Mithrandir

DominicCobb said:

The Republic becomes the Empire. The Empire does not become the New Republic, it becomes the First Order.

Honestly we’re not given a precise answer to this. In the outer rim territories, looks like that’s it. But I’m not sure that’s the same situation in the inner Core systems.

The Rebels form the New Republic, and later the Resistance.

The fact that the Resistance is sort of a fringe, unoficial faction of the Republic might help explain the use of guerrilla garments. But in VIII, after the escalation of the conflict and an open attack on the republic, I don’t think they could still keep showing the good guys as a poor band of outcasts. They are in control of the wealthiest systems of the galaxy

It would be very strange if these teams swapped uniforms, so to speak.

Yes, both ways would make sense in the end. I’m secretly hoping for both teams having different versions of stormtrooper armor. But probably we just won’t be getting that.

The First Order’s stuff is new and spiffy because so are they. That doesn’t make them in charge, and they’re not. The Resistance is scrappy because they aren’t in charge either, they’re a separate group created by members of the New Republic. As to whether or not they should have armor is a legitimate question but in my mind it would make no sense whatsoever for them to look like stormtroopers.

The thing with the First Order having top tech and being all shiny and new might not be just a design flaw, but rather expose some of the weaknesses of the movie’s plot. At least with what we have been told so far.

If their take was, as Abrams said, to think of the FO as a what-if scenario with the nazis hiding in Argentina, I think they just didn’t make enough research about what happened down here.

I can take that admirers of the old Empire would still honor its aesthetics. I can even take that a splitting appendice of the oficial government would look and feel poor funded. I can a galaxy-wide regime having enough resources to build a superweapon the size of a moon. But it is far more difficult to accept a band of outcasts being able to fund the transformation of an entire planet into a sun-sucking superweapon the upsaid regime couldn’t even afford.

Let’s see what approach they take with Episode Eight, where the New Republic is to be a warring faction. In the meanwhile, I think that clearly these design choices weren’t made under an in-universe logic, but rather with an outsider perspective. Bad guys don’t show their faces and hide beneath masks while the freedom fighters are humans you can get invested with.

The first gesture of the defecting soldier is precisely to take off his helmet.

Well, Han strikes me as a sort of Gatsby character. I think probably he’ll have a mentor that dies under very violent circumstances.

Violent as in lesson-learning trauma you don’t speak about. Not violent as in sad-stuff-you-remember-all-day

Because taking control of a Galaxy-wide Government grants you access to a pletora of resources which in turn permits you to give better equipment to your army.

In Star Wars our sympathies and loyalty as viewers switch between trilogies, yet diegetically the Old Republic, the Empire and the New Republic are a continuum, the same way after 1917 the bolscheviks didn’t sink any old russian Empire ship just becaused it served under the old regime, nor did the current Russian Federation get rid of old Soviet military equipment.

Which is also why Versailles wasn’t demolished after the French Revolution.

Or why Roman Cardinals are called the curia, which is a title that before the empowerment of the Church was held by the Roman Senate.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

OFC, it’s a personal opinion, but I just don’t buy that “evil shape” and “good shape” stuff. If anything, I would go with something that an old user from this forum always pointed out. The Empire is technological, massive, machine-like while the rebels are organic, small-scaled and put their confidence on individuals rather than on a system, whatever that is.

ST has the potential to show some of the conflicts you can face when you have to govern a vast territory with that philosophy.

I just found this, and is absolutely hilarious, yet done by somewhat prof. actors. The intonation is flawless.

It’s a dubbing from the literal chinese translation.

The Sith are the West
The Jedi Order is the Presbyterian Church
Chancellor Palpatine is Speaker D
ObiWan is Ratio

There are plenty of pearls you can find by reading the comments on the video, but watching “I have the high ground” by replaced by “the geography I stand in is far superior” just made my day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XziLNeFm1ok

Looks like I found out some ten years later

MalàStrana said:
rebels who don’t want to rebel because the Empire is too powerful… seriously…)

You may have a call from PM Chamberlain.

In real life, people pressed by circumstances; or fearless completely loony people.

“Heroes”, only in Hollywood.

After Rogue One, and without defending the Prequels from a cinema POV, I can confess that in Star Wars I care and only care about characters that have been there directly or indirectly since the 80s. Prequels have them, sequels don’t.

