Rogue One: Many Bothans Died to Bring Us This New Trailer

[Giggling Ghast]

A new trailer has dropped. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdj1zb9sMY) I predict a 97.6 per cent chance of arguments about how feniminissm iz roonin' mah Stah Wahrz.

What'd you think? I thought it was considerably more hopeful than the first one, which left me convinced Jyn Orso was a sociopath that may end up working for the Empire. Still, I'm willing to bet this will be fairly bleak, and most of those characters won't be getting out of this movie alive.

Note: I am aware that many Bothans died to bring information about the second Death Star and this movie is a prequel.

[BWR]

It looks significantly better than TFA. It might actually be an OK SW movie.
I'm still bummed that they got rid of Kyle Katarn and his mission to do this.

[Ramza00]

Point of order, the bothans died later to bring us the trailer about the 2nd death star (ROTJ), not the 1st death star (ANH).

Instead this guy (captain antilles) dies to bring us this trailer about a star war story which is side story off the original trilogy

http://i.stack.imgur.com/85JC1.jpg

[Giggling Ghast]

And many Bothans died to bring news of the Emperor's arrival on the second Death Star, not the actual Death Star plans. I'm aware of the lore, I just wanted to make a 'many Bothans died' joke.

[Ramza00]

And many Bothans died to bring news of the Emperor's arrival on the second Death Star, not the actual Death Star plans. I'm aware of the lore, I just wanted to make a 'many Bothans died' joke.

https://i.redditmedia.com/NPuCT8mPUoOyhJ3InxCa_6iimcatUh30oQt2UNE28kA.jpg?w= 320&

Can you try your image again, it is not working?

-----

I just wanted to post a picture of Darth Vader being a villian.

[Giggling Ghast]

OK, I got it now:

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/66500153.jpg

[Aotrs Commander]

I thought it was considerably more hopeful than the first one, which left me convinced Jyn Orso was a sociopath that may end up working for the Empire.

Which is unfortunate, since that idea was the one and only thing I thought looked promising from the first trailer.

But no, apparently the Empire Can Never Have Nice Things (Or Even Anything, Really) is of course going to be one of the first things we get ported over from the the OldEU.

(We'll be bloody lucky, I think to get the likes of TIE Fighter in the newEU, I fear...)

[Murk]

Well, it has explosions and star ships and dramatic music and Felicity Jones, which sounds nice.
Since the Force Awakens I can't really be enthusiastic about the rest of the movie, so I think that brings the total to a solid "meh".

[Cikomyr]

This will be awesome!!

Do you think the old blind dude is an ex Jedi?

We still have no goddamn idea who the guy dressed in white is.

[hamishspence]

We still have no goddamn idea who the guy dressed in white is.

This guy?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Orson_Krennic

[Aotrs Commander]

Do you think the old blind dude is an ex Jedi?.

Yes I loved the way they appear to have managed to find a way to squeeze a Jedi in without being a Jedi. Because that was completely necessary, wasn't it?

*sigh*

Can't ACTUALLY have a Star Wars movie without a magic space samurai or an equivilent to one, can we?

[Cikomyr]

Yes I loved the way they appear to have managed to find a way to squeeze a Jedi in without being a Jedi. Because that was completely necessary, wasn't it?

*sigh*

Can't ACTUALLY have a Star Wars movie without a magic space samurai or an equivilent to one, can we?

For me, he seems to fit more the "Errant Martial Monk" trope

[Dienekes]

Hmm, I wonder if the homicidal droid will call anyone meatbag?

[BlueHerring]

Yes I loved the way they appear to have managed to find a way to squeeze a Jedi in without being a Jedi. Because that was completely necessary, wasn't it?

*sigh*

Can't ACTUALLY have a Star Wars movie without a magic space samurai or an equivilent to one, can we?He isn't. He believes in the Force, and might actually be Force-sensitive, but he doesn't appear to be a Jedi. Remember that there are plenty of Force traditions in the galaxy, and the Jedi just happen to be the largest and most prominent during the Republic.

The new canon seems to be cutting down in the whole "Oh yeah this whole bunch of Jedi escaped Order 66" thing. Aside from Obi-Wan and Yoda, there's only been one confirmed survivor* of Order 66 (to my knowledge, that is).

*Except for the Jedi who fell and joined the Inquisition, of which we only know for sure that one was a full fledged Knight at the time.

[Aotrs Commander]

He isn't. He believes in the Force, and might actually be Force-sensitive, but he doesn't appear to be a Jedi. Remember that there are plenty of Force traditions in the galaxy, and the Jedi just happen to be the largest and most prominent during the Republic.

The way that dude was waving his staff around over all the KO'd Stormtroopers looked it might as well have been glowing. No, he probably isn't a Jedi, but someone who basically fulfills that exact role. In the same way that the cartoon X-Men writers would bend over backwards to give Wolverine claws or some sort in flashbacks before he actually had claws...

That was my first thought, anyway.


The new canon seems to be cutting down in the whole "Oh yeah this whole bunch of Jedi escaped Order 66" thing. Aside from Obi-Wan and Yoda, there's only been one confirmed survivor* of Order 66 (to my knowledge, that is).

*Except for the Jedi who fell and joined the Inquisition, of which we only know for sure that one was a full fledged Knight at the time.

And the ones in Rebels and likely everything else before long.

[BWR]

The new canon seems to be cutting down in the whole "Oh yeah this whole bunch of Jedi escaped Order 66" thing. Aside from Obi-Wan and Yoda, there's only been one confirmed survivor* of Order 66 (to my knowledge, that is).


That's good, if true, especially if they also get rid of the Inquisitors and the Hands as well. Strictly speaking, I didn't have anything against Jedi escaping Order 66. Some manage to elude/kill their clones, some weren't with clones at the time, etc.; that's fine. What I disliked was how they weren't hunted down and destroyed by Vader in the time between ROTS and ANH. more and more just came crawling out of the woodwork. Sure, it's a big galaxy and Vader and Palps are only two people and even Yoda can be wrong ("when gone am I, last of the Jedi will you be" - hah!), but narratively it ruins the impact of Luke being the last.

[Aeson]

He isn't. He believes in the Force, and might actually be Force-sensitive, but he doesn't appear to be a Jedi.
AotrsCommander didn't say the guy was a Jedi. He said that the guy appears to be a not-Jedi included in the movie so that they can have a Jedi in the movie without technically having a Jedi in the movie.

I'm inclined to agree with AotrsCommander that that's something which was a bit irritating about the old EU, and that it's not exactly something I'm particularly pleased about seeing in the new movie. Jedi were so rare that a purge of the order which occurred merely ~20 years before the destruction of the Death Star over Yavin IV was enough to push the Force into being something which is apparently widely regarded as something out of myth and legend, or as superstitious nonsense, not something with a firm basis in reality, despite the purge of the Jedi Order being well within living memory. This sounds exactly like the sort of scenario where we should have Force sensitives and half-trained Jedi, and even full-fledged Jedi Knights and Masters who survived the purge, popping up in every other story and doing things that reveal them to be Force sensitives even to those who have no training in identifying such. Aren't these guys supposed to be, you know, hiding, if they exist at all?

There's a general belief in Imperial incompetence, and yet even accepting that such is true it stretches credulity that someone like Tarkin would believe Vader to be all that was left of the Jedi when you have so many Force sensitives and half-trained or fully-fledged Jedi popping up all over the place and doing things which make it blatantly obvious that they're Force sensitive and when you have Imperial Inquisitors who make no pretense of not being Force sensitive or of not being former Jedi.

I get that space wizards are fun to include in games and stories, but in the setting as portrayed in the original and prequel trilogies they're extremely rare. 10,000 Jedi in the entire galaxy? There's likely trillions of people on Coruscant alone, and the prequels would have us believe that there's a simple blood test that can detect at the very least potential Force sensitivity and doesn't need the intuition of a Jedi or other Force sensitive to do it. Even if the Jedi can only take the Force sensitive kids who show up in orphanages on a handful of worlds, there ought to be significantly more than 10,000 Jedi in the galaxy unless Force sensitivity is an extremely rare condition.

[Keltest]

AotrsCommander didn't say the guy was a Jedi. He said that the guy appears to be a not-Jedi included in the movie so that they can have a Jedi in the movie without technically having a Jedi in the movie.

I'm inclined to agree with AotrsCommander that that's something which was a bit irritating about the old EU, and that it's not exactly something I'm particularly pleased about seeing in the new movie. Jedi were so rare that a purge of the order which occurred merely ~20 years before the destruction of the Death Star over Yavin IV was enough to push the Force into being something which is apparently widely regarded as something out of myth and legend, or as superstitious nonsense, not something with a firm basis in reality, despite the purge of the Jedi Order being well within living memory. This sounds exactly like the sort of scenario where we should have Force sensitives and half-trained Jedi, and even full-fledged Jedi Knights and Masters who survived the purge, popping up in every other story and doing things that reveal them to be Force sensitives even to those who have no training in identifying such. Aren't these guys supposed to be, you know, hiding, if they exist at all?

There's a general belief in Imperial incompetence, and yet even accepting that such is true it stretches credulity that someone like Tarkin would believe Vader to be all that was left of the Jedi when you have so many Force sensitives and half-trained or fully-fledged Jedi popping up all over the place and doing things which make it blatantly obvious that they're Force sensitive and when you have Imperial Inquisitors who make no pretense of not being Force sensitive or of not being former Jedi.

I get that space wizards are fun to include in games and stories, but in the setting as portrayed in the original and prequel trilogies they're extremely rare. 10,000 Jedi in the entire galaxy? There's likely trillions of people on Coruscant alone, and the prequels would have us believe that there's a simple blood test that can detect at the very least potential Force sensitivity and doesn't need the intuition of a Jedi or other Force sensitive to do it. Even if the Jedi can only take the Force sensitive kids who show up in orphanages on a handful of worlds, there ought to be significantly more than 10,000 Jedi in the galaxy unless Force sensitivity is an extremely rare condition.

If I remember correctly, some novels indicated that the old Jedi Order turned away as many or more students from becoming padawans as actually got trained. Whether they weren't strong in the force or of a bad temperament, they would get sent off to use their abilities to become farmers or freighters or some other productive job that they would be helpful with. So they would have some abilities like precognition or something, but not the super advanced telekinesis and what not that would make them stand out as more than simply being particularly skilled.

[Ramza00]

I get that space wizards are fun to include in games and stories, but in the setting as portrayed in the original and prequel trilogies they're extremely rare. 10,000 Jedi in the entire galaxy? There's likely trillions of people on Coruscant alone, and the prequels would have us believe that there's a simple blood test that can detect at the very least potential Force sensitivity and doesn't need the intuition of a Jedi or other Force sensitive to do it. Even if the Jedi can only take the Force sensitive kids who show up in orphanages on a handful of worlds, there ought to be significantly more than 10,000 Jedi in the galaxy unless Force sensitivity is an extremely rare condition.

