I see RO was being similar to John Carenter’s The Thing, which also had a strong cast of characters, despite none of them having any clear backstory, shown or told. We learn who those character truly are through their response to the crisis in the film, and I personally think that’s so much more interesting than just a series of flashbacks
The Thing is a masterpiece, carried by a cast who are distinct with small amounts of screen time between them. They are memorable and often charismatic. RO has no such cast. And it’s the wrong genre for that sort of ensemble.
A war film can’t have an ensemble cast? I mean that’s what RO is, it’s a war film set in the SW universe. In a sense RO is The Dirty Dozen in space, so I’m not sure how an ensemble cast can be incorrect for the genre.
Also, those first two sentences are extremely subjective, and many people would say that RO has all of those attributes. They are all distinct characters, I personally would say that they are quite memorable (same more so than others, but that also applies to The Thing). And many of the characters are quite charismatic, at least to the extent that it makes sense within a somewhat gloomy war film.
canofhumdingers said:
When he found the hallway full of rebels, he did what he routinely does in the OT and goes into action.What he routinely does is stand behind the front line cannon fodder while they die in droves, then he steps forward to assess the damage. He doesn’t move that fast, ever, and he doesn’t use his lightsaber or the force wastefully like that. If only the way he acts was the issue… but the main problem is that he’s clearly been added in a reshoot for fan-service. Any theme of sacrifice (which was barely achieved with the blandest cast) is thrown out by a finale that cheers on the bad guy. Am I crazy is this all wrong to anyone else?
Fan service aside, Vader’s situation was rather unique in RO compared to anything we saw in the OT. In ANH they had the Tantive IV in a tractor beam, it was trapped within their hangar bay and a whole SD compliment was ready to storm the crew of one little ship. In RO there was a massive battle going on that was completely unexpected and the DS plans had been transmitted aboard a ship that could take off at any minute. In such a desperate situation it would be dumb to not send in Darth Vader if he was available. After all, pre-ANH, that was pretty much Vader’s role in the empire, to do the jobs that ordinary troopers couldn’t do (not easily anyway). Storming the Tantive IV after it had been captured was a task that didn’t require Vader, storming the Tantive IV while they were still downloading the DS plans and could escape at any minute, that is a task for Vader.
Also the idea of “cheering” Vader on is a bit of a misreading of the scene. Yes, people like Vader, but the scene is clearly meant to be intense and frightening, and in the same way that people like horror movies, people like seeing Vader being menacing. So yes, it’s fan service, but it’s also an intense scene adding tension and urgency to the rebels escape from Scarif. Also, the strange thing about SW is that interpretations are always very different between fans and regular viewers. I thought the Vader scene was “cool”, and so did my brother who’s also a SW fan, but other people I’ve talked to found the scene scary and/or tense, and there were definitely kids in the theater who were shocked to see Vader mow down good guys.