No matter how badly written they are, I’ll always be interested in watching movies about Obi Wan, Anakin, Luke, Leia, Yoda, Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, the Rebels, the Empire, the Emperor, etc.

The only value I had in ST were the old trio. With Han Solo dead, and Leia written out, and an absolutely flawed plot that still has the rebels as a fringe fraction and an Imperial remnant centered in the periferia of the galaxy (if anything, it should be the other way round), Kiloren or Rey or Orange Yoda just are meaningless to me.

So yes, there are fans that still have a soft spot for the PT, independently of how shitty it is.

Suggesting ideas I post, and think, and try as much as life allows me, to bring approaches and concepts and ideas to fix the PT, because I want them so bad to be good movies. I don’t have a clue about how to fix TFA just because subconsciously I never cared about what happened after ROTJ.

Well, at least the new republic should have had their soldiers in storm-trooper like armor instad of that guerrilla outfit from OT.

Perhaps VIII can surprise us on this, but who knows.

Last night TFA was on TV, and after Rogue One, I just found FO’s Apple iTropper costumes to be way too clean in battle scenes.

NeverarGreat said:
Furthermore, in the case of Tarkin, he distracted from the primary villain: Krennick.

I would say the main villain was supposed to be Tarkin all the way, and then Krennick was created just because by the very premise of this movie, the villain would have to be defeated and shown as incompetent, and going by his rank, position and reputation in ANH, Tarkin wouldn’t have been the case.

However, a Star Wars movie centered around the Death Star one week before the beginning of ANH without any trace of Tarkin would have raised a lot of questions as well.

I think the solution they found to solve this issue was, among many other things, elegant, regardless of how good CGI was.

Some people just keep saying the movie is bad because it’s not what they wanted it to be. And apparently, RLM folks just had a wrong or nonesensical wish for this movie.

If from minute zero you knew this movie was to take place right before ANH [just minutes before, literally] then you can’t blame the movie for being “full of nostalgia”. I wonder what they expected, new designs?

It was implicit in the very premise of the movie.

Tired of people pretending to be right just because their opinion is expressed with emphasis, strenght and wit; hardly a case to justify anything.

At least alderan could develop a defined criticism of the movie.

Boring conversation anyway, have a good 2017 folks!

I like Star Wars a lot, but “the original star wars changed filmmaking forever, it won 7 oscars” and “objectively one of the best movies ever made” are way too ambitious statements.

Not always what you (in fact, what we all) like is the best.

Star Wars is just a movie that not even closely reaches to the highest cinema can give as a form of art. Nor will it ever. It’s a technological fantasy, and it’s supposed to be a fun ride. Within Star Wars movies, some are more serious and more fun than others, but not even one of them raises questions of existencial complexity as true art does, or should do.

The media phenomenon around it shouldn’t cloud its value, for good or bad. Kids stuff, as its own author said.
In fact the main trouble with the prequels is that they tried to bee more serious than what was possible for a space soap opera.

They were, are, and will be enjoyable and fun as ever precisely because they don’t raise those questions, and they simplify and present a world were good and evil are generally delimitated and the moral compass is almost fixed; these movies make us divert from those questions, and are plain and pure entertainment.

At least personally, Rogue One did entertain me, and among many other things, it was able to transportate me into the aesthetics of a universe I felt the same as the one I remember from when as a kid. That’s all I could ask from these movies, and that’s were TFA failed to me.

TV’s Frink said:

I’m ok with how they did Tarkin because I love the character. However, if you don’t see the difference between a mask of a person and a digital recreation of a person I don’t know what to tell you.

I hope they got permission/blessings from his estate or family or whatever.

What I said is that there’s no difference in what it means to the dramatic spectacle. The need to resemble someone has always been there througout the history of drama.

This is only a new means to achieve it.

NeverarGreat said:

If you know something to be fake, your brain generates any number of reasons that it looks fake, even if they aren’t true or not noticeable to the average viewer.

I thought some of the Tarkin stuff was seamless, despite knowing it to be CG. If motion capture got good enough to capture the micromovements of facial muscles, I would feel a lot better about an actor using a ‘digital likeness’ of another actor (provided the actor or their estate were in agreement). In this case, the actor wearing the digital likeness would be translating much of their performance to the screen, even more than an actor with layers of prosthetics on their face.

Even beyond transmitting their facial micromovements (which I think didn’t happen with Tarkin) there is theatre. From ancient times there’s been usage of masks. Mostly rigid masks all througout history, in order to resemble someone/something that wasn’t there.