Stop trying to bring logic and a top down universe building to star wars. George Lucas you can like his style of story building or not, but he did start with a map and a population table and figure out if this ratio of force sensitives is internally consistent or not.

Instead the opposite happened where the story was told first, and then the details of the universe were fudged into creation. Key word fudge as in bull ****. Or put another way the DM handwave the numbers into the system without thinking if they made sense or not.

[Aeson]

If I remember correctly, some novels indicated that the old Jedi Order turned away as many or more students from becoming padawans as actually got trained.
Whatever. 20,000 Jedi-associated Force sensitives, of whom 10,000 are Jedi. What an enormous difference that makes to the relative abundance of Force sensitives which appear to be in the galaxy. It's not like there's a single planet in the galaxy which has a population somewhere around six orders of magnitude greater than the total number of Force sensitives associated with the Jedi Order ... oh, wait, Coruscant is a roughly Earth-sized city planet with skyscrapers that extend far further into the atmosphere than any skyscraper yet designed or built. Now add in the populations of the million or so other worlds Tarkin mentioned ... the Jedi Order is tiny relative to the total population of the galaxy; even if the total number of Force sensitives in the galaxy is several orders of magnitude greater than the total size of the Jedi Order, the total number of Force sensitives in the galaxy is such an insignificant fraction of the total population of the galaxy that they should be vanishingly rare.

Oh, and if you're taking the material from outside the movies, Coruscant is hardly unique in being a city-planet, and even a city-planet the size of the Moon should have a population into the billions, if not more.


Stop trying to bring logic and a top down universe building to star wars. George Lucas you can like his style of story building or not, but he did start with a map and a population table and figure out if this ratio of force sensitives is internally consistent or not.

Instead the opposite happened where the story was told first, and then the details of the universe were fudged into creation. Key word fudge as in bull ****. Or put another way the DM handwave the numbers into the system without thinking if they made sense or not.
I'm not complaining about how few Jedi appeared to exist in the movies. I'm complaining that the stuff outside the movies ignores that the movies themselves consistently treat Jedi and Force sensitives as extremely rare. Exactly how rare might not exactly be consistent within the movies, but that they're very rare is consistent.

If you want a setting where space wizards are abundant, there's nothing wrong with that ... but Star Wars, as portrayed in the movies, is not that setting.

[Keltest]

Whatever. 20,000 Jedi-associated Force sensitives, of whom 10,000 are Jedi. What an enormous difference that makes to the relative abundance of Force sensitives which appear to be in the galaxy. It's not like there's a single planet in the galaxy which has a population somewhere around six orders of magnitude greater than the total number of Force sensitives associated with the Jedi Order ... oh, wait, Coruscant is a roughly Earth-sized city planet with skyscrapers that extend far further into the atmosphere than any skyscraper yet designed or built. Now add in the populations of the million or so other worlds Tarkin mentioned ... the Jedi Order is tiny relative to the total population of the galaxy; even if the total number of Force sensitives in the galaxy is several orders of magnitude greater than the total size of the Jedi Order, the total number of Force sensitives in the galaxy is such an insignificant fraction of the total population of the galaxy that they should be vanishingly rare.

Oh, and if you're taking the material from outside the movies, Coruscant is hardly unique in being a city-planet, and even a city-planet the size of the Moon should have a population into the billions, if not more.


I'm not complaining about how few Jedi appeared to exist in the movies. I'm complaining that the stuff outside the movies ignores that the movies themselves consistently treat Jedi and Force sensitives as extremely rare. Exactly how rare might not exactly be consistent within the movies, but that they're very rare is consistent.

If you want a setting where space wizards are abundant, there's nothing wrong with that ... but Star Wars, as portrayed in the movies, is not that setting.

I think you may want to remember that stories are about exciting people doing exciting things. Even if the EU inadvertently created hundreds of force-adepts and partially trained Jedi characters, they still fall within the "exceedingly rare" category. They just seem like theyre all over the place because they end up doing stuff instead of working on a farm their whole lives.

[Rodin]

For the dude in the movie specifically, as long as he isn't as powerful as Luke, Yoda, or Obi-Wan I don't really see the problem. If he's untrained with minor Force Powers like letting him fight better and limited sensing of disturbances in the Force he can still fill the role of "wizard dude" without being a realistic threat to Vader.

I am getting more excited for this one, since it looks like they're going for a Dirty Dozen style. Underdogs send a specialized group of misfits in on an important mission for the greater war. Better still, it's a prequel movie that isn't slated to have any follow-ups, making it a perfect movie to have expendable characters like all the best WWII commando movies have had. Force-sensitive dude could wind up having his ass handed to him by Vader, giving the team sufficient time to escape but ultimately getting his mind read to reveal that the plans would be transported on the Tantive IV.

It's certainly got a lot of potential, and being a standalone means that they can play with things a lot more than the main plot movies. I just hope they put that to good use.

[Cikomyr]

Hell. Wouldn't it be cool if he was just an awesome blind fung fu fighter who, without the support of actual magic power, still found within him the balance and strenght to be a great fighter?

He attributes it to the Force because that's what he believes in. But hes just like a Wutang monk

[Aotrs Commander]

Hell. Wouldn't it be cool if he was just an awesome blind fung fu fighter who, without the support of actual magic power, still found within him the balance and strenght to be a great fighter?

He attributes it to the Force because that's what he believes in. But hes just like a Wutang monk

Honestly? For me? No.

Because it's still the same paradigm. Whether he has Batman's no-really-I'm-not-superpowered-honest-powers or actual super-powers/space magic. I'm really kind of tired to death of the noble-warrior-melee-swordguy/magic-space-samurai/etc etc etc thing at this point, in or outside of Star Wars1; especially as whatever way you approach it, it's going to seem like Jedi-Lite.

Look let me put it this way: when I was a child I didn't give diddly squat about Luke or the Jedi. I'd take their lightsabres (while it was novel), sure; but I didn't care the least bit about the Force powers and really, all that was VERY much runner up to the interesting bits (i.e. the starship combat).

Just be nice if we actually just left all that alone for five minutes, y'know?




1Naruto at least started out] being 50-60% Being Smart and Devious with it, but there's a reason I've stalled out halfway through the final ninja wars arc.

[Ramza00]

I'm not complaining about how few Jedi appeared to exist in the movies. I'm complaining that the stuff outside the movies ignores that the movies themselves consistently treat Jedi and Force sensitives as extremely rare. Exactly how rare might not exactly be consistent within the movies, but that they're very rare is consistent.

Can you provide the original source of the 10,000 jedi number? It has been repeated many times in the EU and that was moved to legends but rebels seems to recreate the rough 10,000 numbers.

I ask for it may be something that where someone put it down and then it get repeated and repeated and build upon and so on. For example much of the information for the EU is really based out of the Star Wars RPG books which was then repeated in later EU works.

-----

My point is extremely rare is relative. If you have 1 million jedi but 1 trillion or 1,000 trillion sentient beings that 1 million out of 1 trillion is extremely rare. Same thing with 10,000 out of some other number like 1 trillion and so on.

Yet those ratios do actually matter if you were trying to create an internally consistent world throughout multiple stories and settings and world building, but in a few stories that where you will be telling an adventure story where a young boy or girl is going to meet some wise religious mystic it does not really matter what the ratio of the jedi to the rest of the population is.

What I am saying, is keep my katgirls safe and stop trying to kill them (aka do not mix real world physics with D&D magic, do not mix too deeply real world thinking in a half baked fantasy setting whose goal was to tell stories and not to be internally consistent and logical).

[Hunter Noventa]

New trailer looks good.

Some people in other places have put the monk guy down to being a master of Teras Kasi, which aside from bringing us a barely mediocre fighting game, is supposedly some ancient martial art that may or may not be enhanced by force sensitivity.

[hamishspence]

Can you provide the original source of the 10,000 jedi number?

TPM novelization:

"In the time of Qui-Gon Jinn, 10,000 Jedi Knights in service to the Republic carried on the struggle each day of their lives on 100,000 different worlds."

[DoctorFaust]

Looks better than the first one, and IMO it does a better job of introducing the characters.

I still hope that the movie turns into a slasher flick staring Darth Vader once they get their hands on the plans, though.

[Ramza00]

TPM novelization:

"In the time of Qui-Gon Jinn, 10,000 Jedi Knights in service to the Republic carried on the struggle each day of their lives on 100,000 different worlds."

So 1999 was the earliest date so far obtained for the 10,000 number.

Is there any source prior for the 10,000 than the phantom menance? (Thanks for the TPM number, but I would not be surprised there was an earlier reference.)

[hamishspence]

The Conclave at Deneb consisted of 10,000-odd, and that was "all but a few" Jedi:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Conclave_at_Deneba

That comic was in December 1994.

[Aeson]

I still hope that the movie turns into a slasher flick staring Darth Vader once they get their hands on the plans, though.
While I expect that the original trilogy's characters, and perhaps some of the prequel trilogy's characters, will show up, especially considering that the movie is about the first Death Star, I'd honestly rather they didn't, and that those that do don't play that important a role in the movie.


I think you may want to remember that stories are about exciting people doing exciting things. Even if the EU inadvertently created hundreds of force-adepts and partially trained Jedi characters, they still fall within the "exceedingly rare" category. They just seem like theyre all over the place because they end up doing stuff instead of working on a farm their whole lives.
One problem is that the larger the proportion of small groups of exciting people doing exciting things that have Jedi or Force sensitives or whatever is, the more difficult it is to believe that Jedi or Force sensitives or whatever are actually all that rare.

There also an issue in that Tarkin believes Vader to be the last of them, and is in a position where he'd probably know enough about the Inquisition to know that at least some of the Inquisitors are Force sensitives and may be former Jedi. He's in a position to hear credible reports about Rebel operatives who do things which are implausible for mundane operatives, not just likely-exaggerated rumors. He's in a position where he's likely to be told why, or be able to find out why, certain people are wanted by the Imperial military and government or by the Inquisition; something like "suspected Rebel operative, highly dangerous, do not engage without overwhelming force, report any sightings up the chain of command or to nearest Inquisitorial Office" may be enough for your average grunt, but it's also something that would attract curiosity, especially if the special agents sent out to capture or kill the target do not do a very good job of concealing their Force sensitivity.

Having Force sensitives involved in a large proportion of 'exciting' or important events also creates issues for the apparent belief of the galaxy at large that the Jedi are extinct and the Force is nothing more than a myth. If there are enough reports out there of people pulling off feats which are implausible for a mundane person, people are going to start to wonder, and some people might investigate it further. If there are Imperial agents scouring the galaxy and hunting for anyone suggested to have performed such implausible feats, and the people taken by these agents have a tendency to disappear, turn up dead, or turn up as Imperial agents, it starts looking suspicious, especially if the agents themselves don't exactly do a great job of concealing their own nature.

[hamishspence]

Tarkin actually says "You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion"

Plenty of room for him to not count ex-Jedi, if he believes Vader still self-identifies as one.

