Why I like Episode 7 MORE than Rogue One

[Vineheart01 6,403]

Its still a decent movie. The only movies ive stopped watching midway through are majority of modern "comedy" which is literally just crap like Will Farrel being the main character and the whole punchline is hes an obnoxious idiot that for some reason in a movie is funny but IRL you'd want to punch him so hard he gets sent to orbit.

 

But, in terms of Starwars movies, i'd rather watch phantom menace....

[FTS Gecko 24,135]

That's taking it a bit far Vineheart, surely.

[Dagonet 7,246]

 

Are you saying people aren't allowed to re-evaluate their opinions, Crabbock?

Personally, my opinion hasn't changed, and I'm not "dissing" anything. TFA is a decent film, and certainly better than the prequels. It's also extremely derivative to the point that it's more of a remake than a sequel.

Rogue One, on the other hand, is amazing.

Nah I'm not saying that at all... it's just strange how the climate feels so different now, when discussing these films.   Like, right after TFA - everyone was like "OMG JOY JOY JOY" and funny how now people have changed...   And I'm over here like "JOY JOY JOY!" still.   I think I'm gonna be on permanent "JOY JOY JOY!" for years to come.  

 

 Hey it's a happy place to be.... Planet joy!

 

 

Nah, even then there were a bunch of people going blugh blugh blugh. Something with a woman being as good as a farmboy for instance. 

I think a lot of people nowadays have forgotten that ANH was finished and then ESB came and resurrected Vader. And RotJ brought back the Death Star. It's been so long and we've all seen the movies so often that we consider the OT as one large movie, rather than movies that were years apart.

TFA, unlike the OT, was written and released as part of a cohesive trilogy (and I think it will be that more than the PT).

 

Their not liking it doesn't detract from my liking it. 

[Vineheart01 6,403]

In terms of plot, yeah it is. TFA has better plot. That isnt saying much though, Phantom Menace definitely has better action imo and that was about all in TFA i thought stood out as cool.

 

Opinions are like a fart. Yours never stink anywhere near as bad as others.

[markcsoul 2,135]

 

First of all let me preface by saying I like all 8 movies, and there aren't real big gaps in my ranking of them. It's pretty hard ranking them in fact.

That being said, TFA is probably my least favorite star wars movie. It's a movie with SO much potential...partly because of the 30 year gap, and partly because almost any story is possible since the EU was discarded.

But some combination of Disney, JJ, Kennedy, and Kasdan thought this needed to be the safest movie ever. Even though the name star wars alone would guarantee it's a hit. But no, they pandered to the vocal PT haters and made it the most OT friendly movie you could make. Reused plot, same rebels vs empire conflict but with new names, and then all the ships are just slightly updated versions of the originals so there's no fear of fans hating new designs. Planets are the same. All new locations but they just reused old ideas and made them very bland for a movie released in 2015.

Rogue one on the other hand would be in at least my top half. Possibly as high as 2nd or 3rd once I've seen it more times.

 

 

Your SW rankings....

 

 

 

If you go to the force.net forums you'll see just about any ranking you can think of on there. 

 

I love seeing more "unusual" rankings than the norm.  Means people are getting different things out of the movies as opposed to the more "standard" rankings you might see where everyone has the same idea of what star wars should or should not be.

[WonderWAAAGH 7,153]

This is crazy. So many people dissing Episode 7. Like - After episode 7 first came out everyone was praising it and there were very few naysayers. Now it feels like everyone's opinion has changed. Almost like it's the prequels all over again. This is crazy. It's like next year people will be trash talking Rogue one.

I stepped out of the theatre after seeing Rogue One and all I could think was "I need to shower myself in Episode VII." The conclusion that my friends and I drew after watching TFA was that the prequels failed not because of horrible dialogue and acting, but because they threw a light on all of the mysteries that made the OT special. I think that's more or less where we stand right now with Rogue One; it wasn't a story that needed to be told, and now that it has we're no better off for it. I agree with what you've said about TFA, and how it perpetuated the myth making that truly made the OT special. That was Star Wars, and I think given another year's time people will begin to see that Rogue One is no better than the prequels: a couple of cool fight scenes chained together with empty plot points and hollow characters.