Then came prosthetics, which were used to resemble someone or something that wasn’t there.

And now it might be CGI, but the intention remains the same. In the case of Star Wars, provided that Tarkin doesn’t exist per se, the likeness of his original protraying actor is aimed at. Should this movie have been about Winston Churchill, why wouldn’t they just reconstruct his face based in historical data? I believe it would be in no way different than having an actor go through 6 hours of makeup a day just to resemble him, it’s the same principle than 25 centuries ago.

I find supposed ethical issues with this technology to be nonesense.

Now, that being said, I will also say that I’ve come to terms with the technology, which really is groundbreaking for the industry. It doesn’t look CGI at all. But it does look like a prosthetic. And yet it certainly doesn’t completely look like Peter Cushing as we’ll see. But, again, that’s not a problem of the technology (which I found to be almost flawless on Leia), but rather of the fact that this Tarkin doesn’t act as Peter Cushing, probably not for technical reasons but for the very fact that the MoCap source material might just not be likely enough.

http://imgur.com/dkzxA5M

As you can see here, there are some facial structures that might look a little different (Right image is the movie’s, middle is mine. I tweaked the proportion to fit Cushing’s rounder face), particularly the eyes (sky blue vs dark green?) and their expression. Thing is Tarkin back in 77 was a very very bad gentleman. He had sophisticated manners, and there’s a certain tiredness in his eyes. He’s not just the evil, determined-eyed guy that stands tall and firm all around. Nor is he the kind of “I talk and stare into the void cause I’m so evil” guy as here:

http://imgur.com/jUSwNYz (which is the peakpoint that really got me out of character)
http://imgur.com/jUSwNYz

Originally, his expressions were not those of someone who speaks decidedly, but those of someone who looks at you in the eye and frightens you because he is listening in-depth to you, and analysing you.

Reviewing ANH as I write, there’s not a single moment when he doens’t convey at least less than two emotions at a time with his expressions. For instance, when he says “enough of this [Vader, release him]” he sounds commanding, but he looks a little worried as well, etc.

Thing is, there’s no naturality to his acting just because the replacing actor didn’t get the character, or he wasn’t well directed, or (perhaps) this new technology will require a fuck load more work on behalf of the actors to pull a seamless impersonation. What I do know, is that this Tarkin looked a little too monolythic, 4 bits, in his acting; but truth to be told, I honestly put it all in the way the character was written (today’s blockbusters are more and more having the cartoonish all-evil villains just like back in the sixties) and a held back and not so good performance of the replacing actor mainly due to the relatively new ground and lack of reference this technology has to endure until its consolidation.

Best acting with this CGI will naturally be that of an old actor playing his younger self. Or even perhaps to have a special branch of acting-studies to be dedicated to physical impersonations just like it happened with voice impersonators.

But it will consolidate, I put some two cents on it. Hope they bring Alec Guinness as well

doubleofive said:

Plinkett Mini-Reivew

Plinkett’s basic complaint is that the standalone movie isn’t very standalone, which I guess is fair, but to me is like complaining that the “Lords of the Sith” novel didn’t make any sense because what even is Star Wars?

Those guys made a name of theirselves by being OT-Talibans. And while most of what they point out about the prequels is true to me, I can’t help saying that they long missed this one with Rogue One.

Suddenly it is better and more realistic that characters chat while in the middle of gunfire; or that you get to care for characters that play with in-universe star wars toys and praise Darth Vader just like fans do in real life.

May more movies like RO come

Wannabe Scholar said:

DominicCobb said:

A true scholar.

Oh yeah, one of the finest.

Seriously though, Rogue One did have a lot of good stuff, but it could have fined some details with characters (developing them, having them somewhat stand out more than in the film, and having us remembering their names-I only remembered Jyn, Cassian, and K2SO) and plot in the first two act. There was some world-building here and there, but I thought maybe we should have seen actually the kyber crystals being dug up on Jedha. And while the characters did stand out in their own way and did have great scenes (you can’t deny Donnie Yen’s actions scenes were awesome), I wish they all had some interactions that made us understand their characters better (e.g. the relationship between Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen, understanding the Imperial defector, or see why Cas hesitated to shoot Galen Erso or why he decided to come back around to help Jyn for the final battle), and I would have liked to gotten others better screen time (i.e. Saw Gerrera, Jyn’s dad). For me, I thought Rogue One was almost trying to be a character-driven story (somewhat anyway), but it was as if the movie didn’t go further into the characters.

