Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Post-release)

You kinda dodged my original question regarding how does trying to redirect criticism to the old movies would invalidate criticism to R1 and how does that relate to being "a Star Wars fan" but nevermind.


I just find it totally ironic that people back in 1977 leveled the same kind of criticisms at Star Wars as people do now with Rogue One. One reviewer back in '77 said that Star Wars moves along way too quickly to really get to know the characters. I'm just wondering where have I heard that one before?
 
Well, those critics just don't understand SW! They have low SW-IQ and the characters are clearly perfect as they are! And any attempts to deepen the characters, like making the bad guy their father or giving them human emotions like fear or anger would only be character assassination! #NotMyVader #VaderNotFather #DarthJake


Yep! And there's quite a few people on this forum that just doesn't understand Rogue One, it's a war-movie not a movie built on individuals and yet the characters are still great!
 
I just find it totally ironic that people back in 1977 leveled the same kind of criticisms at Star Wars as people do now with Rogue One. One reviewer back in '77 said that Star Wars moves along way too quickly to really get to know the characters. I'm just wondering where have I heard that one before?

OK mate, never mind.
 
To me, Rogue One was (and I think I said this after having just seen it) someone's Star Wars D6 RPG campaign game that ended in victory, but with a TPK.

And I was totally fine with that. It was a fun movie to watch, and I didn't need it to be anything else. I would've liked to have seen more of the characters over time, but for a one-off film, it was a fun little campaign to watch.
 
To me, Rogue One was (and I think I said this after having just seen it) someone's Star Wars D6 RPG campaign game that ended in victory, but with a TPK.

And I was totally fine with that. It was a fun movie to watch, and I didn't need it to be anything else. I would've liked to have seen more of the characters over time, but for a one-off film, it was a fun little campaign to watch.


Ha ha nice one Solo4114 I used to love WEG SW about a million years ago and I think it's one of the reasons I like this movie.


Time will tell whether this film has legs or not. Other posters here are right I think, it is a war movie with a star wars veneer or dirty dozen meets SW. It's unashamedly a fan service film too.

On balance if I felt like watching one of the new SW films it'll R1 I reach for over TFA or TLJ. how about everyone else?
 
Idunno. I saw Vader kicking Rebel ass while Alliance troops won their first major victory against the Empire. Seemed Star Wars enough.
 
Ha ha nice one Solo4114 I used to love WEG SW about a million years ago and I think it's one of the reasons I like this movie.


Time will tell whether this film has legs or not. Other posters here are right I think, it is a war movie with a star wars veneer or dirty dozen meets SW. It's unashamedly a fan service film too.

On balance if I felt like watching one of the new SW films it'll R1 I reach for over TFA or TLJ. how about everyone else?

Haha, thanks. I knew of the WEG game for years, but actually only picked up copies of the books about a year, year and a half ago. I'd love to get a group going on that stuff, but it's tough finding time and folks who can play regularly. If you're still into WEG's RPG, check out www.rancorpit.com.

I think the film illustrates something...different in Star Wars. Something which, perhaps, people are only just starting to realize, actually. Star Wars is no longer the "once in a blue moon" thing it once was. I think part of why the OT is venerated as much as it is is because (A) it was the first of its kind and the first within the overall series, and (B) it was a relatively rare thing. You had 3 films in a 6-year span of time, then nothing (film-wise) for 16 years, and then another 6-year span of 3 films, and then nothing (again, film-wise) for another decade.

Then, in the span of three years, you have four films coming out. In a way, I think what Star Wars is becoming is much more like what the James Bond series is (kinda). Bond films are still an "event" because they only have one every few years or so (sometimes it's only one year, sometimes it's every 2 years, sometimes it's even more, but it's only ever one at a time). However, for people who want to watch the films, there are 25 official films (not including Never Say Thunderball...er...Never...Again), and not all of them are viewed as equally good, even (especially?) among serious Bond afficionados. The original four or five films are well regarded, but there's a fairly large body of work that's viewed as either imperfect or inferior to those standards, and especially some controversy around the newer material.

