Talya wrote:
One of Rogue One's greatest strengths is its seamless, unforced, natural-feeling continuity. But not just from the original trilogy. It ties in closely to the prequel trilogy, and even the animated Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows. It pulls in material from new canon books and comics. It answers plot questions we didn't know we had. ("Oh ****... That's how Luke got to be Red 5!") It shows us people and places we haven't seen for decades, in absolutely perfect detail. Of course it relies on what came before, and in so doing surpasses them all. It doesn't diminish the older material in any way. It elevates it even higher, and that is how it succeeds.
The old EU answered those questions, too. And in some cases, more satisfactorily -- the Legends "why was Luke Red 5" had the normal Red 5 pilot ill at the time of the Battle of Yavin, which is more plausible in that it explains why there's a pilot-less X-Wing lying around waiting for an untested kid to be given the stick on the voucher of an old buddy. The new canon doesn't explain where they got the replacement X-Wing, or why it was deemed wise to bump another pilot from their X-Wing to give to Luke, it only explains why the call-sign was available.
Also, to take issue with your statement up-thread -- AFAICT, only one, maybe two of the classic characters were digital (I can't tell if the actress credited as Leia was used with makeup or as a mo-cap actress, and haven't seen anything written on it yet). Red and Gold Leader were both archive B-roll or alternate take footage from A New Hope that didn't get used in the final edit; that's been reported on by The Independent, I think it was. (Also, Red and Gold Leader are only credited as their original actors, unlike Tarkin and Leia.) I'm not sure whether the difference between "Thanks" to Carrie Fisher and "Special Acknowledgement" to Peter Cushing is that Cushing is dead, or that Cushing was a digitally modelled actor and Fisher wasn't.
In any event, I liked this better than The Force Awakens, in that I appreciate that they actually took the risk of making a new movie, instead of assigned new characters to the same scenes and action beats. This felt like an original film in the Star Wars universe, rather than A New Hope with the serial numbers filed off to pawn it off on a new generation. However, it still had a fair number of flaws that bothered me a bit while watching. It might be argued that I'm holding it to a higher standard than I did/do the prequels, and my response would be that if I am, it's only because it aims to match the tone of the OT (insofar as it relies on familiar spacecraft, a similar design approach to environments and props -- adopting what we've come to accept as the Rebellion-era lived-in look vs. the Republic-era shiny new aesthetic, if you will) more than the prequels did, so it begs an apples-to-apples comparison moreso than the prequels did.
First off, even though I knew it wasn't going to have an opening crawl, it felt wrong to go straight from "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." into action. It galled me, and served to call attention to the lack of a crawl to tease text and then deny me any text of substance to set the stage.
Secondly, I feel like it could have used some more breaks in the action. Star Wars, and especially the OT, is great in that there are moments to breathe and develop some interaction between the characters that isn't reliant on an imminent crisis. Empire has scenes aboard the Falcon in the asteroid field and training sequences with Yoda, as well as an interlude on Bespin and conversations in hallways at Echo Base. Star Wars has quiet conversations with the droids on the farm, and in Obi-Wan's hut, and so on. This could have benefited from a little more character development at the second tier of the ensemble, the recognizeable cameo characters like Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, and the supporting characters on the Council.
That segues into my next point -- it's great to show me a bunch of detail about the daring, improvised raid that stole the plans and got them into Leia's hands, but there was an opportunity here to characterize and reveal to the audience the conflicts going on in the Alliance to Restore the Republic that could have been really cool, and would offer some foundation to really dig into it more meatily with future standalones. It's been decided to do a story about the unsung heroes who don't make it, and that's great, it's a new take and a niche that hasn't been explored officially... but if you're going to make a movie about a bunch of characters for whom it very quickly becomes obvious they won't survive the movie, then you should at least take some opportunity to develop the ones who exist at the edges of the story, but will survive to exist at the edges of other stories. Treat the Bails and Mon Mothmas and Dodonnas as the season-long plot that each episode devotes a couple minutes towards advancing and developing in a modern episodic-format TV series. In addition, we got an ensemble cast of heroes, but the movie only ever made me like or care about two, maybe three of them. I couldn't even come up with Baze's name after the movie, and had to look it up, that's how little attention was paid, and how little I cared, about him. I feel like the ensemble cast could easily have been one or two characters smaller, and it would have been a stronger film.
Ultimately, it felt like a very well-designed Star Wars roleplaying campaign. This was put into the sharpest focus when Bodhi declares that they have to connect the ship into the facility's communication system mid-battle. I literally sat there in my seat and exclaimed to myself "Aww, the GM gave the pilot something to do so he's not just watching the battle for three hours this session!"
Finally, the Empire came off as incredibly incompetent. I'm cool with the whole "our coerced designer built in a flaw" precept, and as far as the impetus for making this movie being to defend and counter the whole viral Internet video about the guy who designed the Death Star, it succeeds there. But every time the Empire -- who just fought and won a war less than two decades ago, so you'd think they still have veterans in positions of command -- needs to react to acts of war, they wait about ten minutes dumbfounded, and then seem to not have any kind of plan or readiness when they do come up with the impetus to respond. They even lampshade this when Krennic, who is gaping in shocked awe at the act of sabotage and breached security unfolding directly in front of them along with everybody else, shouts "Do something, you idiots!" How sealing off an incursion from escape and potential reinforcement wasn't the first act (unless it was to deploy TIEs from the Star Destroyers and THEN seal off the shield), I have no idea. Even civilian institutions today have as part of their security protocols "seal off the building while your internal security deals with it" in their emergency response plans.
Super-minor quibble: Mid-movie, Bail tells Mon Mothma he's going to send Leia out on a Very Important mission. Great! Then, at the end of the movie, it's revealed that instead of having left to, you know, do that, she (and the military asset, the Tantive IV) are sitting around docked on the flagship instead of actively participating in the fight that has all available hands on deck. I was actually a little disappointed when Admiral not-Ackbar called for the hammerhead corvette (my real-time reaction was "oh, are we giving Corellian corvettes a new name? Okay) and it didn't turn out to be the Tantive IV getting called in to run the blockade with the data. That said, I was thoroughly entertained by using it as a tugboat on the disabled ISD, so whatever. But having Leia's ship present and actively participating would have made more sense than having it docked in a hangar bay, and would have presented it as Leia left on the mission for Bail and then got recalled by the all-hands call that went out.
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