Someone mentioned something about seamlessness, and I couldn't disagree more. The CGI of Tarkin and Leia, however you want to qualify it, completely spoiled the immersion. I just couldn't suspend disbelief at that point. The inclusion of Dutch and Hobbie, while cool (I cheered along with everyone else), was similarly spoiled by the obvious cut and paste job. For a moment during the movie I even wondered if they'd been yanked right out of ANH, and that's not a thought that should be crossing my mind mid-action. Immersion ruined again. And then there's Vader, who is an undisputed badass... and hours or days later in universe time, he's shambling around again like an old man fitted with four prosthetic limbs. I just couldn't put that image, Vader tearing through rebel troopers, side by side with any other scene from ANH. It wasn't seamless, it was severely disjointed. Trying to reconcile Rogue One with A New Hope is like watching the special edition Jabba scene from Episode IV and then skipping straight to RotJ. What we're left with is a movie that barely succeeds on its own, and only then by virtue of the last big fight scene, and certainly doesn't mesh with the rest of the trilogy.

Edited December 24, 2016 by WonderWAAAGH

[Crabbok 9,869]

 

This is crazy. So many people dissing Episode 7. Like - After episode 7 first came out everyone was praising it and there were very few naysayers. Now it feels like everyone's opinion has changed. Almost like it's the prequels all over again. This is crazy. It's like next year people will be trash talking Rogue one.

I stepped out of the theatre after seeing Rogue One and all I could think was "I need to shower myself in Episode VII." The conclusion that my friends and I drew after watching TFA was that the prequels failed not because of horrible dialogue and acting, but because they threw a light on all of the mysteries that made the OT special. I think that's more or less where we stand right now with Rogue One; it wasn't a story that needed to be told, and now that it has we're no better off for it. I agree with what you've said about TFA, and how it perpetuated the myth making that truly made the OT special. That was Star Wars, and I think given another year's time people will begin to see that Rogue One is no better than the prequels: a couple of cool fight scenes chained together with empty plot points and hollow characters.

Someone mentioned something about seamlessness, and I couldn't disagree more. The CGI of Tarkin and Leia, however you want to qualify it, completely spoiled the immersion. I just couldn't suspend disbelief at that point. The inclusion of Dutch and Hobbie, while cool (I cheered along with everyone else), was similarly spoiled by the obvious cut and paste job. For a moment during the movie I even wondered if they'd been yanked right out of ANH, and that's not a thought that should be crossing my mind mid-action. Immersion ruined again. And then there's Vader, who is an undisputed badass... and hours or days later in universe time, he's shambling around again like an old man fitted with four prosthetic limbs. I just couldn't put that image, Vader tearing through rebel troopers, side by side with any other scene from ANH. It wasn't seamless, it was severely disjointed. Trying to reconcile Rogue One with A New Hope is like watching the special edition Jabba scene from Episode IV and then skipping straight to RotJ. What we're left with is a movie that barely succeeds on its own, and only then by virtue of the last big fight scene, and certainly doesn't mesh with the rest of the trilogy.

 

 

  Wow that was a bit more critical of Rogue One than I'd expect, but I think you made some great points.  

 

Tarkin and Leia both were in Uncanny Valley.  Granted the CGI is significantly better than it used to be... but we aren't quite there yet.  I do appreciate the effort, but I suppose you are right - it is obvious it's CGI still.  I do applaud the effort though, because there is a ton of technical progress there and I appreciate that.  

 

Red and Gold Leader absolutely appeared to be cut/pasted straight from ANH.  I didn't initially see this as a bad thing, but I suppose considering the effort they made for Tarkin and Leia... they could have done a similar job on pilots.  

 

 Story was an issue and it's one of my minor gripes.  I liked Cassian Andor from the beginning.  You could tell he wasn't squeaky clean and I liked that - however other characters like Bohdi Rook and even Jyn Urso seriously lacked depth.  Yes, even Jyn.   Sure we knew she was Galen's daughter... but in one scene she acts like she's against the Empire, defying them, rebelling, ending up in jail... and then in the next scene she acts like she doesn't care that the Empire is ruling and says she just wants to be free and keep her head down...  I feel like if she didn't die, she would have been seriously bored, trying to figure out what else she was gonna do.... Because she literally had nothing else going for her other than steal the Death Star Plans.  

 

  However I also recognize it's only a short film... not enough time to give everyone a spectacular backstory.  

 

Last thing - yes, it would have made more sense if Vader had been shot a few times during the end battle - which might allow for an adequate explanation as to why he is so sluggish when facing Obi Wan. 