Now, that being said, my problems are more or less nitpicks that I can accept, and I found the film all the more satisfying when the third act brings its story together in a grand-scale and epic showdown. I loved seeing how everyone works together, and you can feel for the characters while they struggle to get the Death Star plans, all the way up until they die (which I kind of expected, thanks to a small comic on deviantart that spoiled it for me). There were the smaller details I enjoyed in there as much as the large battle (e.g. Hammerhead ship pushing the Star Destroyer in another, Rebels on the ground trying to contact the fleet), mainly because I’m a bit familiar with SW Rebels, and I found the entire third act to be excellent.

Another positive I liked about the film was its music score. TFA was lacking any noticeable music of its own (something akin to Binary Suns, Duel of the Fates, etc.). One piece of music that sticks out is the song that’s played when Jyn and Cassian are together on the beach and wait for their end (it’s played throughout the movie, I think).

The CGI (with Tarkin and Leia) for me was fine, and I even liked the original footage they used (though I might be more nitpicky when I see the film for a second time). And I might be one of the few who actually the PT stuff added in the film, specifically Mon Mothma and Bail Organa. They got the original actors from the PT to play out their roles here, and it was such a joy for me because they were so criminally underplayed in the PT.

Overall, I did enjoy this film, certainly more than TFA (The Fanservice Awakens), but my aforementioned nitpicks did stand out. I would like to give this film an A-, but given my problems, a B+ (87/88 percent) will do (better than TFA’s C+).

The track you say is called Your Father Would be Proud, and to me it stuck out as the most memorable as well.

JawsTDS said:

She is in a stable condition, report comes from her brother.

“stable” is not necessarily well though. Certainly not after 10 minutes without oxygen in her brain.

Sad news.

Tyrphanax said:

Vader looks really good at those angles. Better than I remember him from the movie.

Vader is made to be shot from below his shoulders. One thing Edwards got wrong.

MalàStrana said:

Between Vader quietly walking in front of his men in TESB to get the Falcon and the one showing off his Force skills to kill a few random rebel extras, there is a gap. One is classy Darth Vader, while the other is Darth Jason Voorhees.

I agree. However, crashing a rebellion and capturing his son knowing he is alive and well can happen any day, while getting back the plans of the most important military development of your country when you know that there’s a mole in your ranks that probably has compromised the functionality of the weapon just needs some action to be taken.

I felt that Vader and Tarkin both acted recklessly just because the stakes were very very high, and that is something that explains and changes things in ANH in a better way. Exactly the same way you just do not think of Vader as such a random evil guy when you rewatch Empire knowing all he did was to find Luke.

Alderaan said:

Mithrandir said:

I can’t help disagreeing strongly. There are tons of great movies and stories where you know what is going to happen. Surprise is not an artistic value per se.

What you are talking about is called dramatic irony. It occurs when there is so much meaning and revelation in the story, that you can enjoy and take pleasure in watching it over and over again throughout the years even though you already know what will happen in the plot. Each time you entertain yourself with the story, a new layer, a new depth to one of the characters may reveal itself that you didn’t see before. This is the phenomenon that takes place when literature teachers all over the world teach classics to their students year after year, and some 20 years later they are still finding some new gem that they didn’t notice before. It’s the same phenomenon that happens when I watch Empire Strikes Back for the 1,000th time or see King Lear for the 10th time. This phenomenon only happens through the most well-written of stories, and it only happens when a very good writer, in command of his or her craft, is writing those pages.

It is a very different phenomenon from the one you were alluding to: the random plot-twist! Where the audience’s pleasure is only gratified through suspense. When the pleasure in the motion picture is only derived from answering the question “what happens next?”…it stands to reason that a viewer will enjoy the film much less each time they watch it, rather than continue to enjoy it more and more, as in the previous example of dramatic irony.

I remember saying this before in some thread about ring theory and why Star wars is secretly brillant (nothing shining can be secret IMO)

The WTF just happened plot-twist is only well executed if it is meaningful, as Vader’s reveal was, insomuch as that new revelation causes the viewer to go back and reassess the meaning of every previous scene and every previous action in a way they had not previously considered.

And still is a one-time effect the one it produces. Twists and revelations rely on secrets. Once the secret is no more, the revelation is no more, and with it goes away the enjoyment. It is even that way in Empire. Only that while the revelation is now (almost 40 years later) insignificant, it still punches us because it is important to the character.

