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So I tried out watching Rogue One immediately after the show. I know I said it improves it before and it does, but it had strange results.
The first half of Rogue One, which I think is weak, is greatly improved. Knowing Cassian, K2, Saw, Krennic, etc. helps it flow very naturally and helps you to care a lot more about what’s going on. Same with the rebels generally. Since the pace of the show is so slow, Rogue One, which normally feels slow early on, feels much faster by comparison. Almost too fast. Cassian almost rises to the level of secondary protagonist because you know him so well by this point. When he decides not to snipe Galen Erso it’s much more meaningful. You know his modus operandi under Luthen was to gun down anyone who could potentially be a problem, and you see that at the beginning of the movie with his contact on Kafrene. The theme toward the end of the show where he starts to embrace the Force a little bit carries through pretty well.
The part where he tells Chirrut that “this is a first for me” when he’s in Saw’s jail is hilarious because they either forgot about it or he’s lying, given that there’s an entire arc in the show about him escaping a hell prison.
There’s also an interesting dynamic with Krennic’s character. We saw him as the intimidating upper manager figure in the show, but when we see him next to Tarkin and Vader he’s in the junior leagues. There’s a feeling that everything has gone up a level and there’s a natural progression from spies running around to open conventional war.
Then the other half of the movie, which people generally see as much stronger because it has most of the action and the big battle, actually gets weaker. The idea that Jyn steps up and becomes a leader figure right away looks even more absurd because we’ve just seen how paranoid and distrustful the rebel command is and how long it’s taken them to trust Cassian. There’s some of that discussion in the council with some of the worst senators ever but it’s still odd. Then they naturally defer to her to give an inspirational speech to the soldiers on the landing craft, when Melshi is clearly their real leader. The way she suddenly becomes the most important figure in the universe with the ability to single-handedly take out a dozen stormtroopers in melee comes across as more Mary Sue-ish next to the more grounded feeling of the show where everyone receives a lot more development. Baze and Chirrut similarly feel a little more out of place.
The ending feels even more abrupt. There’s no real breather where you take in that everyone died, it just slams right into CGI Leia and credits with little explanation. This was more understandable when this was just a fan film prequel for the original movie but now it feels almost insulting, for lack of a better word.
