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Reasons why TFA and RO are the same movie.

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 (Edited)

Hey guys. This tries to make comparisons between TFA and RO. There are the obvious ones (Death Star, Empire vs Rebels, father figure dead in front of the lead, etc.), but this is more focused on the comparisons specific to TFA and RO. Let me know what you think, and if you have more, or if one of my reasons is wrong, I would like to know.

1 - After opening up to credits and some scenes where someone gets shot and dies, we eventually cut to the male lead/love interest of the movie learning about the plot of the conflict and special person they to find from someone who’s supposed to die, leading to him finding and recruiting the female main lead of the movie, who’s somehow related to the conflict, into this whole debacle.

2 - Female main character who’s an orphan and grows up in a harsh lifestyle that makes them seem like they’re a loner when in fact they got a heart, and who doesn’t initially want to be involved with the situation of the galaxy.

3 - Includes flashbacks which show the main female lead being separated from her family as a young child.

4 - Male lead/love interest is part of a paramilitary organization and purposefully lies to the female main character, only to later unveils their lie near the end of the 2nd act, and who has been trained to fight since childhood.

5 - There’s a scene in the first act where the female lead appears to be in immediate danger, so the male lead tries to step in to help, but stops and watch like an idiot as the female lead beat up the grunts, showing she’s supposed to be good with a melee weapon.

6 - Two male characters (one of which has been credited as everyone’s favorite character) who seem to be best buddies and are the subjects of god awful shipfics.

7 - There’s a tentacle monster in the first act which has no relevance and impact to the rest of the movie whatsoever.

8 - There’s a connection between the female and male leads, which seems to hint at a romance near the end, but doesn’t really bloom into anything other than a camaraderie.

9 - There’s an droid character who provides most of the movie’s humor, which can include electrocuting and/or hitting the male lead.

10 - The movie tries to harken back to the original trilogy by including tons of fan service, with recognizable characters and places that are almost identical to those places in the OT, so much to the point it’s more up in your face than being endearing.

11 - The designs of some of the Imperials troopers are more variants of the typical OT Stormtrooper, with different color schemes and helmet changes, as opposed to the overall departure of the prototypes in the PT.

12 - In the first act, the pilot of the movie’s ship tries ridiculous ways of entering hyperspace, without carefully calculating their trajectory or ensuring that they have a safe way out.

13 - First half of the movie puts emphasis on finding this one dude who may change the entire fate of the galaxy, then sets up the next half for infiltrating the villain’s stronghold while the movie’s main villain is inside, at first completely unaware of the heroes’ presences.

14 - There’s this evil Sith dude in a black mask with a cool red lightsaber, who has this one awesome scene in the entire film, but what they do in the rest of the movie doesn’t seem to match that.

15 - By the halfway point of the movie, there’s a short battle, in which our heroes being separated and doing their own things, until X-Wings come in to eliminate the Imperial forces and bring our heroes straight to the rebel base.

16 - Final act consists of main heroes and a small task force sneaking into and around baddies’ base, which includes lowering the shields for our rebels to come in for assistance and deliver some damage to the baddies’ base.

17 - Both the female lead and male lead/love interest immediately come into a confrontation with the main villain, which has the male lead/love interest getting injured by the main villain while trying to help the female main lead overcome the main villain.

18 - This is the only time in the SW films where a Sith dude in a mask has ever used his red lightsaber to kill side characters, who have never really appeared in any SW medium before this point and whom we actually feel sorry for.

19 - Though the movie’s final battle may have been won, it comes with great costs to our heroes, and it is only the beginning, as the movie ends on a cliffhanger.

Screw lightsabers, I’ll stick with regular swords. At least they won’t blow up in my face like this franchise has.

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Wannabe Scholar said:

10 - The movie tries to harken back to the original trilogy by including tons of fan service, with recognizable characters and places that are almost identical to those places in the OT, so much to the point it’s more up in your face than being endearing.

You make it sound like it’s a bad thing; but if a movie set directly before ANH wasn’t like that, it wouldn’t work.

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Jeebus said:

Wannabe Scholar said:

10 - The movie tries to harken back to the original trilogy by including tons of fan service, with recognizable characters and places that are almost identical to those places in the OT, so much to the point it’s more up in your face than being endearing.

