Movies: Star Wars: Rogue One Part II Release date Dec 14th

[Do Make Say Think]

He is complaining that they talk about the Force without explaining what it is. If they did spend 15 minutes explaining it, people would also complain because everyone already knows what the Force is.

He is changing parameters to judge this movie as a generic space movie, but it is part of a franchise.

No one wants to hear him talk about how good anything is, that isn't his schtick.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

No, that was not my point.

You wanted the character who's role was to lead Jyn to believe in the Rebel Alliance to have more emotional weight?

 

[Amazing Kreiderman]

No one wants to hear him talk about how good anything is, that isn't his schtick.

I get it. It's just not cool anymore to like a movie and be positive about it.

 

[johnjm22]

I like the icing on the cake analogy.

All the cool SW stuff like Star Destroyers, Tie Fighters, Death Troopers, X-Wings, space battles ect. are the icing on the cake, but the cake itself is the characters and the story.

Rogue One is mostly just the icing. There's not much of the rest of the cake. Sure the icing taste good, but it doesn't last, and you don't want too much of it by itself or else you'll get sick of it.

It's a mediocre movie at best.

 

[KirkOut]

I get it. It's just not cool anymore to like a movie and be positive about it.

I agree. I really liked R1 despite a few parts that's didn't make sense. I usually like the plinkett reviews but these comments seemed ridiculous

 

[Seedtype]

I'm floored by how much they didn't like it.

I'm not too surprised, but I think they might be being a little too rough on the fanbase.

However some comments in this thread kinda trigger me, like people saying that Star Wars has so much potential to explore stories... and then they say they want more Vader.

We don't need anymore Vader, we've seen his fall and his redemption. His character is done. (I'm fine with him in Rogue One, I think since this was a grunt movie, he's great showing how much more powerful a force user is compared to Joe Blow Rebel)

 

[aufheben]

I like the icing on the cake analogy.

All the cool SW stuff like Star Destroyers, Tie Fighters, Death Troopers, X-Wings, space battles ect. are the icing on the cake, but the cake itself is the characters and the story.

Rogue One is mostly just the icing. There's not much of the rest of the cake. Sure the icing taste good, but it doesn't last, and you don't want too much of it by itself or else you'll get sick of it.

It's a mediocre movie at best.

I'm not sure to what extent I agree with this.

 

[Amazing Kreiderman]

I like the icing on the cake analogy.

All the cool SW stuff like Star Destroyers, Tie Fighters, Death Troopers, X-Wings, space battles ect. are the icing on the cake, but the cake itself is the characters and the story.

Rogue One is mostly just the icing. There's not much of the rest of the cake. Sure the icing taste good, but it doesn't last, and you don't want too much of it by itself or else you'll get sick of it.

It's a mediocre movie at best.

By that logic, TFA was literally just icing.

 

[johnjm22]

By that logic, TFA was literally just icing.

The characters in TFA had character.

And yes TFA was also a mediocre movie.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

You wanted the character who's role was to lead Jyn to believe in the Rebel Alliance to have more emotional weight?

Are you suggesting his death and role in the movie had emotional weight to it?

Agree to disagree, I suppose.

And no, that was not the original contention I made. I suggested scrapping him from the movie entirely along with at least Gatling Gun Man to give more time and possibly do a better job in fleshing out the other characters.

 

[Shareefruck]

I think the cake has always just been the presentation framework in prime Star Wars, not story and character (as in the delivery of the material, not necessarily the effects), which were never out of this world. In that respect, the cake is just fine in Rogue One. The structure and all the beats work pretty well.

If the story and character is the cake, then Star Wars has traditionally always been something where the icing tasted far better than the cake. Even though A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back had decent characters and a serviceable story, that was never the main reason they were such incredible, lasting movies, IMO. It's always been the aesthetic, presentation, and delivery that they knocked out of the park, first and foremost, not the substance.

 

[johnjm22]

I think the cake has always just been the presentation framework in prime Star Wars, not story and character (as in the delivery of the material, not necessarily the effects), which were never out of this world. In that respect, the cake is just fine in Rogue One. The structure and all the beats work pretty well.