Take Snoke in TFA. “the map is traveling with you faaaaaaaaaather…Han…Sooooolooo” [I almost expected JJA to appear in the bottom corner of the picture with a “Now you must feel surprised” sign.

Seriously. Mistery Box is total bullshit. The difference between the rational use of a resource and its abuse is the same difference you can find between a classic director like Kershner and the guy that created Lost.

Is every story or motion picture going to be that complex? No. But if it’s not, then it needs to exhibit some other cadre of strong filmmaking traits if it is to stand the test of time. What other aspects of Rogue One or The Force Awakens cause them to rise to memorable status? Do they possess visuals along the lines of a Kurosawa film? Are they edited as masterfully as the trench run sequence in ANH? There are other ways in which a film can stand the test of time.

No, OFC they don’t stand with Kurosawa. But honestly, nor does ANH or any Star Wars/Spielberg blockbuster, maybe except Schindler’s List. You can analyze why Star Wars had the success it had, and find technical reasons in editing, storytelling, etc; but elevating it to the category of cult cinema right there with say 8 1/2 just feels wrong to me. And I enjoy Star Wars a fucking lot, which is why I’m here.

But some ways it will not stand the test of time include vfx, which will date sooner rather than later, and nostalgia porn, which will be lost on people within a few years. Making a movie filled with fanservice might please you now in your short sighted and I would argue misguided desire to live in the past (as that review alluded to), but it will not reflect well on these films and will one day not reflect well on your own memories either.

I don’t know. It felt fresh to me, it’s not about a boy/girl that is tired of living in the suburbia and wants adventure and finds out he has powers and goes and makes some feats, preferently destroying a superweapon.

Do I have nostalgia? Yes. Read my review, to me Star Wars is the Empire vs the Rebels. I can take it being the republic and whoever the foes maybe.

If the opposite path to nostalgia is just fucking up the ending of Jedi by setting the exact same situation with other smell, well, I’ll take nostalgia.

Just one man’s opinion.

Sure, no puns taken!

Alderaan said:

Lord Haseo said:

Alderaan said:

Lord Haseo said:

These non Star Wars fans are the worst…

EDIT:

And you’re goddamn right I went there.

Do you really want to go somewhere else? We could also discuss how some people have incredibly poor taste in films, don’t understand anything about storytelling or filmmaking, and base their ratings of Star Wars movies on nothing more than how much **** can be crammed onto the screen that they’re familiar with from other films or novels for God knows what reason.

You don’t even understand the opening crawl of a film you claim to love. Fuck out of my face with that shit.

You’re asking for a ban man. What I do understand are people who are so vain, so into themselves, that they enjoy watching movies where their entire gratification comes from subconsciously going “ah I knew that was going to happen” and “I remember that in some other film I liked years ago” and “that was in _____ EU book I read!” and the like.

There was a great quote in one of the reviews I read that said we, as a society, used to go to movies to wonder about the future (and the OT certainly fits that bill). Now we seem to be in love with reliving the past.

I can’t help disagreeing strongly. There are tons of great movies and stories where you know what is going to happen. Surprise is not an artistic value per se.

In fact, I would argue that there was a time when we went to the movies and theatres not giving a shit about knowing the ending, and still enjoyed it. And now all we got is just plain “oh, plot twist!”

Rogue One is a tragedy, because you know the unavoidable fate of the characters, yet you know they can do nothing about it.

Seen it three times by now, and I just keep liking it more and more. The Rebel Alliance feels like an actual military organisation. And we get to see that both Rebels and Empire have their internal political struggles, be it Tarkin/Krennic or Saw/Mon Mothma. It doesn’t feel monolithic anymore.

It’s a film that has the maturity the OT had, where characters understand each others with just eye contact and they don’t need to say everything, tho in the end yes, what ends up being key is the story and not the characters. I can’t see how that’s not the case in most of movies anyway.

And I don’t like the fact that this movie is getting so much trashing on the web, mainly because I really liked it and hope all the spinoffs take this approach and level, and not to have “character driven” spinoffs such as “origins of han solo”, “origin of boba fett”, “Vader”. And since I do not want Luke Skywalker or whoever they need to be re-cast, I won’t even dare to say a thing about CGI. Yes it was recognizable, but I’m enthusiastic on this tech, and hope they continue to pull it off.