You make it sound like it’s a bad thing; but if a movie set directly before ANH wasn’t like that, it wouldn’t work.

I don’t know about that. I prefer RO over TFA any day, but I have to admit there’s a lot of damning evidence to show that both are guilty of this. A lot of people have complained of the ANH imagery used in TFA, and how obvious it was. And there have been people who said similar things of RO (like RedLetterMedia, if you focus on the actual good points they had on RO).

Screw lightsabers, I’ll stick with regular swords. At least they won’t blow up in my face like this franchise has.

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My equivalency machine is saying ‘no’ to your theory.

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yhwx said:

My equivalency machine is saying ‘no’ to your theory.

Can you please add more to that? What’s wrong with my list and why do you think so? And this isn’t sarcasm, I am genuinely curious (besides, I made this out of fun, so it shouldn’t be taken too seriously).

Screw lightsabers, I’ll stick with regular swords. At least they won’t blow up in my face like this franchise has.

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Wannabe Scholar said:

yhwx said:

My equivalency machine is saying ‘no’ to your theory.

Can you please add more to that? What’s wrong with my list and why do you think so? And this isn’t sarcasm, I am genuinely curious (besides, I made this out of fun, so it shouldn’t be taken too seriously).

Well, I wrote a little computer program, and it told me that “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” does not equal “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. There might be a bug in the program, but I’m just trusting what the computer says.

In all seriousness, you just can’t say that because two things have some similar characteristics, they are the same thing. That’s not how the universe works. (Rimshot?)

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Wannabe Scholar said:

6 - Two male characters (one of which has been credited as everyone’s favorite character) who seem to be best buddies and are the subjects of god awful shipfics.

Wow, this proves that TFA, RO, the whole OT and PT, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Breaking Bad and hundreds of other movies and TV shows with two male characters are basically all exactly the same. Thank you for opening my eyes.

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Rogue one is just a rehash of Pearl Harbor Tora! Tora! Tora!

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People here are actually nitpicking about the precise meaning of “the same” as though it is literally intended to mean exactly the same, and are apparently doing so as a means of avoiding confronting the very strong overall points you make or engaging in any kind of serious discussion about them. What a surprise.

People can keep their heads in the sand all they want, but I’ve been saying for a while now that Disney’s Star Wars (like Disney’s Marvel) has a very strict formula it is going to continue to follow until it has milked it for all it’s worth. The result is that, like the endless stream of comic book movies, all the new Star Wars movies that come out each year are going to feel like they are essentially the same movie. It may not be a bad movie, but it is the same movie, and it will get old. The magic of Star Wars will be sucked dry, and the excitement around the release of each new film increasingly diluted. You can have too much of a good thing.

And for me, Rogue One wasn’t even a good thing. I genuinely enjoy watching the prequels more, if for nothing else than “so bad it’s good” value. This movie was just fucking boring and brought absolutely nothing new or interesting to the table for me. I’ll reserve final judgment until I see them, but if it is indeed an indicator of the direction Star Wars is going (especially the EU/“anthology” films), that’s a worrying sign for the coming films.

Movies made annually for the sole purpose of exploiting a financially lucrative property rather than out of any kind of creative impulse are not art. I’m sorry, but they just aren’t. And their appeal to me is very limited. If a day comes when I don’t even bother seeing the new Star Wars movie because they’ve just become so fucking endless and bland, that will be a sad day for me.

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For Density:

1 - After opening up to credits and some scenes where someone gets shot and dies, we eventually cut to the male lead/love interest of the movie learning about the plot of the conflict and special person they to find from someone who’s supposed to die, leading to him finding and recruiting the female main lead of the movie, who’s somehow related to the conflict, into this whole debacle.

“Someone is shot in the beginning of the movie, then we meet one of the main characters and some expository dialogue, then this character meets another main character, who has something to do with the plot.”

An absolutely blank description that fits a hundred movies. Should they start the movie without any exposition at all? Should our main characters be completely detached from the plot?

2 - Female main character who’s an orphan and grows up in a harsh lifestyle that makes them seem like they’re a loner when in fact they got a heart, and who doesn’t initially want to be involved with the situation of the galaxy.

This is actually a similarity.

3 - Includes flashbacks which show the main female lead being separated from her family as a young child.

