Alderaan

digitalfreaknyc said:

Should check out this interview with Ben Mendelsohn: http://collider.com/ben-mendelsohn-rogue-one-star-wars-interview/#changes

“We did have multiple, multiple ways of going at any given scenario, we had multiple readings of it. So should they ever decided to, there would be a wealth of ways of approaching these different things. And I know from having seen sort of the crucial kind of scenes throughout it, I know there’s vastly different readings of at least four of those scenes, with enormous differences within I would’ve said 20 or 30 of the scenes.”

I think this is the problem. These films are being made in a corporate board room.

And they suck as a result.

This video is absolutely hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odj6NHsWe00

Really feels like people’s reaction to this movie in a microcosm. Of course some of this video is hyperbole, so don’t take it too seriously, but I did find quite a bit of truth in what was going on.

Yeah, I wasn’t suggesting here. I was just offering the possibility it would occur somewhere like social media or film reviews or wherever. Apparently, I’ve been informed there is an actual name for all of this: astroturfing.

Sorry for the derail. It’s not an easy situation for anyone and we all know that.

Ha, I was just reading an article about Russian internet trolls, Hillary PAC paying internet posters, and Monsanto and other corporations starting to do the same. Hilarious and sad all at the same time. But I would consider the job if they paid enough! 😃

SilverWook said:

This is a very bleak war film set in the Star Wars universe we know and love. That alone is going to cause problems for some people.

I would have liked it to be more bleak at times. Or at least consistent. In the sequence on Jedha, there is a small child crying in the street and Jyn hurries to rescue her. Then a moment later there is a guy doing martial arts comedy and a droid cracking jokes. These things do not go together.

Swazzy said:

I also remember them making fun of themselves in saying “Well anything is a matter of opinion, unless it’s mine and then it’s right”.

True, which is why Plinkett does his whole black comedy routine, so as not to give the impression that he takes his review so seriously. I’m easier to make fun of though, and I do it all the time!

I’m sure that however Disney decides to proceed, there will be an influx of posters appearing all over the web, paid for by their advertising and promotions department, aggressively agreeing with their decision.

The lightsabers really do look good in the The Force Awakens. I agree.

Most pointless change? There are many I hate much more, but I will go with stuff like the Luke/R2 line in ESB:

You’re lucky you don’t taste so good/
You’re lucky you got out of there alive/

Or however it goes.

Knights of the Old Republic would make for some great Star Wars films, if they could get talented people making them and take some chances. They could use in-universe world and come up with original material, without leaching off the OT.

Also, I saw Hacksaw Ridge a few weeks ago. I don’t know how many people saw it. But it’s a violent, gritty war film. There are definitely parts where deaths are glossed over. They happen and then the camera cuts away from them and never returns. Those are fast deaths. Then there are some other deaths that are more dramatic. The camera lingers, and by extension, the audience’s attention lingers. Since the film slows down for a moment or two, so does the editing. There are not twenty cuts in the middle of these slower death scenes.

It’s just basic filmmaking.

I think you should probably take a step back from your shilling, and leave people’s families out of this. Get real dude.

Tyrphanax said:

Exactly. The deaths are fast and unglamorous like in a war film.

This isn’t true. The deaths were not fast. They were slow. There were just a million cuts during the scenes. That doesn’t equal fast. That equals terrible editing.

DominicCobb said:
Also, why would you spend money to see a movie you hate again? Why are you spending so much time tearing it apart?

I just don’t get it.

I took my family to see it because they wanted to see it. That doesn’t make sense to you? Maybe you should re-evaluate your priorities in life.

Part 5: Battle of Scarif

Like most people, I enjoyed quite a bit of the action in this last act and it was undoubtedly the strength of the film. I said earlier that the battle was unnecessary from a story point of view, once Jyn’s father had died, but I’ve since reconsidered. Everything could have been fixed by combining Eadu and Scarif into one base and saving Galen’s death for the end.

Anyway, the action was pretty good in the space battle. One thing I do think was missed was the possibility to set a more fatalistic tone for our heroes on Scarif. At some point, they become trapped on the planet, and the recognition that their mission had turned into a noble, heroic suicide mission, would have been quite profound. Imagine if our characters suddenly realize there is no way they are making it off the planet alive, but they have their job to do anyway, to save the galaxy. Instead, we see people trying in vain to survive right up until the end. It makes me think of Luke’s added scream in the '97 SE.