Honestly cinema today, and actors are generally so crappy I’d rather have a CGI Alec Guinness or Peter Cushing all day.

Add more ANH OST.

Cut/Tweak the shot of the Stormtrooper yelling “hey you, stop right there” at the blind guy in Jedha (the audio is fine, but it is a close up and the stormtrooper doesn’t make any body movement (which is all the acting a masked guy can make) while delivering it. Feels very weird.

Add Vader’s breathing while he’s in the bacta tank.

Re-synch the line when Vader is talking and points his finger at Krennic. The line is “until you rest assured Galen Erso hasn’t compromise this weapon…in any way.” By the line delivery, his gesture should go exactly in “in any way”. But he just does it at a random point of the line.

Re-dub Vader if possible in somelines where he just looses his calm speech and puts way to emphasis.

I revisited the conversation just to precise the line in the upper paragraph, and I can almost confirm that there are different versions of the movie in cinemas. At least in versions that made it up here Vader makes a rethorical question when he says:

“It’s power to create problems has certainly been confirmed…A city destroyed, an imperial facility openly attacked!!?”

But in the version I recently heard, he clearly delivers a statement, in a more Vader-esque way.

Strange.

ZkinandBonez said:

I’m still a bit confused over why Mustafar was never identified by a caption though. Did they think that too many people might not know the name? Or were they simply trying to keep the PT references to a minimum?

It may have something to do with them not wanting to spoil who the character in the bacta tank is 1 minute earlier. I totally can see secrecy freaks worrying about this.

Second viewing here. Awesomeness of this movie still holds. Compared to TFA, only Disney TM moment is Jyn’s monologue at the Rebel Council.

The prequel we all deserved, at least for me. Specially liked the first act, and the fact that Jyn fucks up big by not taking the hologram with her. Something that Rey never does because, you know, he’s awesome at everything (or her decissions aren’t important to anyone but her).

Jyn, generally I liked her. Her voice and intonation isn’t too decided at times. “run, hide, scatter your forces” is an example of how to deliver a line if you want to sound like a random teenager. I’m somewhat tired of this archetype of the “rough girl” being only someone who can irrealy kick some guy’s asses. That’s what Jyn and even Rey are, sensitive daddy’s girls who know martial arts and can fight. Rey naively trusts Finn, while Solo, who is a man, can tell that he’s lying. Exactly the same goes for Jyn in this movie, with Cassian and the blind guy. At least for me “street-wise” or “rough girl” also implies some level of intelligence and gravitas, such as the one that they correctly put in Mon Mothma. That is a good female character on her own.

Felicity’s performance is hard to rate. I liked very much some bits of her acting. Specially the line “then we’ll find him, and bring him back, so he can tell them himself”. I find the intonation, the pause in “bring him back…”, the very way she delivers the line as something that we don’t see much in the saga, which is the characters making up their specch in the very moment they’re talking. Happens a lot in real life but not in matine movies like Star Wars. And well, there are plenty of moments like that, when the characters deliver lines in strange ways because they are agitated, physically exhausted, etc. Maybe this doesn’t necessarily make me care about the character’s “arc” but it really does make me feel empathy for their situations at the moment.

I still think Vader isn’t well filmed, the score is not quite there, and that thing about the quality of the grebbling in the 3d models.

But in the end, it holds close to the OT, closer than any other SW film, both in heart and mind.

EDIT, delete please

Jeebus said:

DominicCobb said:

Just thinking, this is the fourth Star Wars prequel and the first that doesn’t manage to totally fuck up any aspect of the continuity.

I didn’t like the speed they gave to Darth Vader in this movie either; I’d rather not have him show such acrobatics with the lightsaber. That being said, what I did like of it are the implications that speed has, which is that on the Imperial side of things, only Vader and Tarkin fully understand how fucked the Empire is if they loose those plans.

What I mean is that we didn’t see a raging Darth Vader, but a desperate, rushed Vader. And that I did like because it implies that he’s not only the most dangerous, but the most lucid within the Empire as well.

Obi Wan in ANH, instead, is something far more personal and has, not until he finds out about Luke, no implications in the grand scheme of politics of the galaxy. That, on one hand. And on the other, I like the explanations that go around the web, that in the end Vader fears Obi Wan for what he’s done to him and so approaches him in a rather conservative way.

To me it felt a lot like Star Wars as I remember it, which is an adventure movie in space, during a war.