[Rodin]

While I expect that the original trilogy's characters, and perhaps some of the prequel trilogy's characters, will show up, especially considering that the movie is about the first Death Star, I'd honestly rather they didn't, and that those that do don't play that important a role in the movie.



It depends on whether they go on board the Death Star or not. If the plans are elsewhere, then there's no reason for the heroes to board the Death Star and hence no reason for Vader to show up.

If they DO go aboard the Death Star, however...

I think they'd be fools not to have Vader show up. Don't have him as the main villain of the movie - you need someone that the heroes can defeat for that. But having Vader's presence looming over things emphasizes the stakes, and provides a "Bigger Bad" to explain how we got from Rogue One to the beginning of Episode IV.

Vader is also possibly THE single most popular character from the entire franchise (with the possible exception of Han Solo). Han is difficult to include for obvious reasons, but Vader? He's a suit and a voice. I'm not sure if James Earl Jones is still up for doing the voice, but getting a good imitator can't be that hard. Giving Vader a secondary role seems like a no-brainer to me.

[Cikomyr]

Having Vader not the main villain of the piece, but merely the unstoppable juggernaut secondary villain that looms in the background would be fine.

You only need one real action scene with him; maybe two. Make it count.

[The Glyphstone]

It depends on whether they go on board the Death Star or not. If the plans are elsewhere, then there's no reason for the heroes to board the Death Star and hence no reason for Vader to show up.

If they DO go aboard the Death Star, however...

I think they'd be fools not to have Vader show up. Don't have him as the main villain of the movie - you need someone that the heroes can defeat for that. But having Vader's presence looming over things emphasizes the stakes, and provides a "Bigger Bad" to explain how we got from Rogue One to the beginning of Episode IV.

Vader is also possibly THE single most popular character from the entire franchise (with the possible exception of Han Solo). Han is difficult to include for obvious reasons, but Vader? He's a suit and a voice. I'm not sure if James Earl Jones is still up for doing the voice, but getting a good imitator can't be that hard. Giving Vader a secondary role seems like a no-brainer to me.

JEJ is reprising the voice-acting role for Rogue One, it seems.

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/23/darth-vader-rogue-one-star-wars

[Legato Endless]

For the dude in the movie specifically, as long as he isn't as powerful as Luke, Yoda, or Obi-Wan I don't really see the problem. If he's untrained with minor Force Powers like letting him fight better and limited sensing of disturbances in the Force he can still fill the role of "wizard dude" without being a realistic threat to Vader.

I am getting more excited for this one, since it looks like they're going for a Dirty Dozen style. Underdogs send a specialized group of misfits in on an important mission for the greater war. Better still, it's a prequel movie that isn't slated to have any follow-ups, making it a perfect movie to have expendable characters like all the best WWII commando movies have had.

It'd be poetic if after the team's been winnowed down by the mission, one of the escaping survivors ends up going to ground on Alderaan.

[An Enemy Spy]

Honestly? For me? No.

Because it's still the same paradigm. Whether he has Batman's no-really-I'm-not-superpowered-honest-powers or actual super-powers/space magic. I'm really kind of tired to death of the noble-warrior-melee-swordguy/magic-space-samurai/etc etc etc thing at this point, in or outside of Star Wars1; especially as whatever way you approach it, it's going to seem like Jedi-Lite.

Look let me put it this way: when I was a child I didn't give diddly squat about Luke or the Jedi. I'd take their lightsabres (while it was novel), sure; but I didn't care the least bit about the Force powers and really, all that was VERY much runner up to the interesting bits (i.e. the starship combat).

Just be nice if we actually just left all that alone for five minutes, y'know?




1Naruto at least started out] being 50-60% Being Smart and Devious with it, but there's a reason I've stalled out halfway through the final ninja wars arc.

Yes, why can't everything be specifically tailored to your personal tastes? I'm sure they make these movies about Jedi just to spite you and not because the Jedi are the major thing that Star Wars is known for.

[Aeson]

Tarkin actually says "You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion"

Plenty of room for him to not count ex-Jedi, if he believes Vader still self-identifies as one.
That feels rather like splitting hairs to me. Vader and any extant ex-Jedi share at least a bit of a common background and training, and whether or not either still self-identifies as such, they were both shaped at least in part by their experiences as members of the Jedi Order.

I would also wonder whether or not Tarkin and others are particularly capable of distinguishing Force sensitives of one philosophy from Force sensitives of another, particularly if the interactions are limited to the kinds of interactions we see in A New Hope between Vader and Tarkin, or in the original trilogy between Vader and his subordinates and the Emperor. Jedi and Sith both look like people with supernatural abilities who make use of weapons which should by rights be ridiculously impractical, and while there are some key differences in ideology, there's still quite a bit of overlap in the philosophies of the two orders.

People like Tarkin may be sufficiently well versed in Jedi philosophy to make some kind of distinction between Vader and other ex-Jedi and Force sensitives, and maybe Tarkin specifically is sufficiently familiar with Vader and perhaps some Inquisitors as to be able to draw a distinction between the two, but it's at least as possible that they'll see as little difference between any two Force sensitives who were trained in different traditions as someone who has no more than a passing familiarity with the subject would see between two forms of martial arts or between two religious orders.

[DoctorFaust]

Having Vader not the main villain of the piece, but merely the unstoppable juggernaut secondary villain that looms in the background would be fine.

You only need one real action scene with him; maybe two. Make it count.

The director's Gareth Edwards, right? If he is, I don't imagine that Darth'll be showing up on screen all that often, even if he is a major presence in the film.

[cobaltstarfire]

I like this trailer better than the first one. They kind of overdid it with the imperial march though...well not overdid it, but the whole time I was like "I want to hear the whole thing now not just the first bar and a half of the melody!"

It also looks like it's going to have a different feel from other Star Wars movies...which doesn't bother me, but I could see it bothering the fanbase.


I already know what the guy is going to say tomorrow when I show him "it doesn't sound like Star Wars"


...

Also there's a ten hour version of the Imperial March on youtube...well I suppose that's pretty tame compared to some of the other super long versions of songs out there.

[Wardog]

Does anyone else think the tank at 1:21 (https://youtu.be/frdj1zb9sMY?t=82) looks like its on loan from the WH40 universe?

[The Glyphstone]

Nah, it would need a comically oversized cannon in the middle of the front armor plate. Also, not nearly enough skull decorations.

[Palanan]

Saw the trailer. Quasi-meh.

The female lead is still generic, unimpressive and almost devoid of personality. I learned nothing more about her in the new trailer; she's still a cardboard juvenile delinquent who gives me no reason to empathize with her.

Apart from the blind monk, most of the other characters seem equally generic and dimensionless, although I did like the droid, who comes across as Assassin Baymax. If nothing else, it'll be great to have a droid who isn't cuddly and lovable. I liked BB-8, but I also miss IG-88.

The Death Star eclipse was a nice touch, and the desert fortress is a gorgeous design: stark, forbidding, immense in itself but dwarfed by the might of the Empire. If that's any indication, I'm expecting this film to be a visual treat, heavy on action and light on everything else.

But that's what we saw in the first trailer, plus more juvenile attitude, so this doesn't tell us much more. I'll be looking forward to it, and I'm sure it'll be a fun ride, but not expecting anything else.

.

[J-H]

Initial reactions:

This is the first time we've seen a Star Destroyer in atmosphere. Why would a giant space superiority craft have antigrav sufficient to let it hover in atmo? The engine wash must do a number on the local ecology & atmosphere whenever it moves. Initmidating? Sure. Practical? No. :(

Did I see Morgan Freeman with a big beard and big hair? He's everywhere. He does a good job being an encouraging patriarch, but the whole "hooking up with his step grand-daughter" thing (I forget the details, but she's 50 years younger and not technically blood relation) is skeevy. I'm tired of him.

East Asian monk/martial artist type guy who maybe a force user. Pretty cool, but did they have to make the martial artist an East Asian, out of all their choices?

"You're 20 years old, haven't led anything before, and aren't a Jedi. Let's put you in charge because of your individual skills." - Typical for a movie even if it doesn't make sense.

I hope the tall droid is a HK-47 Expy. Meatbag!

I hope the whole movie isn't full of fog and darkness. I like to see my spaceships, not have them blur by.

Looks like a fun popcorn movie, but, canonically speaking, this team is not the one that gets data to the Rebellion. They get it to Organa and she has to courier it from there. At best, they end up stuck behind enemy lines. At worst, most of the team dies including Orso. I'm not sure people are ready for a Star Wars movie that ends with most of the main characters dying, even heroically.

Now I'm going to go back and read everything below the OP.

[BlueHerring]

Did I see Morgan Freeman with a big beard and big hair? He's everywhere. He does a good job being an encouraging patriarch, but the whole "hooking up with his step grand-daughter" thing (I forget the details, but she's 50 years younger and not technically blood relation) is skeevy. I'm tired of him.

East Asian monk/martial artist type guy who maybe a force user. Pretty cool, but did they have to make the martial artist an East Asian, out of all their choices?That's Forest Whitaker, playing Saw Gerrera, who's spent time fighting both Separatist and Imperial occupations on Onderon.

Donnie Yen (the martial artist) is actually a martial artist IRL. It might be racial silliness in Hollywood that decided the casting role, but his action is at least going to have some legitimacy to it.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by J-H
This is the first time we've seen a Star Destroyer in atmosphere.

On the big screen, maybe, but capital ships in atmo were a regular thing in the Clone Wars animated series. Your reasoning is entirely sound, but logic never stopped anything in science fiction. :smalltongue:

If it makes you feel any better, there was a even more ridiculous scene in one of the classic Star Trek novels from the early 80s, in which the Enterprise was hovering less than a mile above a river valley. And of course there was the nonsense with the fully submerged Enterprise in the second Trek reboot.


Originally Posted by BlueHerring
That's Forest Whitaker, playing Saw Gerrera, who's spent time fighting both Separatist and Imperial occupations on Onderon.

A direct import from Clone Wars--that's interesting. I wonder if they'll slip in a reference to Ahsoka.

[miner3203]

Trailer looks good, blind monk guy is cool, and the half-second of Vader at the end surprised me--I didn't realize they'd actually have to board the Death Star to get at the plans...

The only thing that bothers me is the machine-gun laser...this movie is set pretty much directly before A New Hope, and yet the only lasers we see in that one are effectively laser pistols. I'm not really sure how they're going to explain that...

[J-H]

Donnie Yen (the martial artist) is actually a martial artist IRL. It might be racial silliness in Hollywood that decided the casting role, but his action is at least going to have some legitimacy to it.
Good. Darth Maul was so good primarily because someone who actually knew how to move correctly (and with good footwork/balance) played him.



If it makes you feel any better, there was a even more ridiculous scene in one of the classic Star Trek novels from the early 80s, in which the Enterprise was hovering less than a mile above a river valley. And of course there was the nonsense with the fully submerged Enterprise in the second Trek reboot.
Trek at least has a history of the treknobabble shields, the main deflector dish, and no obvious "This way forward" exhaust from their engines.

