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TruckOSaurus said:
You didn't like Rogue One? I loved it. In retrospect, I find it was a much better movie than The Force Awakens. ---------- I won't read critics since I want to know next to nothing about the plot when I go see it at the premiere tomorrow but this score makes me hopeful it'll be good! |
For me it was disappointing. I'd probably rank it fifth, behind the original trilogy and TFA, and ahead of the prequel trilogy.
I think it has a few good things going for it: 1) a treatment of the rebellion as occupying a moral gray zone; 2) some great visual effects and cinematography; and 3) a spectacular third-act space battle, arguably the best in the entire series.
Now, the bad.
The characters are uninteresting, apart from K-2SO. Krennic is a toothless and unmemorable villain. Erso is boring, and usually a passive onlooker in her own movie. The rest of the supporting cast struggles to be noticed. A movie with a large ensemble cast like this can work -- look at The Guns of Navarone or Ocean's 11 -- but you need a bunch of sympathetic or dynamic characters.
Reshoots really hurt the flow, the pacing, and the content of the movie. If Edwards had been allowed to film unencumbered, I think the final product would have been better. The first two acts drag and drag, setting up an admittedly rousing third act finale.
The digital actors. Every time the cartoon that was Grand Moff Tarkin showed up on screen, I was immediately thrown out of the action and reminded, awkwardly and painfully, that I was watching a movie. The same goes for Carrie Fisher's digital cameo, which is the last thing we see in the film. What a terrible way to punctuate what was a thrilling, breathless scene just before.
Fan service. To be fair, TFA is also guilty of this, and of mining the recognizable people, places, and things we now associate with Star Wars. But Rogue One took it too far. Darth Vader's role was too big -- a product of reshoots, from what I understand. The appearance of Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazan was gratuitous, as was Bail Organa's cameo. It goes on and on: R2-D2, C-3PO, Red Leader, Whills, Yavin Base, and of course that awful final shot.