In that light, I have no idea why the whole data tower was necessary, considering R2 could just plug into the Death Star computer at will. It’s contrived nonsense, but whatever, once Jyn and Cassian are climbing the thing, Krennic comes in and fires a blaster at them. Cassian should have been killed in this scene. Again, the tone should have been fatalistic. Cassian should have died, and the camera should have immediately cut to Jyn. And the stakes would have been dramatically raised. Jyn has to dig down deeper if her mission is to succeed. Instead we get the whole roll-your-eyes cliche with Cassian coming back from the not-quite-dead, the evil villain confronting the hero, etc. etc.

Oh well, once again, at least the space battles are cool. The shield gate looked great, even its destruction. The Star Destroyers crashing into each other did not look as good, because the CGI made one of them look like it was made of quicksand. The editing was significantly better in this part of the film compared to what we got in The Force Awakens last battle. The casting was a little better, although a couple of the rebel pilots still look like they are some Disney execs kids, or maybe they won a raffle to be in a Star Wars film. I don’t know.

By far the best part of the entire movie was Vader at the end. LOVED it! They should have saved him exclusively for this scene. Really gets you excited to watch the original Star Wars again, or at least that last scene does anyway.

Final grade of this movie? I think it’s as poorly made as the prequels honestly. But again, I don’t hate it as much, because there’s no midichlorians or Yoda spinning around like a monkey; nothing in this movie offends me or desecrates the OT in the way Lucas later did.

It’s just a boring movie that isn’t very well made.

It is just not a very well made movie. From a directing standpoint, from a cinematography standpoint (there basically isn’t any), from a screenwriting standpoint, from an acting standpoint, from an editing standpoint (cut, cut, cut, even in the middle of a death scene), from an anything standpoint. It is a poorly made film.

Contrary to what Adywan says, criticizing these films would not be an annual thing if Disney actually did one thing: make a good film! Or at least a film well-made.

Remember those wonderful RLM videos about the prequels? Remember their filmmaking criticisms? Those apply to these poorly made sequels as well. These newer movies are perhaps not as bad, and they perhaps have some redeeming qualities in comparison, but they are still poorly made films. It’s easy to say they are just movies, they are just fun, Star Wars doesn’t have to be great cinema, etc.

But the truth is that the original Star Wars changed filmmmaking forever. It won 7 Academy Awards and was nominated for best picture. The Empire Strikes Back is objectively one of the very best films ever made. Return of the Jedi is not quite as good, but the filmmaking talent is still considerably better than what we got from JJ and Edwards/Gilroy.

If you cannot see these things as anything more than cartoons, I feel sorry for you. But to each their own.

Part 4:

After her father dies, Jyn returns back to Yavin 4 and lobbies the Council to attack Scarif, in an attempt to steal the Death Star plans. You’re absolutely right Tavor, Galen’s death should have been reserved for the film’s climax, and moreover, the research facility on Eadu and the Imperial base on Scarif were redundant and should have been combined. There was no need for two different settings when one base would have sufficed.

Anyway, because the bad scriptwriting needs melodrama, the Council rejects Jyn’s pleas even as Cassian and Mon Mothma and others conspire to help her or at least condone her actions. These people evidently hated when Saw went rogue, but when Jyn–someone with questionable loyalties and no track record of aiding the alliance-- does it, well shucks, let’s just smile and decide at the last minute to help her out.

The more I think about it, the more this movie is starting to piss me off because the scriptwriting is just so damn lazy. I can complain all I want about the terrible composition, the lack of any interesting cinematography, the PTSD editing, the pacing and rhythm problems, and the CGI and bad acting in some roles throughout the film, but first and foremost a film begins and ends with the quality of the script; and in Rogue One, the script is not good at all. I mean, we’re not Mary Sue-ing our way through shots of Starkiller simultaneously destroying relatively small planets clear on the other side of the galaxy, but this isn’t good screenwriting either.

What are some other ways it could have been better? How about shortening the dialogue all throughout the movie. The worst example was in the Galen Erso hologram message at Saw’s place on Jedha. The guy just rambles on, and on, and on…and on. He literally speed-reads through a message that is as long as these ridiculously long posts of mine. When the actors read their lines, there is no rhythm or timing to any of it. For that matter, there is no rhythm or timing to any of these scenes. Ah, **** it, let’s just move on to the cool last battle, undoubtedly the best part of the film.

So our heroes steal away to Scarif and **** starts to go down. There is actually one well shot or at least animated sequence where the camera doesn’t cut every two seconds. I don’t remember the whole sequence, but it takes place in space above Scarif, and eventually Rogue One or some other ship makes its way to the shield gate. It was kind of a sweeping ten seconds that I really enjoyed. The space fx look great too, especially the whole shield gate thing. Good things in the movie are starting to happen.