[Legato Endless]

On the big screen, maybe, but capital ships in atmo were a regular thing in the Clone Wars animated series.

Even then, we've seen the Venator Star Destroyers lift off from the ground at the end of AotC. Although those certainly don't cast quite the same visual.

[BannedInSchool]

Why would a giant space superiority craft have antigrav sufficient to let it hover in atmo?
It's already got AG for the crew, so maybe they can just switch it from up to down. :smallbiggrin:

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Legato Endless
Even then, we've seen the Venator Star Destroyers lift off from the ground at the end of AotC. Although those certainly don't cast quite the same visual.

Good catch, I knew I was missing something.

And I think we saw the same in Revenge of the Sith as well, when Anakin and Obi-Wan part as friends for the last time.

[hamishspence]

Even then, we've seen the Venator Star Destroyers lift off from the ground at the end of AotC. Although those certainly don't cast quite the same visual.

Acclamator troopships, not Venators. It's ROTS that shows a Venator taking off after Obi-Wan boards it to go to Utapau (and one on the ground on Kashyyyk).

Rebels consistently shows ISDs in atmosphere, at least.

[DoctorFaust]

Well, at least in the old canon, Victory 1-class SDs could enter and exit atmosphere, and Lusankya did take off from Coruscant with the help of some external boosters (and at the cost of many hundreds of thousands of lives). And for what it's worth, the Imperial-class does have a max atmospheric speed given in one of the Star Wars: Rebels books.

[J-H]

Hey, could this be the same Jan that in the original EU was Kyle Katarn's lady friend?

All I really know about Jan Ors is from a fanfiction over on spacebattles...

[hamishspence]

The backstory seems a little different:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jan_Ors

It's possible that the name sounds similar on purpose, because somebody on the movie team played the game way back when, though.

[Wardog]

Why would a giant space superiority craft have antigrav sufficient to let it hover in atmo? The engine wash must do a number on the local ecology & atmosphere whenever it moves. Initmidating? Sure. Practical? No. :(

When has that ever stopped the Empire before?

[Dragonexx]

In regards to the jedi/ex-jedi thing. I'm actually for it. I honestly have a hard time giving a **** about things in star wars that don't involve the force, jedi, sith, or lightsabers. It's what set's star wars apart from other space based settings.

[Olinser]

Much stronger trailer than the first one.

Still think the whole sliding the dish into the Death Star is utterly idiotic, but overall much stronger trailer.

Upgraded from 'meh, wait for Netflix' to 'probably see it in theatre'.

[Foeofthelance]

Initial reactions:

This is the first time we've seen a Star Destroyer in atmosphere. Why would a giant space superiority craft have antigrav sufficient to let it hover in atmo? The engine wash must do a number on the local ecology & atmosphere whenever it moves. Initmidating? Sure. Practical? No. :(


I would love to see a short story where someone tries to present that to Tarkin or Vader or somesuch as an actual argument.

"Excuse me, Grand Moff, but we've just gotten the environmental impact studies back on the new Star Destroyers and-"
-"I'm sorry. The what?"
"The, er, environmental impact studies, sir? For the new Imperial class? There's a bit of a problem with their atmospheric drives. They, um, they tend to crush trees."
-"I can't believe what I'm hearing."
"Thank you, sir! I kept telling Admiral Clausewitz that such powerful antigravity emitters would be a danger, but-"
-"But they're Star Destroyers!"
"I know, sir, and as the foremost symbol of Imperial authority it would be an utter shame if they were cause irreparable harm to a planet's environment!"
-"But that is what Star Destroyers are for!"
"I'm sorry, sir, but if I may, that's what the turbolasers are for. As I was saying, the problem lies with the atmospheric drives. Particularly the lift generators."
-"..."
-"You know what? You're quite right. Far above my department, however. I know just the man who can help you. Let me make you an appointment with Lord Vader..."

[Olinser]

Well, at least in the old canon, Victory 1-class SDs could enter and exit atmosphere, and Lusankya did take off from Coruscant with the help of some external boosters (and at the cost of many hundreds of thousands of lives). And for what it's worth, the Imperial-class does have a max atmospheric speed given in one of the Star Wars: Rebels books.

It also may not be ATMOSPHERE per se. We only see the 1 shot of it.

It may be an asteroid base with artificial atmosphere and low gravity.

[miner3203]

I would love to see a short story where someone tries to present that to Tarkin or Vader or somesuch as an actual argument.

"Excuse me, Grand Moff, but we've just gotten the environmental impact studies back on the new Star Destroyers and-"
-"I'm sorry. The what?"
"The, er, environmental impact studies, sir? For the new Imperial class? There's a bit of a problem with their atmospheric drives. They, um, they tend to crush trees."
-"I can't believe what I'm hearing."
"Thank you, sir! I kept telling Admiral Clausewitz that such powerful antigravity emitters would be a danger, but-"
-"But they're Star Destroyers!"
"I know, sir, and as the foremost symbol of Imperial authority it would be an utter shame if they were cause irreparable harm to a planet's environment!"
-"But that is what Star Destroyers are for!"
"I'm sorry, sir, but if I may, that's what the turbolasers are for. As I was saying, the problem lies with the atmospheric drives. Particularly the lift generators."
-"..."
-"You know what? You're quite right. Far above my department, however. I know just the man who can help you. Let me make you an appointment with Lord Vader..."

This is probably the most entertaining thing I've read all day...

[Rodin]

And now I'm picturing Vader using Force Choke on the superior in that discussion.

"I find your lack of environmental consciousness...disturbing."

And then Vader forms a committee to discuss turning the Star Destroyers into Hybrids.

[hamishspence]

It also may not be ATMOSPHERE per se. We only see the 1 shot of it.

It may be an asteroid base with artificial atmosphere and low gravity.

The "walled city" look seems very much like Isis, the capital of Onderon in TCW - Saw Gerrara being a character in the movie, seems like it would support the idea that it is Onderon itself.

[DiscipleofBob]

Initial reaction: I hope the obligatory comic relief character is some kind of annoying alien named 'Manny Bothins.'

Both trailers look promising. It feels a lot more like a Star Wars movie, probably because of the existence of original trilogy era technology and starships.

[lt_murgen]

Hmm, I wonder if the homicidal droid will call anyone meatbag?

Don't we all wish!


Does anyone else think the tank at 1:21 (https://youtu.be/frdj1zb9sMY?t=82) looks like its on loan from the WH40 universe?

Actually, it looks a lot like a a TX-130 (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TX-130_Saber-class_fighter_tank) variant, for the 1 second we see it...



Initial reaction: I hope the obligatory comic relief character is some kind of annoying alien named 'Manny Bothins.'

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Manuel_Both-Hanz

[hamishspence]

Nah, it would need a comically oversized cannon in the middle of the front armor plate. Also, not nearly enough skull decorations.

The WH-30K universe, on the other hand, is more minimalist when it comes to skull decorations and the like. I could see the tank fitting in quite well in the early Horus Heresy era.

[Wardog]

Don't we all wish!



Actually, it looks a lot like a a TX-130 (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TX-130_Saber-class_fighter_tank) variant, for the 1 second we see it...




http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Manuel_Both-Hanz

I don't see much resemblance.

It's a lot boxier, the track pods are smaller and much closer to the main body, and it generally looks more like a real-world tank.

Plus, it has twin-linked somethings on its sponsons, and another double-barrled gun low down on the front, both of with the TX-130 lacks.

I though from the frame in the trailer that it had a turret as well, but I found a picture of it here and it doesn't:
https://598d5fcf392acad97538-395e64798090ee0a3a571e8c148d44f2.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.c om/9411847_star-wars-rogue-one-leak-seems-to-confirm_7e3311a_m.jpg?bg=887566
I still think it looks more like some sort of weird, slim-line Rhino (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=warhammer+40k+rhino+variants&biw=1320&bih=707&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwieqs-1rc7OAhUIJMAKHV-JDqMQ_AUIBigB)/Predator (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wh40k+predator+tank&client=firefox-b&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijs4Xxq87OAhWlLsAKHcuyDawQ_AUICCgB&biw=1320&bih=707)varient than a TX-130.

[Giggling Ghast]

The second trailer for Rogue One has dropped and it reveals why Jyn Erso is central to the plot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9abcLLQpI

The likelihood of a TPK remains high.

[cobaltstarfire]

I liked this trailer, it's the first one that actively made me want to see the movie.

[Ramza00]

Good. Darth Maul was so good primarily because someone who actually knew how to move correctly (and with good footwork/balance) played him..

I am going to have to challenge this :smallyuk:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0mUVY9fLlw

[Dienekes]

I am going to have to challenge this :smallyuk:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0mUVY9fLlw

Doesn't really look like much of a challenge. Ray Park definitely knows proper stance, balance, foot work, and gymnastics. He carries himself perfectly fine.

It isn't his fault the fight choreography went for a **** ton of flashy glow-stick waving instead of making people actually look like they're fighting. But let's be honest here, Star Wars has never really gone for actually deadly looking choreography with their fights. The best one was probably ESB, but that was just because in story Vader is straight toying with Luke, right up until he gets mad and quickly disarms him in 2 seconds.

The Force Awakens fight may also be pretty good, I honestly don't remember anything but thinking it was interesting when I saw it in theaters, it may hold up on repeat viewings, it may not.

[cobaltstarfire]

I am going to have to challenge this :smallyuk:


Stage Combat is Stage Combat, the whole point of Stage Combat is to swing at the opponents weapon, or a space where the opponent is never at real risk of getting hit. The purpose is to look fancy and make pleasant sword fighting noises. The lack of it looking like a real fight doesn't really reflect poorly on ones technique or fitness.

[Dragonexx]

Yeah, fights in star wars were never meant to be "realistic". Especially considering that in real life, fights tend to be short which isn't good for drama or excitement. (Seriously, watch olympic fencing. Fights tend to be resolved in seconds once blows are exchanged). Watch this compilation of trailers below with differing lengths depending on what kind of emotion it want's to invoke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjG61DoDzN8

[blackmagic5]

I'm willing to bet this will be fairly bleak, and most of those characters won't be getting out of this movie alive.

[-D-]

I'm willing to bet this will be fairly bleak, and most of those characters won't be getting out of this movie alive.
Just ones needed for the sequel

[Rakaydos]

Just ones needed for the sequel

So a handful of fighter pilots that show up at Yavin.

We know none of the capital ships show up at yavin...

[Giggling Ghast]

I'm willing to bet this will be fairly bleak, and most of those characters won't be getting out of this movie alive.

I suspect the same.

[Cikomyr]

So a handful of fighter pilots that show up at Yavin.

We know none of the capital ships show up at yavin...

Its probable they Va Moosed out of there since they had no way of contributing to the battle.

[Rodin]

I suspect the same.

