Rogue One

[GoktimusPrime]

i thought the initial description of the movie as being a slightly more gritty, darker, no jedi, scrappy war heist about the rebellion was very interesting and different.

I like the idea idea of a Star Wars film that has no Force users in it. It would make it different from the mainstream Star Wars movies, but also because Force users are meant to be a very rare minority of people in the galaxy. Even at the height of the Jedi they were still a rarity, with Jedi numbering in thousands (I think) among the gazillion number of life forms throughout the galaxy. Many people would have never seen a Force user in their life, thus they've always been something of a myth. Even Qui-Gon Jinn explicitly said, "We're keepers of the peace, not soldiers." The Clone Army was created to bolster Jedi numbers, and of course Jedi were so rare that they only acted as commanding generals in the army, not infantry. Sith are even rarer due to their Rule of Two (to the point that the Jedi had come to believe that the Sith were just "boogeymen" and even the Jedi Council initially refused to believe that the Sith could be real). So I think that it would be really cool to see more Star Wars stories told from the POV of the more common folk in the SW universe rather than the elite few who have a high Midichlorian count^are Force sensitive.

then recently disney ordered re-shoots because they didn't think it was 'star wars' enough or perhaps too dark. this has me thinking 'well the whole point from the beginning was to do something different, now at the end you are trying to change it'. is this going to make it worse? i feel like it could end up now being in some kind of limbo, in between something different but with light hearted moments shoe-horned in? i dunno.

I think that a movie can be both dark, gritty and serious and light hearted at the same time. It all depends on how well it's done. The Empire Strikes Back struck this balance really well by having humorous moments punctuating the intensely dark and emotionally fuelled drama of the story, such as the 'running gag' of Han and Leia's constant arguing (which really was a product of their love for each other), Yoda's goofy silliness (a ruse to test Luke's patience) etc.

"Afraid I was gonna leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?"
"I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee."
"I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss!"

"No time to discuss this as a committee."
"I am not a committee!"

"How you get so big eating food of this kind?"

also being a long time fan of various games, comics and books I won't accept anyone stealing the death star plans who isn't Kyle Katarn from what they've shown so far though I think though that Jyn Erso might possibly take some inspiration from Kyle so it's a little better hehe.

Eh... Disney have officially stated that their films are ignoring Expanded Universe canon, so I guess Kyle Katarn is about as relevant to this period in the Star Wars film universe as Admiral Thrawn is to the sequels.

FWIW I agree with your sentiment. When news of the sequels was first announced I was really looking forward to seeing a lot of stuff from the books being adapted to screen - Thrawn, the Solo kids, Vornskyrs, Mara Jade Skywalker etc. -- and I was especially looking forward to seeing Vong Wars. Alas it's not gonna happen as they've decided to throw that all out in favour of this Knights of Ren thing, Super Leader Snooky-Pooks and other stuff yet to be revealed.

[GoktimusPrime]

Eh... Disney have officially stated that their films are ignoring Expanded Universe canon, so I guess Kyle Katarn is about as relevant to this period in the Star Wars film universe as Admiral Thrawn is to the sequels.

Looks like I spoke too soon about Thrawn.

[philby]

Looks like I spoke too soon about Thrawn.

yeah i was just about to say that haha. rebels S3 looking pretty damn epic!