I’m very happy with this movie, to me it is the living proof that Star Wars doesn’t need plot twists, cliffhangers, mistery boxes, supersecrecy or whatever to be awesome and enjoyable. It’s just a fun ride, sit, chill and enjoy, even if you know exactly where it is going to go.

It felt so good to be back again in OT’s timeframe that most of the stylistical choices taken, such as first person fighter shots, etc, didn’t even bother me.

Apart from what I’ve already listed as flaws for this almost flawlest movie, I’d say the only real missed oportunity was to make a better use of the rebel fanfarre.

Bobo Jameson said:

Mithrandir said:

Just came out from a screening, and again, somethings are quite disturbing, but it is far far better than Disney Awakens the Force, and personally for me, up there with the OT.

The soundtrack feels somewhat odd, certainly not a JW OST, but the movie closes with classic star wars credit music. And I think that’s my feeling about the movie, it might be different but it indeed earns to be called a Star Wars film, probably the first since the 80s.

Things I liked:

Break out of War!!! One line -this is Admiral Raddus of the Rebel Alliance- made it for me. The previous debate (even if Felicity’s speech was a Disney® moment) was gold. Should the Rebellion risk an open War against the Empire? This was the first battle, the Rebels first open incursion against the mighty Empire, and it was on the verge of just not coming to be.
The high steaks, intelligence assasinations, etc. There is no Death Star says Vader. The Senate doesn’t know anything. There IS a lot of political tension amidst a war film.

Great, excellent prequel material. I liked seeing some Old Clone Wars vehicle at the beginning as well, and Coruscant was just criteriously used as a memory of a long forgotten past…

Tarkin. Great, great and promising technology. I agree the results are a little off, but I put it all on Guy Henry’s acting. You can Mocap his face and get it replace by Cushing, but he just isn’t Peter Cushing, nor has his gestures. This is what I think was the reason behind the uncanny valley feeling I got sometimes during the movie. For instance, they got the mouth part to be quite accurate. Eye movement is even correct, but eyebrows seldom get a vertical movement, which is a key feature when someone is surprised/tense. Now is that a fault on the thecnology or is it just an actor perhaps playing it light perhaps because he knows he is to be replaced?

In the end…OT era. Boy how I missed this. I can’t help not giving a damn about The First Order and Kiloren or Battledroids or Mace Windu. This IS the classic Star Wars Era. All the designs and schemes of the OT prove to be so timeless I wouldn’t mind if they just got stuck doing films set in this timeframe.

Things I didn’t like:

Well, the soundtrack: Both Imperial themes from the OT weren’t used enough. ANH’s wasn’t even used, and Rebel Fanfare was in a Yppieeee Disney version, not militaristic enough.

ILM/Technology: Yes, used universe and whatever they want to sell to E-Entertainment and SDCC, but there’s no point in putting half the budget in 3D modelling entire catalogues of model pieces only to use them in OT ships. What I mean is, they got Star Destroyers and the Death Star quite right [just speaking of the models, the lighting felt off, and very Star-Trek to me] but the new designs weren’t digitally built with such model pieces, so the movie ends up having on purpose low-detailed model-like Star Destroyers but classic CGI full detailed U Wings, Rebel Cruisers, Scarif Building or Krennic’s Shuttle. Perhaps I’m asking too much, but it should have all looked as those old and loved 80s models.

About the lighting of the space scenes, well I might be a nitpicker, but it’s just that it didn’t match OT’s more uniform and plain light, instead there’s a super-accurate Gravity-like approach of lighting.

And, the last thing I didn’t like is…Vader. I think Edwards cinematography didn’t help him at all. Vader is there to be filmed from below, and he just keeps putting the camera at the height of his eyes, which renders an angle not so familiar of his mask, and certainly not imposing at all. Combine it with the fact that JEJ didn’t get the tone quite right, and also the fact that well, he doesn’t quite have anything to do in the movie other than fan service and you’ll have a strange presence in the film. (which on the other hand, I welcome because what is Star Wars without Darth Vader?)

The last shot of Vader standing there in open space even looked fan-film like.

When did fun little nods become “fan service”? I friggin’ hate that new term! I’m a lover of nostalgia, it’s excellent and charming. People out there quit giving dorky ass names to things whilst trying to harpoon the fanbase!

I’m not even complaining of it, rather just about how Vader was handled with the camera…