Rogue One first thoughts
Dec. 15th, 2016 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardStraight from the theatre Rogue One thoughts -- (positive, btw, a little bit of negative)
So I am very, very familiar with Star Wars in all media except the video games, and the approach those take all differ based on medium as well as the people involved. Going into Rogue One, I didn't know if it would feel like one of the movies (OT, PT, TFA, they all feel different), like the shows (early TCW, late TCW, Rebels S1, 2, 3, all different feels), the comics, the novels, like its own thing, what.
My overwhelming feeling, and I mean this in the best possible way and not as an insult at all, is that Rogue One felt as though someone had taken a Star Wars comics miniseries and put it on the big screen. And that's a hard, hard feeling to capture -- I love the comics most of the time, and even today my primary engagement with the Star Wars canon is with the comics just because they come out so regularly. I'm astonished that they managed to hit that feel, and I think it was the best possible approach they could have taken. But my gods, it felt like walking into a movie theatre to watch a comic book, to the extent that my brain automatically started breaking down scenes into panels and pages.
Did they RESURRECT PETER CUSHING? Is this like when they stood over Alec Guinness's tomb with a microphone to record Obi-Wan for TFA? What dark magic is Lucasfilm up to. What human sacrifices are they carrying out for these purposes.
Adding to the comic book feel is that this felt like a Star Wars movie for Star Wars fans. This is the hardest thing to do with tie-in material, which this is -- to trust your audience and not waste time laying out baseline knowledge. No one introduced Mon Mothma or Bail Organa or Moff Tarkin or even Vader; their significance is implied rather than outright stated.
I do think the scene at Vader's castle was one of the weakest in the movie. (Especially because it's the only location that didn't get a title card; I don't know if it was supposed to be Mustafar or what.)
I can't believe they killed EVERYONE. How am I supposed to write Jyn and Cassian making out NOW.
The Ghost! And the call for General Syndulla on the comms!
I'm sure SW.com will do a "voices of Rogue One" thing like they did for TFA -- in retrospect I should have taken a picture of the "additional voices" credits but didn't think of it until later. I know I saw Steve Blum, Dave Filoni, Vanessa Marshall, and Sam Witwer up there, and Stephan Stanton did Admiral Raddis' voice.
I was wary of Jedha when it first came up in promo material, but I think it worked out okay, and having the Guardians of the Whills and the Force of Others, which is all from the original SW material, was a nice nod.
I do wish that there were more legacy aliens -- I count Mon Cala, the Aqualish on Jedha, and two Twi'leks (one of whom was a holographic dancer, natch). This is a recurring weakness of the new films -- as well as a lot of the comics, actually, so it works in that sense too...
Damn, saving Vader for the end like that was...very much a comic book move, actually, and worked very well. Same with Leia.
I can't believe they killed EVERYONE.
Though on that note, now I'm curious about the strength of the Rebellion in ANH -- Pablo Hidalgo and Dave Filoni and others have talked about the Yavin rebels being one cell, or a collection of several cells, and the entire Rebel force not being assembled until Endor. And the Rebels clearly got hammered pretty hard at Scarif and lost a couple of commanding officers, but I don't remember enough of ANH to make too many judgments about whether or not the Rebels at Yavin are the ones who survived Scarif, if they're the ones who weren't there in the first place, if they got called up fast from training or other assignments or what.
WOMEN PILOTS! But no women as ground soldiers, which bums me out.
Also -- there's now starting to feel like there's a discrepancy between the Empire as presented in the films and the shows and the Empire that's presented in the books and comics. The former two keep pushing that it's white and male (and I get that of the films, three were made forty years ago when doing anything else was unthinkable, and of the shows they're using animation models), but the latter two are emphasizing that it's neither predominantly white OR male in any branch of the service with characters like Rae Sloane, Zare Leonis, Moffs Ssaria and Mors, emphasis placed on female stormtroopers, others whose names I can't remember (there's on in the Princess Leia comics). And with every new piece of canon that comes out that discrepancy is starting to grow and feel worse and worse. (Seriously, all the Death Star engineers are old white human dudes? ALL of them?)