If the story and character is the cake, then Star Wars has traditionally always been something where the icing tasted far better than the cake. Even though A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back had decent characters and a serviceable story, that was never the main reason they were such incredible, lasting movies, IMO. It's always been the aesthetic, presentation, and delivery that they knocked out of the park, first and foremost, not the substance.

Decent characters? The originals had some of the most memorable characters of all time.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

lol

I feel this is appropriate.

 

[Shareefruck]

Decent characters? The originals had some of the most memorable characters of all time.

But if we go by your definition of "icing", even the characters are memorable mostly due to their surface level flash and aesthetic rather than for their substance/development. It was very much about the look, sound, and feel of Vader and look and sound of Leia and Solo's personalities.

My point is, if the implication is that the cake is the substance and the icing is the presentation, that seems to go against how Star Wars really functions. When it comes to Star Wars, the presentation kind of IS the substance, and the stuff that you would look for if you were to dig deeper or treat these characters as more than cookie-cutter archetypes is really secondary.

 

[Canuck21t]

I think the cake has always just been the presentation framework in prime Star Wars, not story and character (as in the delivery of the material, not necessarily the effects), which were never out of this world. In that respect, the cake is just fine in Rogue One. The structure and all the beats work pretty well.

If the story and character is the cake, then Star Wars has traditionally always been something where the icing tasted far better than the cake. Even though A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back had decent characters and a serviceable story, that was never the main reason they were such incredible, lasting movies, IMO. It's always been the aesthetic, presentation, and delivery that they knocked out of the park, first and foremost, not the substance.

I disagree. The original Stars Wars are memorable because they had a good balance of interesting characters and story AND stunning visuals. Rogue One didn't quite manage to have that balance, but it wasn't that unbalanced either. I did care for the two main characters at the end.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

But if we go by your definition of "icing", even the characters are memorable mostly due to their surface level flash and aesthetic rather than for their substance/development. It was very much about the look, sound, and feel of Vader and look and sound of Leia and Solo's personalities.
.

You're docking Star Wars' characterization for not doing something it was never intended to accomplish. The purpose isn't to do a character analysis of the intricacies of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, the purpose is to get you to empathize and root for Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

And I can't think of a film franchise that better accomplishes this better than Star Wars. Which is why it's one of the most popular (and lucrative) franchises of any genre of all time.

This isn't to say that characterization is "icing" either: the main dramatic thrust of the trilogy is based on the adventures of Luke Skywalker and his friends, in the context of a Galactic Civil War between the Rebellion and the Empire. Meaning characterization is marshaled not into making them original, complex characters, but making the audience like them. They're trying to take science fiction characters and make them seem "real"- and again, Star Wars does this better than most any franchise, whatever the medium.

Also, a vigorous "WRONG" to people only liking the "look" and "feel" of the characters rather than the characters themselves. This is such a cynical and reductive argument that I don't even know how to approach it.

BTW, film is a visual medium, so I happen to know that there is no such thing in film as a divorce between "presentation" and "substance". EDIT: I get you're saying that the characters of the OT are unoriginal tropes (Han Solo = cowboy, Obi Wan = wise old sage, etc etc) dragged on by a well constructed story and cinematic direction (the ANH trench scene + ESB + conclusion of ROTJ), but I don't see how these two things are automatically different, or should be categorized as different, from characterization.

 

[aufheben]

I think the cake has always just been the presentation framework in prime Star Wars, not story and character (as in the delivery of the material, not necessarily the effects), which were never out of this world. In that respect, the cake is just fine in Rogue One. The structure and all the beats work pretty well.

If the story and character is the cake, then Star Wars has traditionally always been something where the icing tasted far better than the cake. Even though A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back had decent characters and a serviceable story, that was never the main reason they were such incredible, lasting movies, IMO. It's always been the aesthetic, presentation, and delivery that they knocked out of the park, first and foremost, not the substance.

The characters were definitely good IMO but most people who like Star Wars saw it when they were kids and have liked it since. I think stuff like lasers and lightsabres were more important possibly than it's given credit for. Some characters are kind of hard to separate from the icing in ways too. Maybe that's looking too far into it but a big chunk of what made some characters interesting was aesthetics, like Yoda and Vader. If that makes sense. Probably not. Is the icing supposed to be equal to the cake in this analogy?

