and I love the originals so I won't try to tear them down but I believe this was a better movie than most of the other seven.

13 hours ago, Fez said:

1. Luke and Leia being siblings coming out of nowhere and retroactively creating quite a few plot holes. It also causes Leia's character to be greatly shortchanged, because all of a sudden she should also get to deal with the fact that Darth Vader is her father but she never really does. Only Luke does.

 

To me this was one of the biggest issues. Vader was in direct contact with Leia, was torturing her, trying to break her mind and yet he, the great Vader, the one every Jedi said was the most powerful, didn't sense that she was his daughter or anything? I mean hell he sensed Luke and Kenobi when they were on different ships. Can this be explained away by the fact she had not "awoken" yet?