Rogue One

[schneefink]

My favorite part about going to watch Rogue One: while waiting for admission DD and I by chance started talking with two people next to us. It started out about the practicalities of cloning, at one point we talked about Sith Lady Umbridge, and after the movie we went to two Christmas markets together and exchanged numbers and already made plans to meet up again. I love making new friends, and recently it hasn't happened as often as I'd like.

I also enjoyed the movie. It wasn't spectacular, but it was good.

- The scene that made me roll my eyes the most (next to the "choke on your ambition" line) was right at the beginning, when the Imperial ship lands five minutes away from their target just so they can dramatically walk up to the farm in the high grass.

- Somewhere on Scarif I suddenly realized "uh-oh, they're all going to die," and remembered how episode IV begins. Somehow I'd managed to forget that. I didn't dislike it though, it was clear that the characters found the sacrifice worth it and we already know that it will be. (What First Order.) I especially liked the scene with the nameless rebels on the ship that Vader kills but they still manage to rescue the data: they have a cause and they're willing to die for it. It's bigger than individual people, which doesn't make the individual deaths less tragic however.

- I liked most of the characters, especially Bodhi the pilot and Chirrut the space monk and Baze his bodyguard. Jyn and Cassian both had a lot of potential too. But with both of them I felt there was something missing in the middle of their character arc, Jyn between going from "the rebellion doesn't concern me" to passionately arguing for continuing the fight, and while for Cassian "I did things I'm not proud of for the rebellion when it's necessary and I stand by that" to "I need to see this fight through because otherwise I couldn't justify the things I've done to myself" makes perfect sense I still wish I'd seen a bit more.
Jyn and Cassian reminded me of the line I read somewhere "if they need to kiss for the audience to know they're in love the romance is badly written." They're not in love yet, but they could have fallen in love some day, and I mostly liked their relationship.

- To my surprise I didn't like K-2SO. Not because of him, he was funny, but because of what his existence means. He definitely has a personality, but he's a re-programmed droid, with programmed loyalty. I assume he's an AI, but there clearly are restrictions on his freedom of thought. He seems so human though – and by that I mean sentient – that the fact that he's a droid and droids are possessions and this is normal in this 'verse is profoundly unsettling. K-2SO wasn't obviously treated like a possession, but he was essentially brainwashed by the Alliance and is now used as a tool who was programmed to be friendly. Kind of creepy.

- The fact that the main character is a woman – yay! – only emphasized the astonishing lack of female background characters in many scenes.

Comments

[inkstone]

I just watched Rogue One today. I had a similar reaction. It was good but not spectacular. It did what it needed to do. I found it very workmanlike in construction. I thought the actors did the best they could with the characters they were given but they were not written so well.

And yes, the lack of female characters was astounding.

[schneefink]

Workmanlike construction describes it well. Especially the beginning felt like something I'd seen a hundred times before: secret hideout discovered by Bad Guys, frantic last messages and packing (including prominent shot of blue milk for franchise fans), dramatic confrontation with threats, scared kid watching, dramatic last stand with fridging of the mother and sobbing, more scared kid. The whole thing was too formulaic and predictable to make me feel a lot, and consequently both of Jyn's big moments when confronting her father only half worked for me.

[skygiants]

Ha, I thought the scene where the Imperial troops were awkwardly tromping through the grass for five minutes was deliberately written to make them look awkward and fallible, like 'well .... here we are ..... looking kind of silly and really inappropriately dressed for this territory ........' And for that reason, I really liked it!

[marginaliana]

I agree with pretty much all of this, although I liked "choke on your aspirations" because now that we've seen Vader's history it seems like the kind of ridiculous overblown bullshit pun that he would have thought up and saved for an appropriate occasion. But I agree that Jyn's arc didn't quite work.

[nanslice]

Skipping over those spoilers but gosh, that's an awesome way to make new friends! :D

[schneefink]

I'm all for Imperial troops looking awkward and "it doesn't matter if we give them five extra minutes to escape because they won't escape anyway" arrogant, but I didn't get the impression that it was deliberate. If it was that didn't work for me, because at the same time they set the whole scene so dramatically, with Galen striding out to meet them and Lyrra (spelling?) appearing with the blaster etc.

[schneefink]

True, it does kind of fit him...
(I was very surprised that aide was allowed to talk to him when he was out of uniform! Seems like something he would forbid to preserve his image. *shrugs*)

[schneefink]

You immediately know you share some of the same interests :D

[gokuma]

I loved this movie so much it's almost ridiculous. It's very cathartic for me - and each time I see it (I've seen it twice at this point) I seem to hang even more on each detail and character because I know it's the last thing they'll ever do.
I fell in love with Baze and Chirrut from the moment I saw them XD And I even bought the Visual Guide as a goodbye-old-year gift.

So. Yeah. I didn't expect I's like it that much XD

[schneefink]

Baze and Chirrut <3 I remembered later that I wrote here about Jyn and Cassian possibly falling in love but not them, but that's because it was absolutely obvious that they love each other.
I didn't expect to like the movie that much either, but it was a nice surprise :)

[cephy]

Yep, I had much the same reaction - I liked it, but I... expected to like it more? The friend I was seeing it with left the theatre basically going omg omg omg with stars in her eyes, but I just wasn't there.

The dramatic walk at the beginning was so eye-rolly, it's true; Friend and I were both snorting at that one. And the beginning in general I thought was a little scattered, I didn't really latch on to the story until much later on. I do intend to see it again before it leaves theatres, though, and hopefully now that I know what to expect I'll be able to settle into it a bit better.

[schneefink]

Yeah, it took me a while to get invested in the characters, and I think they could have told the whole years-before beginning in flashbacks/Jyn's memories. I wonder if they cut some scenes in the middle that would flesh out Jyn and/or Cassian.