I don't know it's hard to talk about these movies because I have no idea what my opinion would be about them if I'd never seen them until say, yesterday. Also this is obviously kind of unfair but the characters A New Hope don't become that interesting until later movies.

As I said previously I don't think that necessarily makes for a bad movie if the characters don't provide much of a conventional connection. I kind of liked it in this one.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

I'm not too surprised, but I think they might be being a little too rough on the fanbase.

However some comments in this thread kinda trigger me, like people saying that Star Wars has so much potential to explore stories... and then they say they want more Vader.

We don't need anymore Vader, we've seen his fall and his redemption. His character is done. (I'm fine with him in Rogue One, I think since this was a grunt movie, he's great showing how much more powerful a force user is compared to Joe Blow Rebel)

Speak for yourself. There is basically a ~30 year gap between movies. Meaning we missed Vader in his late 20's-Late 50's or something along those lines. Hell they could easily do a trilogy, one movie for every decade.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Are you suggesting his death and role in the movie had emotional weight to it?

Agree to disagree, I suppose.

And no, that was not the original contention I made. I suggested scrapping him from the movie entirely along with at least Gatling Gun Man to give more time and possibly do a better job in fleshing out the other characters.

No I didn't mean to imply that, there is no real emotion in this movie and that's fine by me: everything was by the numbers and that's what I expected.

I was excited to see the movie and enjoyed it. It didn't need to be an emotional ride and I am sort of glad they didn't try to be.

A lot of people complain that the characters didn't get developed but I still don't understand why that matters: Jyn was developed and she was the only one who really needed it. We got back story for most of the secondary characters and their personalities were established through their behaviour, what would dwelling into their backgrounds add to this movie? I am skeptical that finding out more about Donnie Yen's character's past would do.

 

[XX]

Much better movie than TFA. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

If all the side stories are this good, Disney is in good shape. But I have a feeling they **** up the young Han movie.

 

[Shareefruck]

The characters were definitely good IMO but most people who like Star Wars saw it when they were kids and have liked it since. I think stuff like lasers and lightsabres were more important possibly than it's given credit for. Some characters are kind of hard to separate from the icing in ways too. Maybe that's looking too far into it but a big chunk of what made some characters interesting was aesthetics, like Yoda and Vader. If that makes sense. Probably not. Is the icing supposed to be equal to the cake in this analogy?

I don't know it's hard to talk about these movies because I have no idea what my opinion would be about them if I'd never seen them until say, yesterday. Also this is obviously kind of unfair but the characters A New Hope don't become that interesting until later movies.

As I said previously I don't think that necessarily makes for a bad movie if the characters don't provide much of a conventional connection. I kind of liked it in this one.

Personally, I think there's a misconception about the difference between aesthetic value and childish novelty. If special effects are amazing, that doesn't necessarily mean that a movie is visually strong-- in fact I would argue that that's a very tiny part of it. Also, something that is aesthetically brilliant has a sort of timeless value of its own that is not any less important than story or characters.

A New Hope and The Empire Strikes back were aesthetically brilliant, IMO. This is not only because of the childish novelty of things like the cool-factor of light sabres, special effects, Darth Vader, and spaceships (if it were, The Force Awakens/Rogue One would be arguably as aesthetically/visually strong as the OT, which they're clearly not). It's also things like sound, atmosphere, mood, how characters look/feel, the rhythm/snappiness of the dialogue, cinematography/framing, colors, the poetry of how scenes are sequenced and presented, the wipes, the crawls, etc..... When you add all these things up, they make up a MASSIVE part of what makes a movie a movie.... and ALL of those things are aesthetic rather than content/substance, and therefore, in this analogy, would be lumped together with the icing rather than the cake. I would argue that the Star Wars franchise leans almost ENTIRELY on aesthetics to be worthy of being considered timeless/brilliant. And this is in no way an insult.

The actual character development, writing, plot, themes, etc-- the "cake"-- is more than serviceable enough as well, and good/tight enough that perhaps it withstands criticism, but I don't see any way to argue that these aspects of A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back are brilliant or outstanding, without the influence of the aesthetics. I would argue that the opposite is true though-- The aesthetics are still timelessly brilliant without the influence of the substance. Even though neither area are outright weak, it's still a completely one-sided affair.