How the flashbacks are handled in the movies is completely different. RO has actual flashbacks, while in TFA it is a vision of past events.

4 - Male lead/love interest is part of a paramilitary organization and purposefully lies to the female main character, only to later unveils their lie near the end of the 2nd act, and who has been trained to fight since childhood.

Two movies that are about wars in space have both a character who is a fighter? Shocking. And they also tell a lie? Wow, that never happened before.

5 - There’s a scene in the first act where the female lead appears to be in immediate danger, so the male lead tries to step in to help, but stops and watch like an idiot as the female lead beat up the grunts, showing she’s supposed to be good with a melee weapon.

That’s a common way to establish that a character is able to defend themself.

6 - Two male characters (one of which has been credited as everyone’s favorite character) who seem to be best buddies and are the subjects of god awful shipfics.

I covered this already, but again: “The movie has two male character, who are friends.” That’s even more vague than the first point.

7 - There’s a tentacle monster in the first act which has no relevance and impact to the rest of the movie whatsoever.

While I’m not a fan of either of the monsters, you have to admit that they are very different from each other and serve completely different purposes.

8 - There’s a connection between the female and male leads, which seems to hint at a romance near the end, but doesn’t really bloom into anything other than a camaraderie.

Because every movie with a male and female character has to end in a romance?

9 - There’s an droid character who provides most of the movie’s humor, which can include electrocuting and/or hitting the male lead.

Wow, funny droids in Star Wars, I have never heard of that.

10 - The movie tries to harken back to the original trilogy by including tons of fan service, with recognizable characters and places that are almost identical to those places in the OT, so much to the point it’s more up in your face than being endearing.

We already have three Star Wars movies that were visually distached from the OT. I’d rather have too much “fan service” than no visual connections to the originals at all.

11 - The designs of some of the Imperials troopers are more variants of the typical OT Stormtrooper, with different color schemes and helmet changes, as opposed to the overall departure of the prototypes in the PT.

Both movies take place closer to the OT than the PT, so why should they rather have PT designs?

12 - In the first act, the pilot of the movie’s ship tries ridiculous ways of entering hyperspace, without carefully calculating their trajectory or ensuring that they have a safe way out.

I don’t even know what you’re talking about here. Could you be more specific or would that reveal how little the scenes actually have in common?

13 - First half of the movie puts emphasis on finding this one dude who may change the entire fate of the galaxy, then sets up the next half for infiltrating the villain’s stronghold while the movie’s main villain is inside, at first completely unaware of the heroes’ presences.

Different circumstances, in TFA they try to find Luke, then Rey gets captured, so they go to Starkiller Base to free her and then continue the search. In RO, they try to find Saw and they succeed, then they go to the archive because they need the plans.

14 - There’s this evil Sith dude in a black mask with a cool red lightsaber, who has this one awesome scene in the entire film, but what they do in the rest of the movie doesn’t seem to match that.

Wow, a Sith with a red lightsaber, that certainly only happened in RO and TFA.

15 - By the halfway point of the movie, there’s a short battle, in which our heroes being separated and doing their own things, until X-Wings come in to eliminate the Imperial forces and bring our heroes straight to the rebel base.

“There are battles in both movies and our heroes don’t stay together for the whole time, but they eventually meet again.”

Also, you need to be more vague, here. Technically, the Resistance are not rebels. You should have used something more bland, like “good guy’s base”. Hey, I just found another similarity, there are good guys and bad guys in both movies, I think you overlooked that one.

16 - Final act consists of main heroes and a small task force sneaking into and around baddies’ base, which includes lowering the shields for our rebels to come in for assistance and deliver some damage to the baddies’ base.

Wow, so “infiltrating the villain’s stronghold while the movie’s main villain is inside, at first completely unaware of the heroes’ presences” includes sneaking around and disabling the base’s defences? Who would have thought…

17 - Both the female lead and male lead/love interest immediately come into a confrontation with the main villain, which has the male lead/love interest getting injured by the main villain while trying to help the female main lead overcome the main villain.

“The main characters confront the villain and one of them gets injured” This is truly unique to these two movies.

18 - This is the only time in the SW films where a Sith dude in a mask has ever used his red lightsaber to kill side characters, who have never really appeared in any SW medium before this point and whom we actually feel sorry for.