Well, bleak by Star Wars standards, anyway. Having it be like a WWII movie where the cast falls one by one but the last survivors blow up the dam on their way out would be right in line with the movies A New Hope was homaging in the first place.

[Ebon_Drake]

OK guys, I'm in a betting mood. Here's my guesses for the Rogue One death pool:


Jyn Erso: SURVIVES. Goes on to feature in a variety of novels, comics and/or cartoons depending on popularity.
Handsome rebel guy and probable love interest: DEAD. This right here is my riskiest bet. I reckon there's a 50/50 chance that either this guy or the pilot will die. Which one depends on whether they go for high emotion or just kill off a more disposable character. I'm going bold and betting on the former.
Pilot guy: SURVIVES, narrowly. See above.
HK-47 Evil droid: DEAD, or at least badly damaged and incapacitated. As he's a droid he can just be repaired anyway if they want to bring him back.
Blind monk guy: DEAD. He seems like he has the least room for character growth and his death would have the most impact. Makes a sweet emotional speech about the Force as he goes.
Blind monk guy's friend: SURVIVES. Goes on a roaring rampage of revenge after his friend dies. He probably died during this originally, but that got cut in the rumoured "lightening" of the script. He makes it out alive, with room for character development as he deals blind monk guy's death.
Jyn's dad: DEAD. Probably in a big redemption moment.
Saw Gerrera: SURVIVES. It'll turn out he's not actually that important to the plot, since so far it looks like he's only in one scene. Probably died in the original script, but that changed when he was rewritten as a pre-existing character.

BONUS ROUND!
Big bad Imperial guy: DEAD, probably via a good old-fashioned Vader choking due to his failure.

That said, I do think there's a fair chance that the trailers are over-selling the bleakness of the movie. If that's the case, I'd revise the above to say the rebel guy unequivocally survives. The rest can stay the same, although the monk's odds of surviving get much better.

[Darth Ultron]

I'm willing to bet this will be fairly bleak, and most of those characters won't be getting out of this movie alive.

It won't be and that won't happen. First off it's Disney, so it has to be made for little kids and worse the crazy parents of little kids.

But more importantly are the Toys and other items based on a character. See, if character Zim Bim is killed in the movie, the theory is that no one will buy his toys, comics or birthday party paper plates. So you need to kep the characters alive. And this is even more true for novels, cartoons and comic books. It can be hard to put a character in a bunch of ''past'' adventures before they died. But I bet the ''white sloth Rebel Chewy clone'' guy will have one of those ''1000 year life spans'' so he can be in the ''present day movies''.

[Hopeless]

My initial thought was not that anyone specific dies but rather that it was more likely none of them would survive!

So lets assume...
I think the former Imperial pilot is either killed helping them accomplish their mission or manages to evade detection and posing as an imperial pilot rescues whoever survives whilst Vader goes in pursuit of the Tantive IV...

During a convention a few months ago the monk character was revealed to have died causing the mercenary to have a change of heart and I'm not sure but I believe they suggested he betrayed the group and the monk's death caused him to change sides and seek redemption for what he saw as his fault.
Did anyone else pick that up or is that hearsay for now?

I'd like the droid to be the one responsible for saving the surviving rebels lives but lets be honest.

I think Jyn is killed sending the transmission to the Tantive IV.
Its unlikely her co-pilot or the droid would have survived the resulting fight to keep the tower clear for her to send the transmission since we did see an Imperial TIE Fighter in that trailer.

Now for the real longshot...
What are the odds the former Imperial Pilot absconds with that TIE Fighter picks up Jyn and they escape the resulting battle dumping it to seek alternative transportation and thereby survive the battle?

And now for what I'd like to see...
Well who doesn't want Darth Vader facing off Krennic over his failure?:smallwink:

[Giggling Ghast]

I'll put money on Jyn Erso joining the Empire. Everybody else dies.

[cobaltstarfire]

HK-47 Evil droid: DEAD, or at least badly damaged and incapacitated. As he's a droid he can just be repaired anyway if they want to bring him back.



He could be effectively dead if his memory banks are irreparably destroyed though eh?

[huttj509]

Stage Combat is Stage Combat, the whole point of Stage Combat is to swing at the opponents weapon, or a space where the opponent is never at real risk of getting hit. The purpose is to look fancy and make pleasant sword fighting noises. The lack of it looking like a real fight doesn't really reflect poorly on ones technique or fitness.

Flynn it to win it!

It was fun in college watching swashbuckling-type movies with fencing club. The Princess Bride was great because from the banter it was clearly a knowing nod "yes, we absolutely know that what they're saying they're doing is totally not what they're doing, but it looks fun."

[Kantaki]

I'll put money on Jyn Erso joining the Empire. Everybody else dies.

That would be great.
Bonus points if the Rebels getting their hands on the Death Star blueprints was planned by Vader and/or the Emperor to lure them out and capturing a high ranking member(s) and to get information about their bases.

But somehow I doubt they would make (one of) the hero(es) a traitor/mole. Well, maybe there will be one, but I don't think they will get away with it without some punishment, or worse being brainwashed into turning to the light side.

[Porthos]

Saw Gerrera: SURVIVES. It'll turn out he's not actually that important to the plot, since so far it looks like he's only in one scene. Probably died in the original script, but that changed when he was rewritten as a pre-existing character.


FWIW, he was always Saw Gerrera from the first script. Or at the very least the first shooting script.

[Ebon_Drake]

FWIW, he was always Saw Gerrera from the first script. Or at the very least the first shooting script.

Oh, really? The story I'd heard was that they'd written his role as a new character, then realised that Saw Gerrera fit the description already so figured they may as well use him. I'd assumed that was the reason for the difference in his appearance (bald vs hairy) between the teaser trailer and the later ones. I could well be wrong or trusting nonsense rumour sites though.

[Porthos]

Oh, really? The story I'd heard was that they'd written his role as a new character, then realised that Saw Gerrera fit the description already so figured they may as well use him. I'd assumed that was the reason for the difference in his appearance (bald vs hairy) between the teaser trailer and the later ones. I could well be wrong or trusting nonsense rumour sites though.

About the hair, a tiny bit spoilery:

From what I understand bald Saw and hairy Saw are BOTH in the film. We get to see Saw at different points in his life, hence the hair change

Anyway, Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo confirmed that this was Saw from the beginning (https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/764263907162591233). Or at least when they started filming initially. :smallsmile:

[Green Elf]

Are they making Rogue 1 to make all the Force Unleashed fans mad?

[Dragonexx]

I wouldn't think so. The force unleashed takes place at the founding of the rebellion, where here it's been clearly established for a while.

Also, star wars rebels overwrites force unleashed anyways, (ironically, an apprentice of anakin/vader still unites the rebellion).

[Quild]

I saw Rogue One yesterday and it was pretty good.

You don't need to know much about Star Wars to see this one. It's pretty solid by itself.
It also fits quite well in SWU without trying to say "I'm a Star Wars movie" by using tropes (for instance, no opening crawl and I think there's no wilhelm scream).

The scenario is pretty good despite a few flaws. The first minutes are jumping a lot from a place to another, but then the story gets more smooth.

All in all, it's a good movie, even if it lacks some greats moments that you will remember for years.

[Thrawn4]

I saw Rogue One yesterday and it was pretty good.
I beg to differ. The visuals are great, the scenes with Darth Vader were good, but that's about it. Lots of shooting. And shooting.
Although
I was surprised that every main character died.

[Dienekes]

I beg to differ. The visuals are great, the scenes with Darth Vader were good, but that's about it. Lots of shooting. And shooting.
Although
I was surprised that every main character died.

Hmm dang. I was hoping that the imperial guy in the cape would be enjoyably Thrawn-esque. But if someone literallly named Thrawn didn't like it then my hopes are likely dashed.

[Kittenwolf]

Saw this last night.
I was not impressed

* Boring, unlikable protagonists
* Generic plot of generic generic-ness even more generic than you could claim any other star wars movie was.
* Total sausage-fest
* Massive uncanny-valley CGI to bring back old characters (oh gods Grand Moff Gollum!)
* Magical teleporting hyperspace ("Hey, our people are on the ground getting shot at. No worries, we'll just fuel up some ships and hyperspace them over there before they finish wiping their noses!")
* Unguarded critically important Imperial facilities
* DARTH VADER SHOULD NOT PUN!!!!!!


It was an okay movie but I wouldn't give it more than three, maybe three and a half stars.

[Hatu]

Just saw it, didn't like it. Granted, I'm an old curmudgeon who doesn't cotton to all this new-fangled Star Wars stuff, but I was still underwhelmed.

In brief, I thought the first half was surprisingly decent with some nice character work and good visuals. But the second half was a mediocre popcorn action flick that served only to make both the Rebellion and the Empire stupider than they were before.


For the most art I liked the protagonists. The problem is that they barely got any chance to breathe. Jyn had a truncated arc going where she has a chance to reconnect with her father and her old ideals, which helps establish her. Donnie Yen is well acted and gets his strong faith in the force (the classic Quixotic Jedi for all you old West End Games Star Wars RPG fans out there). The droid tried too hard to be funny, but I still liked him. And Andor has lots of screentime, so we at least got a good feel for who he was. But really in the end, that's just surface stuff. Once we hit Eadu, the film more or less abandons any notion of character arcs and instead goes for false drama and action set pieces.

The order to assassinate Galen doesn't make much sense once the Death Star is already operational, so the drama falls flat. Also, the 'conflict' between Jyn and Andor begins and ends almost immediately, to no further payoff later.

Meanwhile, the film is almost mechanical in the way it sets the entire team up to die. It's just a continuing string of nonsensical barriers that must be overcome, and by the end it honestly felt like the cast itself was bored waiting for the next heroic sacrifice. It's sad, sure, but it feels so artificial. It kinda reminds me of Data dying at the end of Nemesis. So in the end, it doesn't really feel like the heroes matter; they don't grow as people, and they don't earn their victory. So why should I care?

And sadly, that's the strength of the movie. The theoretical main villain, Krennic, is a complete waste of screentime. He isn't menacing in the least, he doesn't have any clear ambitions or plans, and he barely interacts with the heroes. He just sort shows up at random times for a scene, then leaves. Even worse, Tarken metaphorically bitch slaps him in every scene they share, and all Krennic can do about it is mope. Pathetic! I mean I guess technically he was less of an active liability to the bad guys than Captain Phasma, but she at least had a cool suit of armor. Krennic just sucks.

Vader, meanwhile, was terribly used. Krennic goes to visit him in his fortress of solitu err, lava (for no clear reason), and it ends with Vader making a lame Bond-one-liner quip while choking him. Then he appears again at the end, he attempts to recapture the Death Star plans in a scene that feels like bad fanfic. He single-handled boards the rebel flagship and hacks his way through dozens of soldiers in a flagrant display of lightsaber and Force moves. Yet somehow he DOESN'T choke the one soldier loudly claiming he needs to get the plans through a stuck blast door. This is made all more inexplicable when you remember that, in the beginning of Episode 4 (probably a day later or so, in universe), he will just let his stormtroopers board the ship instead.

