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Thread: Rogue One

  1. #31
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    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.

  2. #32
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    SPOILERS BELOW

    My expanded thoughts:

    Overall I loved it and thought it was one of the most enjoyable films I've seen in a long time. I'm super invested in the Star Wars universe though so I got a massive boost out of the copious fan service in this film.

    The story was decent, though I felt a lot of the bits with Forrest Whittaker were unnecessary and I'd rather have had more time with our main crew. The actors were all up to muster, and I particularly enjoyed the performance and characters of Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk and Ben Mendelson.

    The way the combat was portrayed was amazing, across the board. The firefights were incredibly visceral, especially towards the end with the AT-ACTs. It was like the Battle of Hoth turned up to 11. Completely and utterly epic. The space/fighter combat was also amazing. In the same way that the land battle on Scariff was like the Battle of Hoth turned up to 11, the space stuff was like the Battle of Endor on roids.

    I actually enjoyed CGI Tarkin, though the execution wasn't perfect by any means. One of the main problems is that I felt that the first scene he was in was the weakest from a technical point of view. Later scenes seemed better, and a few of them in the ANH enclosed Death Star control rooms were almost flawless. It was a bold choice to have him so involved but I feel it mostly paid off even if it wasn't completely perfect, though again as a long time fan a large part of that for me might have been the OMG TARKIN factor.

    Darth Vader's two scenes were absolutely incredible. The bit where he went postal in the rebel ship was the most enjoyable and cathartic two minutes I think I've ever seen in cinema, mainly because I fully expected the scene to cut after he ignited his saber. I didn't mind the 'choke' pun - Vader was making puns way back in 1977 so it's not like it came out of no where.

    The copious amounts of fan service brought a grin to my face each time. Aside from Ponda Baba and Dr Ezavan (the two guys who bullied Luke in the cantina in ANH) it was all reasonably in context and smoothly integrated. I especially loved seeing Gold Leader and Red Leader from the Battle of Yavin pop up.

    I don't think I'm in a position to judge whether it was an objectively good movie just because of how invested I am in Star Wars and it's associated lore. However, I can say I've not got as much enjoyment from a movie in ages.
    I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.

  3. #33
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    Maybe spoilers ahead depending on how spoiler-sensitive you are.

    I must be in the minority then who though it was just ok. The first 1 1/2 hours were kinda meh but it really picked up and got good in the last 40 minutes.

    ALTHOUGH, it could have been the cinema I was in. The screen was a little small and the sound a little underdone so I'll wait until it's on Netflix and give it a second chance.

    Loved K2SO. He owned every scene he was in.
    Dovie'andi se tovya sagain

  4. #34
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    Way back in the 90's a movie called Forrest Gump first introduced a form of CGI that could bring people back from the dead (eg. John Lennon, JFK etc.). Now that CGI has been used to it's best effect in Rogue One with Tarkin to start with. Nerdgasm truly is the word.

  5. #35
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    Saw it yesterday and LOVED it! Personally, I think it's the best Star Wars film that's been made since ESB.

  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by Robzy View Post
    Saw it yesterday and LOVED it! Personally, I think it's the best Star Wars film that's been made since ESB.
    Agree, a little slow at first but I absolutely loved it! It's (almost) everything I want in a Star Wars movie. Even The Ghost was in it.

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by SharkyMcShark View Post
    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
    Last edited by GoktimusPrime; 17th December 2016 at 08:38 PM.

  8. #38
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    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.
    I'm really just here for the free food and open bar.

  9. #39
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    Good point. The movie also tries to explain why the Death Star just happened to have such a critical flaw built into its design, something that's been the butt of many jokes. It's not the most perfect excuse (as parodied in this CollegeHumour video), but obviously they can't undo what already exists in canon, so given what they're working with it's not a bad attempt.

    I'm eager to see the Honest Trailer for Rogue One, because if anyone can nitpick flaws in a film, it's the Honest Trailer guys. And these days a lot of filmmakers are saying that they want to make their films "Honest Trailer proof." Evidently not Michael Bay. But a good movie is one which Honest Trailer finds difficult to find fault in. Case in point: Honest Trailers - The Empire Strikes Back. They really couldn't find much fault in this film, which goes to show how good it is.

  10. #40
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    Is this worth watching from a story telling point of view?
    I mean, we all know where it's going, but is it a meaty story which makes you go ahhh, hmmmm, or... yes, that was interesting, all while quietly stroking your goatee, or is it going to be another Disney safe movie with the occasional fan nod and fight scenes thrown in? I just don't want to see Fast and Furious: In Space, if you know what I mean.

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