Rogue One

[SharkyMcShark]

The last two minutes.

[Ralph Wiggum]

The last two minutes.

Right. That one character absolutely kicking arse in the last two minutes?

Shame this forum doesn't have hidden tags, because I'd enjoy a good discussion. Maybe the title can be changed to *SPOILERS*

[Krayt]

There was one thing I didn't like.... Too much CGI on Tarkin. Granted he looks great and is much needed, just someone went overboard with facial twitches that just aren't Peter Cushing.

And where was lavabase? It's the only thing in the whole movie where you don't get told the name (I may have blinked.... But I don't think so.)

***edit***

God damnit Disney!!! It's Mustafar..... What was wrong with Bast Castle on Vjun????

[SharkyMcShark]

There was one thing I didn't like.... Too much CGI on Tarkin. Granted he looks great and is much needed, just someone went overboard with facial twitches that just aren't Peter Cushing.

And where was lavabase? It's the only thing in the whole movie where you don't get told the name (I may have blinked.... But I don't think so.)

***edit***

God damnit Disney!!! It's Mustafar..... What was wrong with Bast Castle on Vjun????

I'm an old EU fan so my first thought was Vjun too.

[SharkyMcShark]

I really enjoyed the fan service in this one because even though in many ways it was a lot more in-your-face, it worked because the story was in that time and place, instead of TFA which was all call backs.

[GoktimusPrime]

I really enjoyed the fan service in this one because even though in many ways it was a lot more in-your-face, it worked because the story was in that time and place, instead of TFA which was all call backs.

^Totally agree with this! The setting of Rogue One allowed for it to jam in a gratuitous number of Original Trilogy Easter Eggs but in a way where it makes perfect sense and doesn't feel out of place. I really liked how they also replicated the same Rebel pilots who flew with Luke to attack the Death Star to also be fighting in the Battle of Scarif. Also cool was how they used the same actor/actress for Bail Organa and Mon Mothma from Revenge of the Sith.

The CG recreated Tarkin and Leia were quite impressive. I agree that they don't look totally convincing, but I once watched a video on computer animation which explained that human faces are the most difficult thing to recreate with CGI simply because the human mind is so intimately familiar with how a face should look like that it will subconsciously and automatically detect even the slightest of imperfections. They can render aliens, creatures, monsters, dinosaurs, vehicles, robots, plants, terrain, asteroids etc. and it all looks convincing to us because we're not used to looking at these things all the time in real life. e.g. if a chimpanzee were to look at a CG chimp (say like the ones in Planet of the Apes) then that chimp would probably look fake to the real chimpanzee. It looks convincing to human audiences because most of us haven't spent our whole lives studying human faces. It's something that our brains have done since we were born - babies learn to look at people's faces in detail, which teaches them the skill of facial recognition.

So to put things in context, generation CG human faces for characters like Tarkin and Leia are arguably the most difficult feats of visual effects in terms of bluffing the audience. Previous movies that did this (e.g. The Crow, Superman Returns etc.) usually do so where the person's face isn't perfectly clear. Brandon Lee's CG face was shrouded in darkness, Jor-El's face was grainy and only appeared inside the big crystal etc. Forrest Gump is different because they took existing video of those people and super-imposed Tom Hanks into it. And we didn't have close-up shots of those faces either, whereas we did with Tarkin and Leia. Leia looked more jarring than Tarkin because she was in an extremely well lit environment with the white-walled and bright interior of the Tantive IV.

It should also be noted that Tarkin's and Leia's faces weren't entirely digitally constructed. They had look-alike performers who had their faces digitally modified to look more like Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher respectively. Leia was played by Ingvild Deila, whereas Tarkin was played by Guy Henry. Revenge of the Sith had Australian actor Wayne Pygram as Average Moff Tarkin without digital modification (they just applied make-up and hair styling to make him bear close resemblance to Cushing, just as they did with MacGregor to make him look more similar to Sir Alec Guinness). But given that it was meant to be a younger version of Tarkin (and also only shown at a distance in darkness), it wasn't absolutely necessary to make him look just like Cushing. Given that Rogue One seems to occur shortly before the events of A New Hope, they've understandably gone to the effort to make Henry and Deila look like their Original Trilogy counterparts.