So our heroes are badly used and our villains suck. How about the story? Pretty nonsensical. It starts well; a renegade Imperial Pilot tries to get a message about the Death Star to Jyn, but he winds up caught in a turf war between different factions of the Rebellion. It's an intriguing setup, and it provides good initial motivation for the heroes. But it doesn't amount to much, since the rebel 'extremist' seems to completely recommit to the Rebellion the instant Jyn shows up. And from then on, things just happen in order to happen. With proof the Death Star exists and is operational, the Rebellion instead sends Andor to assassinate Jyn's father, Galen; maybe they were worried he'd build an even bigger doomsday weapon that eats suns? No, that would be stupid.

But just to make assurances doubly sure, they ALSO send a squadron of X-Wings to blow up the base Galen is in. Naturally, the attack manages to completely miss Krennic's shuttle, but does manage to tragically kill Galen who was only building a superweapon so that he could give it a FATAL FLAW.

Speaking of which, Galen's 'plan' is moronic. Even ignoring the idea that no one would notice he constructed the Death' Star's main reactor out of space-Pinto parts, why the hell did he wait until the last minute to tell anyone about it? He's been working on the project for 15 years! Even if sending the message is a risk, it's a risk he'll have to take. Why not do it when there's still time to react? Of course, when he does send the message, why did he merely explain his plan, rather than sending the technical data anyone would need to make his plan work? He must have access to the necessary data (otherwise, he'd have no way to know if the reactor is vulnerable in the first place), so why not send that? And don't tell me Imperial security is too tight, because we see first hand there IS no security around the data.

Naturally, the Rebellion is full of morons so our plucky band must go Rogue to steal the plans and save the day. But they apparently didn't put much thought into this adventure. They knew Scarif was surrounded by an impervious shield. They were hopeful their stolen ship would have valid codes to get in (it does), but no one worries about getting the data out until much later. By then, the Rebel Fleet has arrived at Scarif just for the lulz, so our heroes begin their lemming-like march to rig up some way to transmit the data to the fleet. In the end, it's unclear why their sacrifice was necessary (the data link they set up is clearly blown up, and the shield is destroyed by the actions of the fleet alone in the meantime), but hey, mission accomplished!

And that, I'm afraid, brings us to the final problem of the movie: it's place in the Star Wars canon. Sadly, that is a complete mess. Yes, everything that happens sets up what we see in Episode 4 to an exacting degree. But none of what happens makes much sense EXCEPT as a way to set up Episode 4. For example, Jyn manages to transmit the Death Star plans to the Rebel fleet. But apparently DRM restrictions mean only the Rebel flagship can download those plans, and they can't make duplicate files. So even though we see a lot of pilots who will reappear in Star Wars escape, they don't get the plans. Whereas the flagship can be tragically disabled and boarded. But as luck would have it, the Tantive IV was hiding aboard the flagship... even though there was a scene earlier where Space Jimmy Smits said he'd send 'her' to fetch 'him.' Wink Wink!! Oh, those clever writers!

Makes you wonder though. Vader was clearly able to track Leia to Tatooine after she escaped from Scarif. Why couldn't they likewise track the rest of the Rebels back to Yavin. Also, given we learn Arto and Threepio were at Yavin BEFORE they boarded the Tantive, why did they need to go to Alderaan at all? Why not just go straight to Yavin and present the plans to the Alliance directly?

The rest of the movie is similarly mired in nonsensical bits like this. We see a bunch of egregiously out-of-place new stormtrooper models and Tie Fighter variants, but somehow we'll never see them again in the future. The Death Star fires its superlaser twice in this movie, but only at low power, so we can claim it's not "fully operational." They make a big deal about how the Death Star uses kyber crystals for power, which is why they're ransacking old Jedi temples. But it's never explained how the Geonosins planned to power this thing, since they were building it to fight the Jedi. And of course the instantaneous communication/travel from The Force Awakens rears it's ugly head here, too: the rebels learn Rogue One is on Sacrif from intercepted imperial transmissions, yet somehow they can scramble the fleet and arrive before the Imperials can even start closing the access point to the planetary shield!

(To say nothing of the fact that the fleet had explicitly refused to attack Sacrif earlier, on the grounds that it might be a trap. So there you go: supporting an authorized Rebel mission, too risky; supporting an unauthorized mission mentioned in Imperial chatter, a-okay! It's probably a good thing for the rebellion that Admiral Raddus died here.)

So that's my take on Rogue One. It's your standard action movie that shamelessly cashes in on the Star Wars franchise, but in the end adds nothing of value to the either the real world or the fictional one.

I have low expectations for the Disney era, but I still think we should be able to aim higher than this.


-H

[Pilum]

Well, that was like watching some of our old WEG d6 sessions come to life.

Pretty good.

Perfect? No, a few quibbles here and there...
Tarkin isn't quite as seamless as they'd no doubt hoped, some scenes dragged a bit and still the case that not all 'modern' characters seem as memorable - that one could be me though, as Little Pilum had no problem picking out who was who and rattling the names off based on a single sentence; face it mate, you got old! (Edit - "memorable" not quite the right word - they're very memorable as characters, just don't ask me to name them!)

Also not a huge fan of the massive space battle at the end, but that's really a personal stylistic choice; I liked the idea of the low-key commando raid like Cockleshell Heroes, but thats not to say I object to what we got. I do think that the Star Destroyers were sold a bit short in terms of capability though.

Quite impressed that they had the courage to let everyone die though, I suppose when you're Star Wars you don't need to worry about launching a franchise! Pity, I'd have like to see more of them, but this way it felt more like those old black-and-white war films that I grew up with.

And oh yes, Vader got to cut loose. Quite satisfying, that, even if he did oddly feel a bit unnecessary at first.

In short - yes, that'll do.

[Peelee]

Good, not great. A few things felt shoehorned, a few things don't really flow well with Ep. IV, and a few lines could have been delivered better (Vader's one-liner would have worked wonderfully if he had played it straight, instead of sounding stupidly pleased with himself, for instance). Overall, though, worth watching.

[hamishspence]

The Death Star fires its superlaser twice in this movie, but only at low power, so we can claim it's not "fully operational." They make a big deal about how the Death Star uses kyber crystals for power, which is why they're ransacking old Jedi temples. But it's never explained how the Geonosins planned to power this thing, since they were building it to fight the Jedi.




Star Wars: Catalyst: Rogue One goes into more detail:

basically - the Republic captures Geonosis early in the war, and Sidious, having already got the Geonosis plans from Dooku , ensures that the Republic starts building their own Death Star as a counter to the mysterious Separatist Death Star - which never got built because it never got past the planning stage, because Dooku had already handed the plans over.

[Chromascope3D]

My initial thoughts coming out of the theater was that it was pretty great, in the top percentile of SW movies (Obviously below Empire but imo above all the others).
While it started out strong in the first and even second act, the third started to fall flat towards the end. I really enjoyed the droid and I thought he went out fittingly, but the monk and the heavy weapons guy felt like they deserved more for all the setup they got, especially because I'd gotten some genuine belly laughs from their deadpan snark.

I was really hoping that Saw's rebellion would play a bigger part, since I was really fascinated by their visual ties to, uh, certain extremist groups, and I was really excited to see Disney pull something as ballsy as them being the "good" guys, but, alas, I guess they didn't agree. I think that it would have made for a more satisfying arc if they had broken from the Alliance and launched the offensive with Saw, only to call in the Alliance later when they realized that they were outgunned with nowhere to run.

Honestly though, I wish it had been longer. Maybe I'm just weird, but if you're going to make an authentic war film, with satisfying character arcs and plenty of spectacle, you gotta make it 3 hours minimum, no less. :smallwink:

I've only just got back from my first viewing, so I've still got some ruminating to do, but I don't expect my opinion to change much. The characters were fairly generic, true, but they played off of each other so well that I didn't really notice, and while the plot was a little off the rails, I mean, it's a Star Wars movie, so that was going to be guaranteed. And while it obviously borrowed a lot of specific names and ideas from the originals, it thankfully left enough of the original theme and tone behind to still feel much fresher than the franchise has been in a while.

Although, now that I think about it, does anyone else think that Jyn was much more paragon in the movie than the renegade the trailer made her out to be? I don't think I even heard the "I rebel" line from it anywhere. The one thing I was expecting going into this movie was for her to be a bad ***** with no respect for the rules, and her first few scenes made it seem that way, but once we got to Act 2 that didn't really seem to be the case anymore. Was it reshot/recut to make her more likable?

[Peelee]

My initial thoughts coming out of the theater was that it was pretty great, in the top percentile of SW movies (Obviously below Empire but imo above all the others).
While it started out strong in the first and even second act, the third started to fall flat towards the end. I really enjoyed the droid and I thought he went out fittingly, but the monk and the heavy weapons guy felt like they deserved more for all the setup they got, especially because I'd gotten some genuine belly laughs from their deadpan snark.

I was really hoping that Saw's rebellion would play a bigger part, since I was really fascinated by their visual ties to, uh, certain extremist groups, and I was really excited to see Disney pull something as ballsy as them being the "good" guys, but, alas, I guess they didn't agree. I think that it would have made for a more satisfying arc if they had broken from the Alliance and launched the offensive with Saw, only to call in the Alliance later when they realized that they were outgunned with nowhere to run.

Honestly though, I wish it had been longer. Maybe I'm just weird, but if you're going to make an authentic war film, with satisfying character arcs and plenty of spectacle, you gotta make it 3 hours minimum, no less. :smallwink:

I've only just got back from my first viewing, so I've still got some ruminating to do, but I don't expect my opinion to change much. The characters were fairly generic, true, but they played off of each other so well that I didn't really notice, and while the plot was a little off the rails, I mean, it's a Star Wars movie, so that was going to be guaranteed. And while it obviously borrowed a lot of specific names and ideas from the originals, it thankfully left enough of the original theme and tone behind to still feel much fresher than the franchise has been in a while.

Although, now that I think about it, does anyone else think that Jyn was much more paragon in the movie than the renegade the trailer made her out to be? I don't think I even heard the "I rebel" line from it anywhere. The one thing I was expecting going into this movie was for her to be a bad ***** with no respect for the rules, and her first few scenes made it seem that way, but once we got to Act 2 that didn't really seem to be the case anymore. Was it reshot/recut to make her more likable?

She didn't say, "i rebel," nobody read her a list of charges, she didn't appear in the tube while in imperial uniform.... lot of promotional stiff was cut from the final film.

[VoxRationis]

I have some similar thoughts on the matter—parts of it felt forced, and Disney does not seem to realize that hyperspace travel takes time in Star Wars, which is something that has been true through both trilogies thus far.
I called that the protagonists would all die—the fact that Vader was right on Leia's tail at the beginning of IV made it pretty likely that whoever sent the plans in the first place was dead—but I kind of expected their deaths to be more dramatic and personal. I expected Vader to kill Jyn, at the least. A warm glowy death on the beach seemed odd to me.