But meanwhile, what were the bad guys doing during this time? Well we get a pointless filler scene with Vader and Krennic, just so we can see Vader’s CGI animated castle or something. Listen, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the last scene with Vader in the movie, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want that cut out of the movie for anything–but that other scene or two he’s in? The dialogue is off. He doesn’t have anything to do. He’s just pointless filler. Save the best for last!

And what about the bizarre scene when Krennic arrives on Scarif? The commanding officer arrives with orders to dig up every one of Galen Erso’s communications, but how does he order his officers to do that exactly? In case you missed it, I will tell you, because I noticed it during the film: Krennic doesn’t look any of the imperials in the eye. He doesn’t even break stride on his way over to his penthouse view of Space Bahamas. He literally walks into the room, fails to acknowledge anyone, gives orders to nobody in particular, and hastily makes for the big window so he can look out at the pretty blue sky.

Really?

Oh well, I’ve rambled on a little too long I guess. Hard to criticize a film for being too wordy when my posts are this long. I promise I will finish my review in Part 5: the Battle of Scarif!

George R. Binks would be the key to everything, really.

Continuing with Part 3:

Once everyone escapes Jedha, Jyn and Cassian and K2SO go to some rainy planet in search of Jyn’s father, who is the primary engineer in charge of constructing the Death Star. I like this storyline between father and daughter, and wish it would have been much more fleshed out in the script. I mentioned all of this before–the idea that Galen intentionally designed a vulnerability in the Death Star is an interesting one, and I think that reveal and his demise would have been better saved for the climax in the last act.

What I did not like about this important scene was first a small thing: being called back to Luke crashing his X-wing on Dagobah, which is all I could think of when their ship landed in the rain. Stuff like this may be nitpicking, I agree, but I just hate the ripoffs like this and the Droid/odds dialogue that takes me out of the movie. Let things like the very nice looking Yavin 4 base, the very well cast Mon Mothma, and the reappearance of Bail Organa, provide all of the nostalgia we are looking for. Don’t shoehorn cameos and ripoffs into the film and take me completely out of the experience please.

What I didn’t like even more was one glaring plot hole and the inconsistency of Cassian’s character. First of all, why are the Rebels still interested in killing Galen Erso? The Death Star has been built and is operational. All of those engineers have already done their job. What good will it do to risk all of these lives in an attempt to kill any of them? Second, why does Cassian not pull the trigger? We watched on in boredom as the name of some trading post was importantly superimposed on the screen at the beginning of the movie, then saw Cassian kill some random innocent in an act that was supposed to make his character ruthless and morally ambiguous. Now he has orders to kill Galen Erso, has him in his sights, and just decides to walk away? What in the world…!!! Just terrible.

But what I really wanted to talk about during this part of the film was something I noticed that caused me to be unable to watch the movie in the same light again: the number of cuts in this movie. There are so many cuts in this film and in this scene in particular that it may actually set a record in all of filmmaking. I’m not even joking. Here is how the editing in this film goes:

Shot…2 seconds, cut…1 second, quick cut…2 seconds, cut…3 seconds cut…1 second, cut…1 second, cut again…2 seconds, cut, cut, etc.

I don’t know how long exactly Galen’s death scene was, but there were literally 15 cuts in a 30 second span where someone was dying and the film was supposed to be slowing down. After that, it took me sometime to recover because all I was paying attention to was the editing. Cut. Two seconds–cut. One second, cut. Shot, reverse shot. Whenever someone speaks the camera is always on the them, then a reaction shot. Then one second later, cut. And two seconds later, cut again.

In some cases this could be considered a stylistic choice, and indeed at certain points in the film where the pacing needs to be fast, it’s even preferred. But the entire movie is edited this way! Even the slow death scenes! Are you kidding me? I had to go back and watch Yoda’s death scene today and admire how both Luke and Yoda are in the frame and the number of cuts are so few and far between. At this point in Rogue One, I started paying closer attention to the camera work and the cinematography too. There was actually one scene earlier where the gang are being held in a jail cell on Jedha, and only at the very end of the scene is there a camera shot that shows a perspective from behind bars. Does anyone remember the scene between Tom Hagen and Frank Pantengeli in The Godfather Part II? When Tom Hagen goes to visit him at the prison, the entire scene is filmed with the barbed wire in between the camera and the actors. When you watch The Empire Strikes Back, watch the framing and panning in the Wampa cave. Think about Vader’s mask emerging out of the smoke during the Carbon freezing scene.