The voice acting were most likely done a year or so ago (the final year is often post-production, principal photography etc. is usually done early on). This has probably allowed for them to use the original actors for Red and Gold Leaders to voice themselves. The original actor for Red Leader (Drewe Henley) sadly passed away in February this year, but fortunately he was at least able to record his lines before passing. Tarkin was voiced by Stephen Stanton, who also voiced Tarkin in Clone Wars and Rebels. He seems to have improved his ability to mimic Cushing's accent, as I found his accent in Clone Wars to have a too American twang to it. I'm not entirely sure, but IIRC Stanton's Tarkin mispronounces 'data' with the American "day-tah" instead of the English "dah-tah." I might need to listen more closely when I watch it again. But otherwise it was a great improvement over his performance in the animated series where a fair number of American phonics came through. Stanton sounded more distinctly English in Rogue One and I didn't even recognise that it was the same voice actor until I Googled it.

Also peculiar how the Star Wars universe - a universe with hyperspace travel and lightsabres - hasn't been able to develop speech therapy techniques good enough to iron out some people's lisps. Director Krennic in Rogue One and General Hux in The Force Awakens both speak with lisps. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to have a go at people with speech impediments, but purely from a science fiction POV it seems odd that a universe with such vastly advanced technology don't seem to have perfected the treatment of lisps. In real life while not perfect, we are able to treat most speech impediments. I wonder if the Stormtroopers are secretly desperately trying not to laugh at their leaders' lisps like the Centurions in The Life of Brian.

"I am with the Force and the Force is with the cheese-makers."

P.S.: Another really interesting element of Rogue One is how they've blurred the moral lines. While the film still generally portrays the Alliance as goodies and Imperials as baddies, it does also show that heroes often have to make morally questionable decisions in order to achieve their desired results. In other words, the ends justify the means, but that is the same school of ethics that the Empire follows. So the audience is shown a Rebellion that is in some ways merely the other side of the Empire's coin. And in Jehda City we hear one of the Stormtroopers refer to the Rebels as "terrorists," which is pretty much an accurate description of what the Alliance is - left wing terrorists (as described by Randall in Clerks ). Rogue One also shows how ironically fractured the Alliance is, with disparate factions and even elements within the same faction failing to cooperate with each other. Something which has proven to be the Alliance's weakness when faced against a far more well organised war machine that is the Galactic Empire. It is only in finally banding together that the Rebels are finally able to successfully obtain the Death Star plans. I can't help but wonder how much better the operation would've been if the Alliance had just agreed to go with Jyn in the first place, rather than allowing a small band of rogues to go it alone, then only to reinforcement them later on. Imagine if it'd been a more concerted effort from the get-go, like say the Rebel assault on Endor etc. But I suppose they needed a reason to explain why the plans were aboard a lone and un-escorted Corvette.

P.P.S: I really loved how they recreated Darth Vader's suit from A New Hope rather than the later episodes. That's an awesome level of attention to detail. Compare this with Vader's suit in Revenge of the Sith which was actually based on his suit in Return of the Jedi. Rogue One Vader's suit is faithfully accurate to the way that his costume looked in A New Hope; the helmet lenses are red, not black, and there are no silver stripes on his pauldron.

L-R: Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi

[SharkyMcShark]

Something else I enjoyed is the implicit explanation of the small size of the attack for against the Death Star - the Rebel fleet was smashed days before.

[Ralph Wiggum]

There was one thing I didn't like.... Too much CGI on Tarkin. Granted he looks great and is much needed, just someone went overboard with facial twitches that just aren't Peter Cushing.

And where was lavabase? It's the only thing in the whole movie where you don't get told the name (I may have blinked.... But I don't think so.)

***edit***

God damnit Disney!!! It's Mustafar..... What was wrong with Bast Castle on Vjun????

Yeah, Tarkin just wasn't right...texturing seemed ok, but those head/facial twitches just made it worse. It was even more prominent in IMAX. Thank goodnes you-know-who ("Hope") was limited to that one seen.

And yeah I figured it was Mustafar for some reason. Maybe because it was the only lava planet in the movies thus far.

[Krayt]

Yeah, Tarkin just wasn't right...texturing seemed ok, but those head/facial twitches just made it worse. It was even more prominent in IMAX. Thank goodnes you-know-who ("Hope") was limited to that one seen.

And yeah I figured it was Mustafar for some reason. Maybe because it was the only lava planet in the movies thus far.

I was hoping for "Luke hiding" logic.... Tatooine as he will never go back = good.... So expected he would never go back to Mustafar after getting fixed did that to him on Couroscant anyway, so why make your base back there?

[Ralph Wiggum]

Looking at other people's theories, it could be either being ordered to reside there by the Emperor as penance for his failure to defeat Obi-Wan, or a deliberate choice to remind himself what happened, and continuing to fuel his anger.