Secondly, it occurs to me that Tarkin now has a pattern of making questionable decisions with his new toy. After all, the Death Star plans were far from the only thing in that archive, and generally one keeps archives around because one might need to look things up one day. What's more, the presence of the rebel fleet made it probable already that the plans had been beamed off, so his decision was unlikely to adequately contain the problem anyway.

Thirdly, the movie retroactively makes the first scene from A New Hope kind of silly. When Vader boards Leia's ship, the crew, including Leia, bluster about being on a diplomatic mission, which is kind of odd considering that as little as a few hours before, that very same ship had participated in an all-out assault on an Imperial facility.

But regarding Vader letting the plans get away, people were shooting at him and there was a lot of noise. He didn't get our camera angles focusing on the disc in the guy's hand. He saw a cowardly Rebel desperate to escape, which is pretty typical for a scene with Darth Vader in it, and focused on the immediate combat threats instead.

[Peelee]

I have some similar thoughts on the matter—parts of it felt forced, and Disney does not seem to realize that hyperspace travel takes time in Star Wars, which is something that has been true through both trilogies thus far.
I called that the protagonists would all die—the fact that Vader was right on Leia's tail at the beginning of IV made it pretty likely that whoever sent the plans in the first place was dead—but I kind of expected their deaths to be more dramatic and personal. I expected Vader to kill Jyn, at the least. A warm glowy death on the beach seemed odd to me.

Secondly, it occurs to me that Tarkin now has a pattern of making questionable decisions with his new toy. After all, the Death Star plans were far from the only thing in that archive, and generally one keeps archives around because one might need to look things up one day. What's more, the presence of the rebel fleet made it probable already that the plans had been beamed off, so his decision was unlikely to adequately contain the problem anyway.

Thirdly, the movie retroactively makes the first scene from A New Hope kind of silly. When Vader boards Leia's ship, the crew, including Leia, bluster about being on a diplomatic mission, which is kind of odd considering that as little as a few hours before, that very same ship had participated in an all-out assault on an Imperial facility.

But regarding Vader letting the plans get away, people were shooting at him and there was a lot of noise. He didn't get our camera angles focusing on the disc in the guy's hand. He saw a cowardly Rebel desperate to escape, which is pretty typical for a scene with Darth Vader in it, and focused on the immediate combat threats instead.

Your unspoilered point and third point I FULLY agree with

[Chromascope3D]

She didn't say, "i rebel," nobody read her a list of charges, she didn't appear in the tube while in imperial uniform.... lot of promotional stiff was cut from the final film.

She was actually read a list of charges, but it was only like four items long. Not exactly impressive. :P

[Dienekes]

Alright saw it with my Star Wars obsessed buddy, as I knew I would.


Honestly, my biggest complaint was the very obvious pandering. Did we really need to see the two schmucks that threatened Luke just randomly? And it's not even a background thing. The camera lingers, just so you know what you're seeing. Like it's winking at you going "Eh? Eh? See? Did you see it? Eh? We love the movies too!" Which would be only mildly eye-roll worthy if I wasn't in a crowded theater, where every time the smallest little nod to the old movies would happen, a bunch of obnoxiously loud halfwits would scream "YEAAAHHHH!" and applaud and holler. Oh did you see C-3PO and R2 in a pointless 10 second cameo? Better scream! Was that a completely obviously cut from the first movie that jarringly does not fit the current visuals? Better scream! Was the bloody Death Star there? Better scream! We all saw the Death Star guys. Hell, the Death Star has been in more movies than Luke at this point. We don't need to scream there.

And then I'm gong to be a big old hypocrite and admit, I was giggling like an idiot watching Vader hack through a room full of rebel scum.

Beyond the pandering. It was an ok movie. It had beats and hints that there could be an exploration of the means of running a Rebellion, but it all doesn't really lead anywhere. Did Not-Rey's adopted father guy go too aggressive in his rebellion? Well, we're told he did. The worst we see him do was make sure a potential spy was telling the truth that would "make him go insane" only, other than being a bit jittery, the pilot seems to be in decent condition, even the jitters go away by the end.

The monk and guard seem like they could have lead up to a look at faith during war times. A subtle analysis how the tragedies effect individuals. But it doesn't really seem to go anywhere with it.

The morally ambiguous spy, we see him shoot his messenger in the beginning, and we get the subplot that he has to kill Galen. Which makes sense, he's a collaborator, they're unsure what else he can build, and they're unsure how close he is to finishing. I can see why the hit was ordered. Though after the technical test on that planet, that last question was answered. In any case, he is going to go kill Not-Rey's dad, but he doesn't and our two mains have a small argument, and, that's it. Wouldn't it have made more sense to have him go through with it, to really show how the Rebellion is taking increasingly deplorable actions to win? Then Not-Rey could shoot him. Which, would make the Tactics Droids predictions more accurate. Which, I'll admit I found that funny. After C-3PO was wrong at every time, at least Tactics Droid gets a few "We have only a 25% chance of getting through these rocks" followed by "And look, we just crashed into those rocks."

But I did enjoy myself. But with what they were leading to it seemed like there was a complex R rated war story in there, that they toned down and slathered in Star Wars trappings to make a relatively average SciFi movie.

[Chromascope3D]

I found out that there were actually extensive reshoots during the summer, which makes me think that it was actually much tonally darker originally. Which is a shame. Makes me wish for a director's cut, but this is Disney so that's very unlikely.

Did anyone else notice that, aside from the droid, all of the protagonists died in explosions? I guess heroes getting shot to death is still considered too dark for children, even though this movie wasn't meant for children but idk. :P

[Hatu]

I found out that there were actually extensive reshoots during the summer, which makes me think that it was actually much tonally darker originally. Which is a shame. Makes me wish for a director's cut, but this is Disney so that's very unlikely.

Did anyone else notice that, aside from the droid, all of the protagonists died in explosions? I guess heroes getting shot to death is still considered too dark for children, even though this movie wasn't meant for children but idk. :P


Technically, the droid died in an explosion too, he just got shot to pieces first. It may have been to make sure we know the heroes really died, since people survive blaster shots repeatedly during the movie. But it was a little weird.

The whole end sequence of the movie was a little weird. The tone was muddled, the pacing was inconsistent and the storyline mostly fell apart. It really does make me wonder just how much the movie changed during post-production.


-H

[Morph Bark]

Saw it yesterday.

I liked how they were generally a lot more subtle than Force Awakens in their references to the original trilogy, with rather than the plot being a rehash of A New Hope/Empire Strikes Back and a lot of on-the-nose references, this one had just a few that stood out. Most of it was just stylistically, such as the scenes at the end in the archive tower being very reminiscent of the decor on the Death Star in A New Hope and the scene between Luke and Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back. And then there was the constant buildup to "never tell me the odds" without it ever really coming out, which I honestly quite liked.

The music was done well, with it sounding very much like the original score, but with its own spin, as if it were done precisely to set it apart from the Episodes. Also, when Tarkin popped up, I was ecstatic. They did some REALLY good CG work to recreate Peter Cushing's face and the animation was top notch. (Leia's a lot less so, but I don't mind it as much since it's so brief and only at the end. Very nice lead-in into A New Hope though.) The relationship between Cassian Andor and K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) is of course very reminiscent of Han Solo and Chewbacca, but I liked that their dynamic was different due to both having an understandable voice, which allowed them to make the human part of the duo more grim and dour in demeanor, more serious.

Mads Mikkelsen was rather underutilized, but his scenes at the start of the film are great. To me, it makes up for how the character dies a rather cliched and inglorious death later on. I also didn't realize until I looked it up that Donnie Yen was the one portraying Chirrut, the Rebel warrior with the big guns who hung out with the blind monk the whole time. It seems an odd part for him, but at least he didn't get typecast.

I liked the tone of the film and that it didn't end up featuring a lovestory as a B-plot, and the film has really made me want to wish for/work on a space fantasy stealth game, where you fly around in a spaceship to places to conduct stealth missions, with perhaps some cinematic platforming sections, because that's honestly what the film made me think of half the time. Well, that, and it reminding me of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, what with how they perfectly build up a party over the course of the film where everybody had their own separate and unique skills and personality. The only other recent film I felt that strongly with was Guardians of the Galaxy, though that one is obviously a lot more light-hearted.

All in all, I think I'll have to rewatch this months into the future after the initial hype and awe has died down, but for now I feel pretty secure in saying that this is probably in the top three of Star Wars films. It has its flaws, but it deals with them much better than previous Star Wars films. It also doesn't require having seen any of the other ones (though having seen any will of course enhance enjoyment of it).

[LongVin]

I saw it last night as well. I liked it better than Force Awakens(which I found extremely flawed) but there were still issues with it.


I liked Jyn far better than I liked Rey. There is at least an explanation given where she got all her skills from(she was raised by an extremist rebel). Andor too was pretty good. There's an established reason why he's there, he's a committed rebel. He's a better character than Fin who honestly had no motivation for anything he did or any reason to stick around other than "hur hur, Rey is pretty." Even the extended group seemed like a good crew which solid reasons for being there.

However, the pacing killed it, I know this is a problem with most modern movies, but it was really bad here(and really bad in Awakens). There's no downtime to really get to know the characters, it's action sequence after action sequence. Not an action sequence? Advance the plot quick! There's no downtime to actually get to know the characters and learn about them and care about them. The scenes in Obi Wan's house and the travelling time on the Falcon made the original movie, it fleshed out the characters and it made you feel for them. Obi Wan's death shock and saddens you because you actually grew to like him not simply because the movie is telling you to be sad by framing it as sad. You don't get this here. I would have loved to learn more about the blind not-jedi and the mercenary and found out who the guardians of the whills were outside of it being a throwaway line and a nod to the original draft name of Star Wars.

That aside I did like how they actually tried to show the Empire as evil and oppressive instead of "yeah, it's evil, it's the EMPIRE and the characters are against it! Therefore Empire is bad"

Otherwise as noted pacing problems, plot holes(I'm looking at you R2 and 3PO just chilling in base not on the Tantive), and instant travel across the galaxy was pretty grating. Not even going to mention uncanny valley Tarkin.

I was a little disappointed with the final space battle. If you got all these big capital ships in one spot I want to see them really duking it out, not letting the fighters and bombers do all the fighting until the end.

Something else I was thinking, in ANH it sounds like the rebellion has been going on for awhile in an open state of warfare. Here it seems like it hasn't even started yet. So it kind of makes the whole timeline hazy and really calls in to question the purpose of the Death Star, unless you want to believe the old EU which states most of the military buildup was to prepare for some sort of extra-galactic invaders.

I liked the Darth Vader ending, just not how they did it. They could have had the same exact scene of the frantic soldier running with the plans and bringing it to the Comm Center as Darth Vader is cutting through and going something along the lines of "We only have enough power left to transmit the plans to Alderaan!" Then you could have the same exact scene of Leia being handed the plans. There's no logical explanation why the Tantive is just docked with the Rebel flagship and why they didn't just get tractored in also.