 

 

I did love the movie though.   It'll be interesting to see how we all feel about it a year from now though.  

Edited December 24, 2016 by Crabbok

[Bojanglez 2,158]

 

Are you saying people aren't allowed to re-evaluate their opinions, Crabbock?

Personally, my opinion hasn't changed, and I'm not "dissing" anything. TFA is a decent film, and certainly better than the prequels. It's also extremely derivative to the point that it's more of a remake than a sequel.

Rogue One, on the other hand, is amazing.

Nah I'm not saying that at all... it's just strange how the climate feels so different now, when discussing these films.   Like, right after TFA - everyone was like "OMG JOY JOY JOY" and funny how now people have changed...   And I'm over here like "JOY JOY JOY!" still.   I think I'm gonna be on permanent "JOY JOY JOY!" for years to come.  

 

 Hey it's a happy place to be.... Planet joy!

 

 

Can't agrue that Planet Joy is an awesome place but you are being somewhat revisionist in how things played out.  I certainly don't remember "everyone" acting like you did -  I remember a lot of pretty critical debate that DID get shut down quickly by the "OMG JOY JOY JOY DON'T SPOIL MY BUZZ" crew.

 

But, as always, people are entitled to enjoy what they want and no one can tell them that's wrong. 

 

What I know for myself is that, having seen them all in the cinema, Rogue One gave me a similar feeling that I got when I saw ANH, ESB, RotJ and to some extent, RotS, whereas TFA gave me the same sense of "was that it?" that I had with TPM, AotC and, to some extent, RotS.  With TFA, even while in the theatre I was torn between feeling "There's new Star Wars!" and "But it's not great Star Wars" and the longer it went on, the more derivative it felt.

 

YMMV

Edited December 24, 2016 by Bojanglez

[patox 2,020]

The Force Awakens has so many glaring holes. So many. Here's 3 off the top of my head.

 

1) Weapon of Mass Destruction with a galaxy-wide range

2) Guilt-ridden pacifist FN-2187 has no problems shooting down all the friends he grew up with

3) Leia ignores Chewie, hugs complete stranger, Rey, instead

 

These aren't even the worst offenders. Force Awakens "feels" like Star Wars. That's what it has going for it. But for those who know the canon, the galaxy, or just basic film-making, feeling like something doesn't make it that thing.

 

And someone please explain why they're a Resistance. Oh, and look C3PO has a red arm!

[Dagonet 7,246]

1 straight out of the old EU

2 who ever said he was a pacifist? Shell-shocked first combat action and unwilling to mow down innocent civilians yes, but pacifist?

3 is an acknowledged mistake.

[patox 2,020]

[Admiral Deathrain 5,232]

I always had the impression hating on TFA was the trendy thing to do. I enjoyed it, because it does a lot more things right than wrong. Many of the flaws are so miniscule that it baffles me just how hung up people chose to be on them. Especially when you consider it is a Star Wars movie, a series that draws its charme just as much from its flaws as its accomplishments.

[Crabbok 9,869]

This is only going to be a problem if it isn't addresses in episode 8.   If Phasma is still a captain and acts like she didn't do anything wrong and has no guilt..... then it'll be a terrible problem.  

 

  But if this was an act of cowardice, and she has to atone for it... then it becomes a good scene.  

[Bojanglez 2,158]

I always had the impression hating on TFA was the trendy thing to do. I enjoyed it, because it does a lot more things right than wrong. Many of the flaws are so miniscule that it baffles me just how hung up people chose to be on them. Especially when you consider it is a Star Wars movie, a series that draws its charme just as much from its flaws as its accomplishments.

i think for myself, I wanted to like it so much I was probably setting myself up for some disappointment (just like with TPM) but all it DID have going for it was that it felt like Star Wars but from the very first scene I found myself thinking "hiding the plans in a droid - what an inspired homage!" and then spent too much of the rest of the movie saying "ok, more homage" and then I groaned at Starkiller.

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, when the space octopuses came into the mix I thought "this DOESNT feel like Star Wars"

And again, this is just my opinion, but I never once felt like that during Rogue One. That felt like Star award from beginning to end and I had nothing more than very minor complaints.

[FTS Gecko 24,135]

Yep, Rogue One felt like the first genuine Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi to me.

[VaeVictis 1,107]

Like, right after TFA - everyone was like "OMG JOY JOY JOY"

Not me, lol. I recognized it as derivative and lacking good characterization right away. I called it "Fun". Which is the nice way of putting "It's not a waste of time, but you're probably not going to bother watching it a second time unless it's on cable on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the football offseason."