If we accept that icing = aesthetics and cake = content/substance, Star Wars is predominantly brilliant/mouthwatering/greatest-thing-you've-ever-tasted icing engorging solid/complaint-free cake, IMO. And yet those movies are still brilliant, on the strength of that icing. That's why I don't think the analogy works in the case of Star Wars.

It's reasonable and somewhat truthful to argue that Rogue One has a poor story, poor character development, poor substance-- FAR worse than A New Hope/Empire Strikes Back-- and that's what makes it a bad movie. However, to argue that it's a bad movie because it's all icing and no cake, to me, makes no sense.

Edit: Btw, Finlandia WOAT, if you want to argue that it's impossible to separate the two because the lines are too blurred between which is which, I can go along with that. The suggestion was brought up, and I only went along with the assertion best I could. I am not saying that either aspects are weak (the characters being like-able and engaging are positives, and the fact that they're shallow/stereotypical don't have to be negatives), but if you're suggesting that Star Wars is still a beloved/highly revered/considered brilliant thing after 30 years mainly on the strength of the substance of those characters, removed from how cool they look, I would not agree with you (aside from maybe Han Solo).

 

[RandV]

The characters were definitely good IMO but most people who like Star Wars saw it when they were kids and have liked it since. I think stuff like lasers and lightsabres were more important possibly than it's given credit for. Some characters are kind of hard to separate from the icing in ways too. Maybe that's looking too far into it but a big chunk of what made some characters interesting was aesthetics, like Yoda and Vader. If that makes sense. Probably not. Is the icing supposed to be equal to the cake in this analogy?

I don't know it's hard to talk about these movies because I have no idea what my opinion would be about them if I'd never seen them until say, yesterday. Also this is obviously kind of unfair but the characters A New Hope don't become that interesting until later movies.

First of all, regardless of the discussion icing >>> cake!

Anyways, I more or less agree with your idea here. I think a big impact from the effects side of Star Wars is that probably for the fist time in sci-fi they were fully believable. Look at older shows like original Star Trek or Buck Rogers, and while they tried often it was just pure cheese that kind of takes you out of it. Lucas was the first one to really get it right with Star Wars, with likeable characters in an interesting yet appropriately vague universe, created a timeless classic that's an imagination factory for the child in us.

Any deeper artistic merit that adults may seek in 'film' is irrelevant once a generation of children get something like this.

 

[LarKing]

Watched it again tonight with some of the thoughts and opinions from this thread in mind. The beginning is jumbled a bit from having to introduce so many new characters and planets. Not really something that made it boring for me whatsoever though. I was really looking at the non jyn and kassian characters for what so many people seem to hate about this movie and man I just don't see it. All of them have a fairly interesting story and depth in this film. Maybe some people just don't like them because they all got their own death scene despite not doing that much in the film as a whole. I just don't see what more they could've done with them in a two hour film though.

The complaints about Saw seem to come straight out of ignorance of the characters/the story but that's also kinda fair because the film doesn't give you that much reason to care for him. As someone who knows the story I can see why I would like him a lot more so I'll give that point to the bashers a bit here.

I don't think this movie was as "good" as episode 7 for the same reason I think many don't in that it's hard to get as connected to the characters and story when you know it's all going to be resolved by the end of the movie and none of them will survive. I do think it was a very good movie at showing what happened for the originals to take place in the way they did though. Especially with the whole "why was there an exhaust port that could blow up the whole station" argument.

 

[DonskoiDonscored]

At least there is no mention of "midichlorian counts" in Rogue One. Just be thankful for that...

 

[MikeyMike01]

The characters in TFA had character.

And yes TFA was also a mediocre movie.

Characters in TFA had no depth at all. Each of the main characters is worse than the last. Even the returning cast wasn't very good in TFA.

Speak for yourself. There is basically a ~30 year gap between movies. Meaning we missed Vader in his late 20's-Late 50's or something along those lines. Hell they could easily do a trilogy, one movie for every decade.

Would love to see more Vader, especially since George did such a **** job with him in 1-3.