But holy shit, it felt like a comic book on the screen.
So I am very, very familiar with Star Wars in all media except the video games, and the approach those take all differ based on medium as well as the people involved. Going into Rogue One, I didn't know if it would feel like one of the movies (OT, PT, TFA, they all feel different), like the shows (early TCW, late TCW, Rebels S1, 2, 3, all different feels), the comics, the novels, like its own thing, what.
My overwhelming feeling, and I mean this in the best possible way and not as an insult at all, is that Rogue One felt as though someone had taken a Star Wars comics miniseries and put it on the big screen. And that's a hard, hard feeling to capture -- I love the comics most of the time, and even today my primary engagement with the Star Wars canon is with the comics just because they come out so regularly. I'm astonished that they managed to hit that feel, and I think it was the best possible approach they could have taken. But my gods, it felt like walking into a movie theatre to watch a comic book, to the extent that my brain automatically started breaking down scenes into panels and pages.
Did they RESURRECT PETER CUSHING? Is this like when they stood over Alec Guinness's tomb with a microphone to record Obi-Wan for TFA? What dark magic is Lucasfilm up to. What human sacrifices are they carrying out for these purposes.
Adding to the comic book feel is that this felt like a Star Wars movie for Star Wars fans. This is the hardest thing to do with tie-in material, which this is -- to trust your audience and not waste time laying out baseline knowledge. No one introduced Mon Mothma or Bail Organa or Moff Tarkin or even Vader; their significance is implied rather than outright stated.
I do think the scene at Vader's castle was one of the weakest in the movie. (Especially because it's the only location that didn't get a title card; I don't know if it was supposed to be Mustafar or what.)
I can't believe they killed EVERYONE. How am I supposed to write Jyn and Cassian making out NOW.
The Ghost! And the call for General Syndulla on the comms!
I'm sure SW.com will do a "voices of Rogue One" thing like they did for TFA -- in retrospect I should have taken a picture of the "additional voices" credits but didn't think of it until later. I know I saw Steve Blum, Dave Filoni, Vanessa Marshall, and Sam Witwer up there, and Stephan Stanton did Admiral Raddis' voice.
I was wary of Jedha when it first came up in promo material, but I think it worked out okay, and having the Guardians of the Whills and the Force of Others, which is all from the original SW material, was a nice nod.
I do wish that there were more legacy aliens -- I count Mon Cala, the Aqualish on Jedha, and two Twi'leks (one of whom was a holographic dancer, natch). This is a recurring weakness of the new films -- as well as a lot of the comics, actually, so it works in that sense too...
Damn, saving Vader for the end like that was...very much a comic book move, actually, and worked very well. Same with Leia.
I can't believe they killed EVERYONE.
Though on that note, now I'm curious about the strength of the Rebellion in ANH -- Pablo Hidalgo and Dave Filoni and others have talked about the Yavin rebels being one cell, or a collection of several cells, and the entire Rebel force not being assembled until Endor. And the Rebels clearly got hammered pretty hard at Scarif and lost a couple of commanding officers, but I don't remember enough of ANH to make too many judgments about whether or not the Rebels at Yavin are the ones who survived Scarif, if they're the ones who weren't there in the first place, if they got called up fast from training or other assignments or what.
WOMEN PILOTS! But no women as ground soldiers, which bums me out.
Also -- there's now starting to feel like there's a discrepancy between the Empire as presented in the films and the shows and the Empire that's presented in the books and comics. The former two keep pushing that it's white and male (and I get that of the films, three were made forty years ago when doing anything else was unthinkable, and of the shows they're using animation models), but the latter two are emphasizing that it's neither predominantly white OR male in any branch of the service with characters like Rae Sloane, Zare Leonis, Moffs Ssaria and Mors, emphasis placed on female stormtroopers, others whose names I can't remember (there's on in the Princess Leia comics). And with every new piece of canon that comes out that discrepancy is starting to grow and feel worse and worse. (Seriously, all the Death Star engineers are old white human dudes? ALL of them?)
But holy shit, it felt like a comic book on the screen.