 

TFA wasn't a terrible movie. But its main strength was being "better than the prequels" which is a pretty low bar to skip over. The characters are fun, but flat and uninteresting. The dialog is poor to awful in parts, with cringeworthy exchanges that sometimes feel like a blend of 1990s teen movies with 1990s buddy cop movies. The protagonist, Rey, has no character arc. She's just really good at everything she does, no matter what it is that she needs to do, even learning new skills on the fly, and never faces any real adversity because of it. Captured? Well, I'll just learn to mind trick and escape. Losing a duel with Kylo Ren? I'll have an epiphany, mutter "The Force" and then beat him. If only somebody had told Luke that trick. Woulda saved him all that hazing from Yoda and a lost hand. The plot is built entirely on contrivance and convenience, as in prior scenes only happen because they were needed for later scenes to happen, as opposed to the other way around. For example, the end of the movie requires them to have Luke's lightsaber. But why do they have Luke's lightsaber? Because it's in the basement of the random space bar they went to, after randomly meeting Han and Chewie who conveniently find their old ship moments after they fly off with it. And then there's Poe getting thrown free of his TIE Fighter wreckage and surviving to show up later like Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. "Ted, you're alive, dude!" "Yeah, I fell out of my armor when I hit the floor!"

 

 

I can really go on for a while about all of TFA's faults. Why does the Resistance send Han, Finn and Chewie alone on the ridiculously vital mission to destroy the shield generator, when Finn is a recent defector of unknown and untested loyalty and he's conflicted with a mission to rescue his friend? Han is a geriatric smuggler looking for his lost son, and Chewbacca has a tendency to gasp at hanging meats. It's a good thing Rey rescues herself. Can you imagine how awkward the film ends when they have to take 15 extra minutes to rescue her and thus their perfect timing is ruined and Poe fails to blow up Planet Death Star? I mean, when Star Wars did this the first time in Return of the Jedi, at least the writers were smart enough to give the protagonists some commandos to help out.

 

  When I look back at Rogue One I think "Well, that Hammerhead corvette scene was pretty silly and I kinda wish they'd toned down Donnie Yen and his compatriot Captain Aimbot. Also, would have preferred if Leia had not been at Scarif."

[WonderWAAAGH 7,153]

The entire plot for R1 was a reverse engineered answer to the question "how do we explain such an obvious and dumb flaw in the Death Star?" Some things should stay a mystery. What's next, an entire movie dedicated to the Stormtrooper who smacks his head on the doorframe?

[FTS Gecko 24,135]

I can really go on for a while about all of TFA's faults...

 

Well, you're certainly not the only one (NSFW):

 

 

I spent quite a lot of time defending JJ Abrams before the film came out, and to be honest I don't think he did that bad a job, but a couple of moments aside it really didn't live up to my hopes.

 

Rogue One exceeded my hopes.  And what it did was confirm for me that I want more of the original trilogy era stories.  More of the Empire.  And definitely more of Vader.

[Dagonet 7,246]

The dialog is poor to awful in parts, with cringeworthy exchanges that sometimes feel like a blend of 1990s teen movies with 1990s buddy cop movies. 

 

 

Which is practically a quote by Alec Guinness about ANH.

 

TFA isn't a perfect movie, but neither are the OT films.

[Jo Jo 4,808]

The entire plot for R1 was a reverse engineered answer to the question "how do we explain such an obvious and dumb flaw in the Death Star?" Some things should stay a mystery. What's next, an entire movie dedicated to the Stormtrooper who smacks his head on the doorframe?

 

 

That explanation is one of the best things in Rogue One. Even in a galaxy far far away, we do need things to make a little sense. Sun sucking planet sized weapons are really pushing it. 

[Hobojebus 11,341]

I prefer episode 7 as well I think rogue one was pretty badly paced it felt long which 7 never did, I didn't think I could feel less inclined towards a lead than i did to rey but sheesh I was left so cold by jyn I was very happy over her eventual fate.

 

The whole thing was like Godzilla all over again I'm glad there won't be a sequel.

[FTS Gecko 24,135]

Well.  Looks like Hobo and I have finally found something we disagree on!

[Crabbok 9,869]

I prefer episode 7 as well I think rogue one was pretty badly paced it felt long which 7 never did, I didn't think I could feel less inclined towards a lead than i did to rey but sheesh I was left so cold by jyn I was very happy over her eventual fate.