The Disney-era LFL model appears to be to put at least one Star Wars film out every year. Not necessarily one "numbered" episode every year, but one Star Wars film every year. They will not all be uniformly good. For all of the "If Marvel can do it, why can't LFL?!" rhetoric, there are plenty of Marvel films that are, at best, also-rans. They're entertaining enough, but they're hardly all equally good. The first two Thor films were pretty blah. Iron Man 2 was...you know, ok, I guess... Iron Man 3 was generally regarded as a very weak entry. Captain America: The First Avenger was viewed as only kinda so-so when it first came out (although I think it improved over time). Nobody talks about The Incredible Hulk anymore, and the character has become a supporting character because, unsurprisingly, the Hulk actually isn't all that interesting in and of himself. As good as The Avengers was, Age of Ultron was only so-so, in my opinion, and felt overstuffed. Captain America: Civil War had similar issues.

Bottom line: not every film is gonna be a mega-hit or a classic for the ages. And as more and more content comes out, the odds of a film being a miss or only a bunt, rather than a solid hit, get higher. There will still be amazing films in this series. But there will also be ones that aren't as good. Oddly, I've found that accepting this has made me better able to appreciate the films overall. Mostly because I'm a little less demanding about them, in that I don't expect every film to be ESB. I mean, yeah, we should. We should expect it, and Disney/LFL should produce that level of quality every time...but in the real world, that's just not gonna happen. So, I take what I can get and enjoy what I enjoy. And when they make one I really dislike, I'll speak up, but I won't get as bent out of shape about it as I did with the prequels, where it felt like that was IT. Star Wars was DONE and there would never be anything more.
 
How 'bout just one like that? And which Star Wars film of theirs is precedent for that? Upon what evidence are you basing this prediction?

You know my position on the newer films. I really liked TLJ. I know you don't. We won't see eye-to-eye on that.

My basic view is this. The way the franchise is running now and for the foreseeable future, you're going to have a number of different creative teams that'll be making films. It's not going to be the work of a single auteur. The Story Group seems to me, for the time being, to be more a kind of guard-rail system. They have a very general sense of the points they want to hit, but as long as you color within those lines and use the official crayon box, you're (mostly) free to do what you please. That may shift over time, depending on the reaction to their films, although I think at least until Ep. IX and whatever the next "anthology" film is, that's going to be the basic model. They'll take on ideas for stories, tap specific directors to bring them to life, and otherwise stay out of it unless the directors are failing to deliver on schedule or are developing a movie that doesn't "fit" with the Story Group's idea for the general contours of what makes a Star Wars movie (e.g. Lord & Miller doing whatever they did with Solo).

So, going forward, you're going to have different creative teams, and as a result, I believe we cannot help but eventually have at least a few films that are just flat-out good. I went through rather a laundry list of Marvel films above, but there are some unequivocally good films in that run as well. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2, Thor: Ragnarok, and Spider-Man: Homecoming all come to mind. Star Wars will have those kinds of films, too, simply because there will be a volume of them with different creative teams.

I mean, look, if you want to despair and claim Star Wars is dead, then ok. I guess there ain't much I or anyone else can say to convince anyone otherwise if they're dead-set on that view. But I think that the simple diversification of the creative teams makes it a lot more likely that you'll have a breadth of experiences when to comes to forthcoming Star Wars films. We aren't dependent upon George and his whims anymore. That alone means that you'll have more chance for variation among films.

On the other hand, if you simply don't think it'll ever get better than 1977-1980, you might as well check out now and just go back to watching those two films on a loop. >shrug<
 
You know my position on the newer films. I really liked TLJ. I know you don't. We won't see eye-to-eye on that.

My basic view is this. The way the franchise is running now and for the foreseeable future, you're going to have a number of different creative teams that'll be making films. It's not going to be the work of a single auteur. The Story Group seems to me, for the time being, to be more a kind of guard-rail system. They have a very general sense of the points they want to hit, but as long as you color within those lines and use the official crayon box, you're (mostly) free to do what you please. That may shift over time, depending on the reaction to their films, although I think at least until Ep. IX and whatever the next "anthology" film is, that's going to be the basic model. They'll take on ideas for stories, tap specific directors to bring them to life, and otherwise stay out of it unless the directors are failing to deliver on schedule or are developing a movie that doesn't "fit" with the Story Group's idea for the general contours of what makes a Star Wars movie (e.g. Lord & Miller doing whatever they did with Solo).