I could go on and on, but this movie has almost nothing like that. Where is the actual filmmaking? Over and over again we get something in the foreground, and then refocus onto some character in the background. We see some character in the background, and then the camera refocuses onto something in the foreground. Cut, cut, then another quick cut. Too many times the actors are too close to the camera or the camera is not even focused on anything in particular at all. Save for one sequence in the last act, I thought the composition in this film was extraordinarily poor.

Sorry for the length of these posts, but I’ll resume in Part 4.

Lost internet this afternoon while I was trying to post the rest of my review, so I’ll pick up now where I left off here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1025415

Act II sees the action move to Jedha, and finally we start to get some semblance of a cohesive narrative. K2SO provides needed comic relief. I really liked the occupied city setting. Unfortunately, I feel like it was a mistake to introduce the Rebels on Yavin 4 before we get this sequence. Dramatically, I’m sure it would have worked better to flow from the bad things the bad guys are doing to the good things the good guys are doing, not the reverse. Oh well.

Meanwhile, we get introduced to yet more characters: the Chinese(?) guys. I like the blind guy in this movie but he was overused in many respects, while his strengths were diminished in other respects, thanks to the dialogue of other characters. The “I’m one with Force, and the Force is with me” mantra works well enough for me. He fights in battle, and that works well enough for me too. He does have some funny lines. But the filmmakers overuse him quite a bit, particularly in his fight scene on the streets of Jedha. The farcical tone of some of that action (along with quasi-slapstick comedy from K2SO) really misses the mark and does not match with what should be darker themes and moods going on in the rest of the movie. How can you go from a camera shot of a small child painfully crying in the street, and Jyn rescuing her with real concern on her face, to a guy doing martial arts comedy and a droid cracking jokes all in the same sequence? Just doesn’t make sense.

Perhaps more egregious, however, was that the other characters steal this guy’s thunder. Imagine, for a second, how much more this character would resonate if he were the ONLY person in the movie who actually believes in the Force. That last scene of his near the end of the film would have been so much more powerful and meaningful. The whole movie would have just worked better if you have this one guy constantly talking about the Force, while the other characters take turns either dismissing him or treating him with some apprehension. Instead, his buddy mocks him one time in the whole movie and that’s it. Jyn and others constantly say “may the Force be with you”, and it just diminishes this guy’s character so much.

From there, we move onto the part where Jyn and Saw are reunited. I don’t really have much more to say about Saw and how pointless he is in the film, except that we just don’t get anywhere near enough background to care about this guy. It’s hilarious and sad at the same time that such a useless character received such a melodramatic and drawn out death scene. The guy was in like two or three scenes ffs. Why does he just stand there and wait to die while the others escape? He screams “remember the dream!” or something at Jyn instead of running like everyone else and trying to survive. Unreal. Meanwhile, the Death Star death-lasers that area of the planet and I just rolled my eyes at how much time all of these people had to escape. This whole sequence is a severe blemish on the film.

Finally, that brings us to Tarkin and the Death Star. I really don’t like the idea of them being in the movie at all. I explained that. Krennic should be the only villain, he should have a star destroyer and a fleet at his disposal, the Death Star should be alluded to over and over again in the dialogue, and some people should fear its potential, while others dismiss its threat. Tarkin need not be mentioned at all.

Instead, the Death Star does not remain an intimidating off-screen threat left to be revealed in A New Hope. We get to see people easily escape when it attacks a planet. We get to see it commanded by a tasteless CGI character who looks like a video game cut-scene. We get new continuity errors with regard to the original Star Wars film. And we get the bonus effect of Alderaan’s destruction being just “another one bites the dust”.

I’ll continue on with the part where Cassian and Jyn go to her father in Part 3.

Preview:
That was the part where–from a filmmaking point of view–my mind got blown. I couldn’t see the movie the same again.

OK so like I said, I saw Rogue One a second time last night. I feel like I can give a more informed, detailed review this time, but I do apologize in advance for the length of these posts.

The film starts out with an OK first scene but an extremely poor first act. I think the complaint about Krennic landing a mile away from everything is justified, but I’m not going to get stuck on something like that too much. Compared to the rest of the film, this first scene feels like a visual breath of fresh air. Jyn disappears down some hidden tunnel a few moments later, and from there our Star Wars story gets underway.

