re: The OFFICIAL Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ***SPOILERS*** Thread

Rogue One shows the potential of this universe reboot, but it also shows that it's potential is severely limited if they keep making movies in the exact same archetype every time. that's the best way that i can describe how i feel about the movie in a single sentence.

I didn't just go into the movie hating it. I was completely enthralled with the movie, across the board, until the 2nd fight scene at Jedha. it was basically just a throw in, was kind of silly, and was exceptionally redundant. it was the first real example of adding in characters for the sake of adding in toys, and then it kind of just fell apart after that.

the single biggest issue with the movie, in terms of movie making, is tone. the final scene completely dissolved into a bunch of random jump cuts that destroyed any of the drama or action or comedy that they were trying to do. they were literally going from completely intense scenes that were incredibly important to the movie to cuts of light humor (both from C3P2 and the pilot-defector). the ending was the biggest example of this, but similar shifts in tone happened randomly throughout the entire movie. i get that the OT had some humor, but you have to use it at the right time. you didn't see any jokes in the final battle of ROTJ or ESB. you know where you saw that? Phantom Menace, son.

the nostalgia shite is just too much. it was annoying in TFA and it was overdrive mode in this movie. if these movies keep on forcing in nostalgia, it's going to become terrible. i get it for the "Reboot" of TFA, but it was not necessary to force it into this movie, yet they did.

the characters were a big issue, b/c i didn't give a frick about them and their development made no real sense. it's hard to build up to a dramatic end where i care that they die when i don't give a shite about them in the first place. nerdy oberyn martel and IP man's bodyguard are the 2 best examples of this.

the final space battle was obviously added so that they could have a space battle. the entire intrigue of this movie was the smaller scale of a heist flick with really large stakes. throwing in unnecessary action just to make sure that it's in there derailed the actual plot of the movie. now i will say that my comments about the characters are somewhat biased in that the space battle (and tone issues) do take away from the characters themselves, so maybe it's not that the characters suck as much as they are bland AND had to deal with bad editing when we should care about them most.

but one other major issue with the final space battle is that it created continuity issues with the OT. Leia had no fricking business being near that battle for about 1000 reasons, but since they had to have this epic space battle, they HAD to force her in there. just stupid storytelling that either was trying to sell toys OR was just trying to re-imagine the ending of ROTJ again (Which had been done a bunch by this point, but most recently in TFA).

also from a technical perspective, Gareth Edwards cannot direct action scenes to save his life. the movie suffered from a lack of scope in the shot placement, but that's OK b/c this was a "smaller" story for much of the film. but then while he expands the scope of what's unfolding on screen, he continues to keep his frame zoomed in and relies on the terrible frenzy-cut style of action direction instead of showing some skill behind the camera in framing what's going on.

i have this feeling that since they re-did the nostalgia again, had a ROTJ-like ending again, and included a C3PO character again means that they're just going to keep remaking the OT again and again. there will be no ESB-level film in this universe reboot if they continue to limit themselves to being completely formulaic movies that are aim more to hit a nostalgia nerve than tell new stories in this incredible universe. this movie stings b/c it seems like a new type of story in a new style within this universe at first, but then it devolves into the same schlock. that works better in TFA as opposed to a movie with a more dramatic finale like this one, esp since TFA gets some protection for essentially being a reboot. that was supposed to end with TFA and it clearly hasn't with this movie.