 

The whole thing was like Godzilla all over again I'm glad there won't be a sequel.

I'm hearing a sequel is already in the work.   They are going with "A New Hope" as the working title.   Deals with the aftermath of Leia's escape. 

[Bojanglez 2,158]

Confirmed: http://www.scified.com/news/george-lucas-direct-rogue-one-sequel

[juxstapo 239]

 

This is crazy. So many people dissing Episode 7. Like - After episode 7 first came out everyone was praising it and there were very few naysayers. Now it feels like everyone's opinion has changed. Almost like it's the prequels all over again. This is crazy. It's like next year people will be trash talking Rogue one.

I stepped out of the theatre after seeing Rogue One and all I could think was "I need to shower myself in Episode VII." The conclusion that my friends and I drew after watching TFA was that the prequels failed not because of horrible dialogue and acting, but because they threw a light on all of the mysteries that made the OT special. I think that's more or less where we stand right now with Rogue One; it wasn't a story that needed to be told, and now that it has we're no better off for it. I agree with what you've said about TFA, and how it perpetuated the myth making that truly made the OT special. That was Star Wars, and I think given another year's time people will begin to see that Rogue One is no better than the prequels: a couple of cool fight scenes chained together with empty plot points and hollow characters.

Someone mentioned something about seamlessness, and I couldn't disagree more. The CGI of Tarkin and Leia, however you want to qualify it, completely spoiled the immersion. I just couldn't suspend disbelief at that point. The inclusion of Dutch and Hobbie, while cool (I cheered along with everyone else), was similarly spoiled by the obvious cut and paste job. For a moment during the movie I even wondered if they'd been yanked right out of ANH, and that's not a thought that should be crossing my mind mid-action. Immersion ruined again. And then there's Vader, who is an undisputed badass... and hours or days later in universe time, he's shambling around again like an old man fitted with four prosthetic limbs. I just couldn't put that image, Vader tearing through rebel troopers, side by side with any other scene from ANH. It wasn't seamless, it was severely disjointed. Trying to reconcile Rogue One with A New Hope is like watching the special edition Jabba scene from Episode IV and then skipping straight to RotJ. What we're left with is a movie that barely succeeds on its own, and only then by virtue of the last big fight scene, and certainly doesn't mesh with the rest of the trilogy.

 

This, this, a thousand times this.

 

I "liked" Rogue 1, but I liked it as a collection of action sequences. Movie-wise it hit a definite "meh".

 

Honestly it watched more like a collection of game cut scenes than a proper film. Which was fine, but it doesn't elevate it to OT standards to my eyes. Whoever said that all the stuff left off screen for us to imagine is what makes the OT good probably got it right.

 

Ep. 7 had a cut and pasted plot with inane details, but my emotional response to it was far better than R1. Not a "great movie" either, by any stretch, but a fun experience IRL. At the end of it I liked the characters more than I did the ones in Rogue 1.

 

For me, and this was probably the fault of my theater enthusiastically laying into the volume, but every locale change was accompanied by a harsh blast of the new score, to the point where a new planet was practically a jump scare.

At the end of the film the only characters we care about are Chirrut and K2, and that's because of funny one liners, not any particular development or arc or anything.

 

Tarkin and Leia are this year's Jar Jar. Tarkin would have been cool as a quick cameo, a reflection in a window would have been fine. Hell, having the actor just be himself as Tarkin would have been fine, he looked enough like him and played the part quite well. Hollywood has a long tradition of casting alternate actors to portray the same characters, I would not have had a problem with that. But the CGI puppet was distracting, disrespectful, and basically just godawful.

 

And frankly I prefer Daisy Ridley's acting to Felicity Jones any day. Regardless of how well the characters were written, Rey emotes far more convincingly and appealingly than Jan, and that's not some "this girl is prettier than that girl" bollocks. A thousand years from now when some Phrenologist unearths Daisy Ridley they'll be shocked by someone who is all forehead and teeth, but her ability to convey emotional context via facial expression is spot on.

 

I didn't hate it at all, I actually quite liked it, but I liked it because of space battles and splody stuff, the characters and plot were just so much noise. And if you notice, most of the folks who tout it as the missing link of Star Wars films are the same ones who rewound the fight scenes from the OT until their VHS copies wore out in those spots, (which was me too  )