Rouge One thread. There are a few SPOILERS in here If you haven't seen it yet!

[matmosphere]

The real problem with that very last bit with the plans being handed off wasn't the bad cgi, it was the giant wide-eyed grin on the caracters face. Shit is going down and they are literally surrounded by a war, a more solemn look would have made it much easier to swallow.

[culturejam]

Late to the party here, but I just saw this over the Christmas break.

I don't know, but I liked this movie a LOT. And it was way better than The Force Awakens, which was just cramming the same old shit from EP IV - VI into one movie (with a weird Gollum guy that doesn't fit into anything).

Also, I didn't even realize Tarkin was CGI. I actually thought it was an actor with some heavy makeup and other trickery to make him look like the original guy. Now at the end, I sort of figured Leia was some kind of computer shenanigans, but it was brief enough that it wasn't distracting.

Vader was totally bad-ass and his amount of screen time was completely appropriate. 

My namesake actor Mr. Whitaker was maybe a little odd, but he really got into the part and I respect that.

I loved the dark tone and unhappy ending. Not everything is Jar-Jar and Ewoks. The film raises important discussion points about rebellion / insurgency and collateral damage and generational war culture.

I fuckin loved it.

[Leevibe]

I don't know, but I liked this movie a LOT.

Thanks for helping me feel like I'm not alone in really enjoying this movie. I thought they did really well with the CGI Tarkin stuff. It must have been massively difficult. I felt like he looked like an identical twin to Tarkin. Not precisely the same, but that close. There were a couple times his eyes looked a little funky.

I loved that they killed everyone off. It was a fun story but it's not going to spin off into a bunch of sideways energy.

I thought the droid was fun and there were some pretty stunning visuals. And the fight scenes made me remember why I thought Starwars was cool when I was a kid.

[juansolo]

K reply for the spoiler thread.

I REALLY liked R1.

For me what it did was complement the original trilogy. It took was was originally just exposition in the opening crawler text and made a film of it that makes the original Star Wars better.

By this I mean it does one thing that really bugged the hell out of me anyway; it explains why the death star has a fatal flaw in it that means you can throw a hand grenade down a hole and blow up an entire ship.

But in other ways also, it shows the rebels as a disorganised mess pretty much on the point of losing. This ups the stakes so much more. Especially seeing that this is all that's really left of them at this point, and the few of them left in that battle on Scarif going on to fight the death star makes them all more than just red shirts.

You see the amount of death/sacrifice that was required to get the plans.

Basically it complements and adds weight to Star Wars. For that I commend them greatly.

Force Awakens was enjoyable, but pure fan service. It was a re-making of the original trilogy in a compressed form really. It introduced some new and interesting characters, but was just pandering. I seriously worry for the next where we find out that Rey is Luke's daughter... Which will happen, mark my words.

If I'm nit-picking R1, of course it's not perfect. Remember it's a Star Wars film, they're usually littered with little things like that.

The score jarred with me when it had call backs to John Williams. Either go full JW or don't go there at all. I think JW would have added to the epicness, but they could have just as easily gone with Hans Zimmer for that kind of OTT epic flavour. Instead it was a bit flat.

Tarkin, yep he's CG and you can tell. If you're not looking for it, he just occasionally looks a bit wrong. However he needed to be in it. Maybe protheticing up an actor to look like him would have worked, I don't know. But I can overlook it because he needed to be in the film to explain why he was running the death star (he plays a big part in Star Wars after all). CG Leia was so brief as to not make an impression either way.

The opening jumped around a little too much. I'm not sure we needed to see a lot of the stuff in there just to establish she is in prison or he is essentially a wet work operative. That could have been trimmed and flowed a lot better. It definitely needed to open up with Mads and co, that was excellent, it then could have cut to her in the prison transport cuffed up. That's all it needed, we didn't need to see her actually in prison. It's spoon feeding when you do that. Also the bloke who rescues her, you don't need to see him killing the messenger. It just doesn't matter and ruins the flow of the opening of the film.

That's all really I'd nit-pick of it. It's not perfect, but it does what the prequel of the Thing did. Instead of being a lazy remake (like Force Awakens) it shows a story that came before. Sure, like The Thing, we all know where it ends as that's where the next film begins. But that story is much more interesting than seeing the Thing again with different actors.