After the title “Rogue One” appears on screen (where I would have liked to hear a more rousing score), we skip ahead many years to a cacophony of scenes and settings that read like a ****ing travel brochure. Meaningless superimposed title this, meaningless superimposed titled that. The first act was, quite frankly, very poorly put together. Jyn is grown up, but we only get to see her in her ordinary world for a minute or two. Compare that to Luke in the OT or Rey in TFA, and you see the film never gives us the chance to really get to know her or care about her like we properly should. We get re-introduced to Mon Mothma and the Rebel Alliance, and I really like Mon Mothma in this movie. I feel like she was severely underused. Could she have been a main character even? Yes, I think so. One of the things the film did get right was visually recreating the look and feel of the Rebel Base on Yavin 4, so I do want to give credit where credit is due.

The final thing I remember about all of these glued together expository scenes in the first act was the part where we get introduced to Cassian, a rebel spy. He basically outs himself as a morally ambiguous character–at best–when he kills an innocent guy who just provided him with vital information. Was this a mercy kill? If so, the film needed to show regret or some kind of emotion to get that idea across. Since there was nothing like that, I can only assume he didn’t care about killing the guy, which makes his character inconsistent with many of the actions he takes later in the film.

And oh yeah, I guess there was the pointless nonsense with Saw and the Imperial pilot on Jedha. I have no idea at all what this film was trying to accomplish with Saw, but his character was completely useless. What is the point of his breathing apparatus? When you look back at the OT and the creation of Vader, his breathing and his suit and his machine-like qualities were designed for very specific dramatic purposes. They weren’t just cool characterizations that people thought up. But what is the purpose of Saw gasping for air into an oxygen mask, when he’s on screen for like two or three scenes? Just to make him different? Just to sell toys? And then there was the part where we saw another prequel-like fake CGI rathtar and yeah, all of this was among the worst parts of the entire film for me.

Anyway, that sums up act one. I’ll move onto act 2 and more thoughts in the next post, but I want to wrap up here by pointing out where I think the filmmakers got this introduction wrong: why are we cutting back and forth among 10 different storylines in the first fifteen minutes of the movie? The main narrative eventually coalesces on Jedha in the next part…why couldn’t all or nearly all of the first act have taken place on Jedha? Where did virtually all of the action in act one take place in Star Wars? Tatooine, right? What about Empire Strikes Back? It was Hoth. What about Return of the Jedi? Jabba’s Palace. And in The Force Awakens? Jakku.

There’s just no reason to jar the audience with all of these different settings at the beginning of a movie. I don’t even remember what the name of the trading post planet was, but it was on screen for five seconds and one scene in the entire movie and that was it. What’s the point? That’s just bad filmmaking.

Everything should have been re-written so that we start off with a strong narrative that revolves around principal characters and one world: Jedha. And that’s where I will pick up next in part 2.

Feeling 34 feels pretty good as far I’m concerned.

TavorX said:

Saw this for the first time last night, so here’s some mind vomit:
Rogue One happened to elevate my appreciation towards the original trilogy and The Force Awakens. The directors behind those films are WAY better at knowing how to pace their scenes from start to finish. Like seriously, Rogue One has really awful pacing aside from the last act. There was simply little cohesion and felt way too rocky when we transitioned from one location to another.

It’s not just the pacing between scenes. Much worse was the pacing within scenes. I’m going to get into this a bit more when I post my seriously detailed 2nd-watch review today, which will include both good and bad.

I saw Rogue One a second time tonight.

Much lengthier and much more in-depth review to follow.

I think it would have also been far superior from a dramatic standpoint if there were some healthy skepticism in the film concerning the Death Star’s threat. Seeing a good contingent of the Rebels actually doubt that the Empire was capable of such a military threat, even dismissing it, would have been welcome. We have countless examples of how brilliantly that kind of drama worked in the originals, including not only Han’s skepticism of the Force, but also General Tagge’s skepticism in the conference room on the Death Star.

SilverWook said:

He ordered the total destruction of an Imperial base, with lots of personnel still inside. That’s not dramatic enough for you?

First I’ll admit that I’m going off memory seeing the film one time, so my recollection of every detail may not be 100% complete. That said, discussing the example you provided, do you think that was integral to the story? Or just filler? If you think it was integral to the story, do you think it could have been possible to have Krennic do the exact same thing? Combining characters and writing a tighter script is a very good thing.

In the example I cited, Krennic obviously can’t relieve himself from his own command. And there’s the issue of Tarkin needing to be in command of the Death Star at some point. I think the script would have been way better with Tarkin and Death Star references without them actually being included in the film. Give Krennic a Star Destroyer and a fleet and let him battle the rebels that way. Let him do all the work.

Leaving the Death Star out of the movie and not relying on its impending threat only visually, I think would have pushed the filmmakers into creating a far more compelling story.