You have to specify “in a mask” here in order to not include Dooku or Palpatine or Anakin here. So what you’re really saying is, “there are two Siths with masks” and we had that point already. Also, you have to specify “who have never really appeared in any SW medium before this point” to not include OT Vader. So you’re just being vague enough to make a connection but specific enough not to include all these other examples that would ruin your narrative.

19 - Though the movie’s final battle may have been won, it comes with great costs to our heroes, and it is only the beginning, as the movie ends on a cliffhanger.

Yeah, a final battle being won with no effort at all would make for a really engaging movie. Also, a movie planned as the first part of a trilogy and a movie directly leading into another movie both end on cliffhangers. Very surprising.


If you’re only vague enough and ignore anything that doesn’t fit your narrative, you can make almost any two movies look similar. And when you pick two movies from the same franchise, you can make them look almost the same. All these points only prove how much time you put into it and how creatively you can describe these things. If you say “RO is the same movie as TFA”, you also have to say “ROTJ is the same movie as Star Wars”, or even “all Star Wars movies are the same”.


Just for fun, here’s how Harry Potter is the same as Star Wars:

  1. The main character, whose parents were killed by the villain, lives with his aunt and uncle.
  2. The main character seems to be a nobody, but it turns out that his parents were important.
  3. The main character has to work a lot and isn’t particularly happy.
  4. A man with a beard reveals to the main character that he has magical powers.
  5. The main character gets invited to go away and learn more about these powers, but his aunt and uncle don’t like this idea.
  6. Aunt and uncle are forced to let him go.
  7. The main character and the bearded man, who revealed the secret, go to a bar full of weirdos and later to a market.
  8. The main character meets the male support character, who is accompanied by a furry creature.
  9. The male support tries to impress the main character with empty words.
  10. They travel.
  11. There is expository dialogue! OMG!
  12. Main character and support meet the female support, who is a bossy know-it-all, and there is some initial tension, but they will all become friends in the end.
  13. A means to traverse a horizontal/vertical gap doesn’t work the way our characters want to and this gets them into trouble.
  14. In the end, the main character fights against the villain and has help from his friends and his new magical abilities.
  15. The main character is naturally gifted at flying, just like his father, and this also helps him to defeat the villain.
  16. The main character defeats the villain by using a weakness that the villain didn’t know about.
  17. The main henchman gets killed, the villain can barely escape.
  18. There is a big party in the end where the main and support characters are honored.

Bonus points:

  1. The mentor is an old wizard, who was friends with the main character’s parents.
  2. There is a mean guy in a black cloak.
  3. A tentacle monster grabs the main character.

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Thanks for doing that so I didn’t have to.

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Wannabe Scholar said:

A lot of people have complained of the ANH imagery used in TFA, and how obvious it was. And there have been people who said similar things of RO (like RedLetterMedia, if you focus on the actual good points they had on RO).

ANH imagery in R1 makes sense, as R1 is set moments before ANH; I’d be worried if there wasn’t ANH imagery.
TFA on the other hand is set 30 years after ROTJ and relies heavily on ANH/OT imagery; that is far more grievous a crime than for a movie set during the OT era to use those visuals.

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Wannabe Scholar said:

Jeebus said:

Wannabe Scholar said:

10 - The movie tries to harken back to the original trilogy by including tons of fan service, with recognizable characters and places that are almost identical to those places in the OT, so much to the point it’s more up in your face than being endearing.

You make it sound like it’s a bad thing; but if a movie set directly before ANH wasn’t like that, it wouldn’t work.

I don’t know about that. I prefer RO over TFA any day, but I have to admit there’s a lot of damning evidence to show that both are guilty of this. A lot of people have complained of the ANH imagery used in TFA, and how obvious it was. And there have been people who said similar things of RO (like RedLetterMedia, if you focus on the actual good points they had on RO).

Force awakens had characters with personalities

Rogue one is only liked because it is more original…but strip that all away and rogue one isn’t a story but only liked because of darth vader

Rogue one is very similar to return of the jedi as they are both undeservingly praised for hollow things that aren’t that impressive

For ROTJ it was the throne room scene…don’t really see the appeal of that scene

For rogue one it was the darth vader sequences. which are to be fair much better than the entirety of return of the jedi but also not good enough for it to save the movie