Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards)

[Dukefrukem]

I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion at all, but I thought this movie sucked. Spoilers variously abound, though I'll try to tag most of them.

Structurally, this movie is clumsy as hell, particularly at the beginning as it's trying to introduce us to the characters we'll be following, and just sorta bombards us in the clunkiest way imaginable with a shitload of information and poorly developed characters all at once, never really taking the time to really give us a feel for either them or their situation. Like, the first half of this movie was just jarringly executed, and the only other movie this year to do an even worse job of executing this aspect was Suicide Squad. And again near the end, when it just becomes a full blown war film, outside of a handful of neat split-second shots, the action just becomes a mind numbing chore to sit through, and was quite frankly generic and boring as hell.

Speaking on characters though, this movie suddenly gives me a huge appreciate for Abrams' character work in The Force Awakens, because my god, there are no characters in this movie. Just a collection of one-note cardboard cutouts. After Force Awakens, I felt like I knew the new cast inside and out. I know who Rey is, despite all the mystery surrounding her. I know Finn on a deeper level, and have a great grasp on his personality and who he is as a person, and the struggles that brought him there. I can understand Kylo Ren, even if I can't directly relate to his dilemma. Here though? I don't know shit about any of these characters. Hell, I don't even remember any of their fucking names! And this is a fucking Star Wars movie, how do you make characters so unremarkable that even their names don't stick with you?

There comes a point near the end when Robot turns to Main Female Protagonist and tells her that her actions never cease to amaze him. And all I could think was, what do you mean? Why wouldn't you be surprised by what she does? After all, she only ever acts however the plot explicitly requires her to at any given moment, and in the most lifeless and blandest manner at that. She doesn't have a fucking character in order to be able to get a grasp on her personality and what she may or may not do at any given moment. She has a backstory, sure, but none of that clumsy exposition matters in the least if the current version of this character we're following in the movie fails to ever actually truly come to life on the screen.

It's like the movie is populated entirely by Aaron Taylor-Johnson's character from Godzilla, who was bland and lifeless and nobody really liked. Now take him, and expand that to our whole cast, and that's what we have left. But hell, at least that movie had Bryan Cranston, as brief as his time may have been. Rogue One really coulda done with a whole lot more Bryan Cranstons running around.

So needless to say, [

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once they all begin to die one by one at the end, I didn't feel a god damn thing for any of it. In fact, it reached a point where, by the time Big Gun Shooter Guy kicked the bucket, I was literally rolling my eyes.

] This movie was so desperate to tug at our heart strings, yet forgot to give us a god damn reason along the way to give a fucking shit about any of it, so really, the only thing I was even feeling this entire time was boredom and annoyance.

But even beyond just the characters, I just overall found myself struggling to find any reason to give a damn about this movie. Like, why did we need this? It feels like filler. Like, why did this story have to be presented in this manner? A comic or a novel or a video game would have more than sufficed. A movie, though? This just feels needlessly excessive, and doesn't give me any greater appreciation for the Star Wars lore or canon than I already had going into it. It feels pointless, basically, and it didn't have to, if, as I said, they actually included a reason for us to give a damn about a single thing happening.

I dont disagree that there were character development issues with the movie- but it's a prequel to a movie that makes it pretty obvious [

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they were all going to die anyway.

] I think that takes away from the impact of impending doom. In other words, the depth of the characters isn't necessarily critical to the plot as say, a three movie trilogy. In fact, I'd argue that characters all played off a dark and dismal time period. Donnie Yen is the shinning example of positivity where others act as if the glass is half empty.

And aside from Rey and Fin in the Force Awakens, you were THAT impressed with what Abrams did with say... Poe? Or Kylo Ren? or Maz Kanata? They were all terrible;y developed.

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Also, and there may be a legit answer to this, but did anyone else find it curious how the Death Star's weakness was explicitly built into it, yet the Starkiller Base in Episode VII was able to be taken out in a fairly similar manner and pretty much just as easily as well? Soooo... did the engineers who built Starkiller Base just especially suck at their jobs, seeing as how it now turns out the Death Star wasn't supposed to be nearly so vulnerable? Mind you, Episode VII just came out last year, and yet they decided to bring this revelation regarding the Death Star's weakness to light for us only a year later.

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This is just adding to how poorly thought out of a movie Force Awakens is. Everything surrounding Starkiller Base is dumb and unnecessary to the plot.

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Also, I guess Interstellar is the next Nolan flick we're gonna borrow visually from in Hollywood? Cause the slow-motion exploding planet scene was so ripped straight out of the mountain-sized waves scene in Interstellar. The only difference being, why the hell was the planet exploding in slow-motion anyways? Hell, when they're back in space aboard the ship and Main Protagonist Female is questioned by Main Protagonist Male why she didn't take her father's message with her, she says it's because "everything happened so fast", and I was like, uh, no, it literally didn't though. That was just a bizarre choice to go with, especially since they repeat it later in the movie. I mean, planet-sized explosions have always been pretty instantaneous in this universe up to this point, so this especially stood out as bizarre and out of place here.

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Pretty sure that was just the wave approaching from miles and miles away. Same deal with the mushroom cloud at the very end which you liked.

I will say this, at least it wasn't as obnoxious as The Force Awakens as it regards the callbacks, but the few that were still in there were still very groan-inducing.

Which ones specifically? I thought they were all very tame with the exception of maybe R2 and 3PO which i told myself were only in the movie so they could continue to say they are the only characters who appear in every Star Wars movie.