So, going forward, you're going to have different creative teams, and as a result, I believe we cannot help but eventually have at least a few films that are just flat-out good. I went through rather a laundry list of Marvel films above, but there are some unequivocally good films in that run as well. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2, Thor: Ragnarok, and Spider-Man: Homecoming all come to mind. Star Wars will have those kinds of films, too, simply because there will be a volume of them with different creative teams.

I mean, look, if you want to despair and claim Star Wars is dead, then ok. I guess there ain't much I or anyone else can say to convince anyone otherwise if they're dead-set on that view. But I think that the simple diversification of the creative teams makes it a lot more likely that you'll have a breadth of experiences when to comes to forthcoming Star Wars films. We aren't dependent upon George and his whims anymore. That alone means that you'll have more chance for variation among films.

On the other hand, if you simply don't think it'll ever get better than 1977-1980, you might as well check out now and just go back to watching those two films on a loop. >shrug<

Well, I didn't realize you love TLJ.

But I disagree that a variety of creative teams will produce dramatically different films in terms of quality. Because every one of those teams is put together by KK, and she only hires like-minded SJW promoters. On top of that, she's unqualified to screen prospective writers and directors for SWIQ, because she herself has an abysmally low SWIQ.

As for your last sentence, of course I don't think it'll ever get better than 1977-1980. I don't know anyone who does. Including you.

The Wook
 
Well, I didn't realize you love TLJ.

Wait, really? I haven't exactly been shy about that fact. I could explain why (although that's probably best left to a different thread, rather than this one), but yeah, I really liked it. It had some weak parts, but I liked a lot of what I saw as the underlying messages, and I liked how the ending seemed to leave things wide open for stories that won't just endlessly re-tread the already well-worn ground of the OT.

But I disagree that a variety of creative teams will produce dramatically different films in terms of quality. Because every one of those teams is put together by KK, and she only hires like-minded SJW promoters. On top of that, she's unqualified to screen prospective writers and directors for SWIQ, because she herself has an abysmally low SWIQ.

As for your last sentence, of course I don't think it'll ever get better than 1977-1980. I don't know anyone who does. Including you.

The Wook

Yeah, we definitely disagree on the "SJW" stuff. We did back in our discussions on TFA, as I recall. As I've said elsewhere, I'm broadly for greater and wider representation in film, including Star Wars films. And I can't speak to SWIQ because I have no idea how it's determined. Is it based on objective, uniformly-applied criteria? Is there a point system? (I think not? I've never seen anyone get an actual score other than "high" or "low," although I've admittedly not tracked all of the posts wherein SWIQ has been evaluated.)

As for the whole "better than '77/'80," yeah, it probably won't ever be better than that, but a lot of that has to do with who I am and where I am in my life. Think there will be films that will be as good as or nearly as good as those films, though. But hey, I'm an optimist about this stuff.
 
Idunno. I saw Vader kicking Rebel ass while Alliance troops won their first major victory against the Empire. Seemed Star Wars enough.


Vader going nuts on a rampage at the end of Rogue One is the best classic Vader scene of them all!! We finally get to see what Vader can do with non-jedi/ non-force user enemy combatants on the big screen and it's the purest form of cinema I have ever laid my eyes on. :D
 
Disney, we need more of THIS.

Jedi/Skywalker lore has been done to death. Give the audience a chance to breathe. The MCU isn't just a series of Avengers movies.

Back up and do some universe-building with movies like Rogue One. I'm talking original stories - we don't need Solo, Obi-Wan or Boba Fett "origin" movies.
 
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This is the show that might get me to subscribe. I love the stuff just with regular Rebel soldiers. Outside of the EU, we haven't ever really gotten anything about Rebel intel agents besides Rogue One, so it could be pretty cool. I'm all for staying away from Jedi/Sith, but it still would be cool if they did something about a rumor of a Jedi that survived and then they find him/her dead because Vader got to them first. We know Vader helped hunt them down in this time period, but never saw any of that. You wouldn't see Vader do the deed, but see the results.
 
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