[Dienekes]

I saw it last night as well. I liked it better than Force Awakens(which I found extremely flawed) but there were still issues with it.


I liked Jyn far better than I liked Rey. There is at least an explanation given where she got all her skills from(she was raised by an extremist rebel). Andor too was pretty good. There's an established reason why he's there, he's a committed rebel. He's a better character than Fin who honestly had no motivation for anything he did or any reason to stick around other than "hur hur, Rey is pretty." Even the extended group seemed like a good crew which solid reasons for being there.

However, the pacing killed it, I know this is a problem with most modern movies, but it was really bad here(and really bad in Awakens). There's no downtime to really get to know the characters, it's action sequence after action sequence. Not an action sequence? Advance the plot quick! There's no downtime to actually get to know the characters and learn about them and care about them. The scenes in Obi Wan's house and the travelling time on the Falcon made the original movie, it fleshed out the characters and it made you feel for them. Obi Wan's death shock and saddens you because you actually grew to like him not simply because the movie is telling you to be sad by framing it as sad. You don't get this here. I would have loved to learn more about the blind not-jedi and the mercenary and found out who the guardians of the whills were outside of it being a throwaway line and a nod to the original draft name of Star Wars.

That aside I did like how they actually tried to show the Empire as evil and oppressive instead of "yeah, it's evil, it's the EMPIRE and the characters are against it! Therefore Empire is bad"

Otherwise as noted pacing problems, plot holes(I'm looking at you R2 and 3PO just chilling in base not on the Tantive), and instant travel across the galaxy was pretty grating. Not even going to mention uncanny valley Tarkin.

I was a little disappointed with the final space battle. If you got all these big capital ships in one spot I want to see them really duking it out, not letting the fighters and bombers do all the fighting until the end.

Something else I was thinking, in ANH it sounds like the rebellion has been going on for awhile in an open state of warfare. Here it seems like it hasn't even started yet. So it kind of makes the whole timeline hazy and really calls in to question the purpose of the Death Star, unless you want to believe the old EU which states most of the military buildup was to prepare for some sort of extra-galactic invaders.

I liked the Darth Vader ending, just not how they did it. They could have had the same exact scene of the frantic soldier running with the plans and bringing it to the Comm Center as Darth Vader is cutting through and going something along the lines of "We only have enough power left to transmit the plans to Alderaan!" Then you could have the same exact scene of Leia being handed the plans. There's no logical explanation why the Tantive is just docked with the Rebel flagship and why they didn't just get tractored in also.



Yeah, this actually brought up a conversation I had with my friend at the end.


Why was Leia there? Seriously. I get why she's in the movie, they have to set up how the princess got the plans at the start of New Hope. Sure. But why is she at the battle? Her entire purpose was to secretly provide assistance to the rebels while being the senator for Alderaan. Why would she ever take part in a pitched, last ditch battle like that?

She wasn't in command of the forces. So she wasn't providing any tactical capabilities. She isn't a pilot, she isn't a gunner. She's wearing her pristine dress, showing she is definitely not ready for battle. All she is doing is jeopardizing her position as secret rebel leader. Did she just want to watch people dying? Well I can't really call her out on that, since I paid to go to a movie to do just that, but still. Why is she there?

[Hatu]

Yeah, this actually brought up a conversation I had with my friend at the end.


Why was Leia there? Seriously. I get why she's in the movie, they have to set up how the princess got the plans at the start of New Hope. Sure. But why is she at the battle? Her entire purpose was to secretly provide assistance to the rebels while being the senator for Alderaan. Why would she ever take part in a pitched, last ditch battle like that?

She wasn't in command of the forces. So she wasn't providing any tactical capabilities. She isn't a pilot, she isn't a gunner. She's wearing her pristine dress, showing she is definitely not ready for battle. All she is doing is jeopardizing her position as secret rebel leader. Did she just want to watch people dying? Well I can't really call her out on that, since I paid to go to a movie to do just that, but still. Why is she there?



Midway through the movie Mon Mothma asks Bail Organa to find Obi-Wan, and he says he'll send Leia to do so (though they don't use either name directly). Since Leia's message in ANH specifically asks Obi-Wan to deliver the Death Star plans safely to her father on Adleraan, she must go directly to Tatooine after Rogue One (or at least she doesn't go home first).

Clearly her father had already given her that mission before he left Yavin 4. So either she diverted from a rather important mission to fetch General Kenobi just so she could sit around in the docking bay during a massive space battle, or she was the worst astrogator in history and was only wound up at Tatooine next because she was actually trying to find Yoda on Dagobah.

Less problematic but more amusing is when you realize R2 and 3PO already knew about the 'secret' base on Yavin 4 and could have sent Ben and Luke there at any time. I was actually wondering if there'd be a throwaway scene at the end where Space Jimmy Smits wipes 3PO's memory again, but sadly no such luck.


-H

[Chromascope3D]

Something else I was thinking, in ANH it sounds like the rebellion has been going on for awhile in an open state of warfare. Here it seems like it hasn't even started yet. So it kind of makes the whole timeline hazy and really calls in to question the purpose of the Death Star, unless you want to believe the old EU which states most of the military buildup was to prepare for some sort of extra-galactic invaders.

I didn't get that feeling. It still feels to me that they've been at war, but only through isolated guerrilla cells, with this being the first time they've organized a direct confrontation. As for the Death Star, I think the Emperor just wanted a tool of ultimate terror to keep the systems in line, without having to appease them with the illusion of representation.

Unrelated:
But related to what I was talking about earlier on the page, with Chirrut and Baze feeling ultimately underutilized compared to how they were set up. Since a big part of how necessary I view main characters (in action movies) to be is how they ultimately contribute to the finale in a way that only they can, I was disappointed in how they jsut didn't really have anything to do at the end. Sure, Chirrut flipped a switch, but there was really nothing about that specifically that couldn't have been given to any other nameless grunt. Hell, that wasn't even really that necessary, since all they were trying to do was tell the Rebel fleet to destroy the gate, which is literally what they were already doing.

I looked around on the web some and found out that in the original teaser, there's a shot of Jyn and Andor running across the beach with the Death Star files (https://youtu.be/Wji-BZ0oCwg?t=1m21s). This makes me think that, originally, the comm tower and the archives were in two different locations. Thus, I'm beginning to think that the ultimate fates for the two Guardians were originally for them to give their lives by drawing/returning enough fire to ensure that Jyn and Andor could cross the beach safely, but when the movie was recut/reshot to remove this for whatever reason, we were left with two characters that just ended up feeling superfluous. Which is sad, because I really liked them.

Also, have we gotten far enough down that we can abandon the spoiler tags?

[LongVin]

Midway through the movie Mon Mothma asks Bail Organa to find Obi-Wan, and he says he'll send Leia to do so (though they don't use either name directly). Since Leia's message in ANH specifically asks Obi-Wan to deliver the Death Star plans safely to her father on Adleraan, she must go directly to Tatooine after Rogue One (or at least she doesn't go home first).

Clearly her father had already given her that mission before he left Yavin 4. So either she diverted from a rather important mission to fetch General Kenobi just so she could sit around in the docking bay during a massive space battle, or she was the worst astrogator in history and was only wound up at Tatooine next because she was actually trying to find Yoda on Dagobah.

Less problematic but more amusing is when you realize R2 and 3PO already knew about the 'secret' base on Yavin 4 and could have sent Ben and Luke there at any time. I was actually wondering if there'd be a throwaway scene at the end where Space Jimmy Smits wipes 3PO's memory again, but sadly no such luck.


-H


Good points. I didn't even think about that.

It now makes less sense. If the plans got transmitted to Alderaan it could be explained away that it's too dangerous to go directly to Yavin IV and they needed to get Obi-Wan first.

The Droids knowing though could be explained away. R2 wants to rescue the princess. And no one is going to listen 3PO.

[LongVin]

I didn't get that feeling. It still feels to me that they've been at war, but only through isolated guerrilla cells, with this being the first time they've organized a direct confrontation. As for the Death Star, I think the Emperor just wanted a tool of ultimate terror to keep the systems in line, without having to appease them with the illusion of representation.

Unrelated:
But related to what I was talking about earlier on the page, with Chirrut and Baze feeling ultimately underutilized compared to how they were set up. Since a big part of how necessary I view main characters (in action movies) to be is how they ultimately contribute to the finale in a way that only they can, I was disappointed in how they jsut didn't really have anything to do at the end. Sure, Chirrut flipped a switch, but there was really nothing about that specifically that couldn't have been given to any other nameless grunt. Hell, that wasn't even really that necessary, since all they were trying to do was tell the Rebel fleet to destroy the gate, which is literally what they were already doing.

I looked around on the web some and found out that in the original teaser, there's a shot of Jyn and Andor running across the beach with the Death Star files (https://youtu.be/Wji-BZ0oCwg?t=1m21s). This makes me think that, originally, the comm tower and the archives were in two different locations. Thus, I'm beginning to think that the ultimate fates for the two Guardians were originally for them to give their lives by drawing/returning enough fire to ensure that Jyn and Andor could cross the beach safely, but when the movie was recut/reshot to remove this for whatever reason, we were left with two characters that just ended up feeling superfluous. Which is sad, because I really liked them.

Also, have we gotten far enough down that we can abandon the spoiler tags?

Probably don't need spoilers for this.

Yeah. I think alot of the movie got butchered with the reshoots to make it less dark. If they release a directors cut it will probably be the only directors cut I will ever buy.

[Hatu]

I didn't get that feeling. It still feels to me that they've been at war, but only through isolated guerrilla cells, with this being the first time they've organized a direct confrontation. As for the Death Star, I think the Emperor just wanted a tool of ultimate terror to keep the systems in line, without having to appease them with the illusion of representation.

I think the status of the Rebellion pre-Yavin is a bit muddled within the Star Wars canon itself. I believe early drafts of Star Wars explicitly stated that stealing the Death Star plans was the Rebellion's first real military victory. A lot of early material maintains that feel, with the Rebellion just making the transition from political dissidents to military resistance.

But as the EU expanded, more and more backstory was crammed into the early days, which had the side effect of making the Rebellion more of a military force in the back then.

With Disney rebooting the canon, I don't know where things stand currently, but clearly that tension still exists. On the one hand, recapturing the look and feel of the original means the Rebels are a tiny, ragtag bunch. But on the other hand, the need an epic space battle at the end means they also have a full fleet at their disposal.

Personally, I tend to favor the only recently militarized side, but either way a little more clarity would have been nice.

As for the Death Star, I agree it was clearly meant as a terror weapon, not so much a military asset. As Tarkin said, fear of it will keep potentially rebellious systems in line. Its ability to kill enemies was a bonus.

Which does make Vader's line in Rogue One about denying the existence of the Death Star to the senate confusing. Not to go all Dr Strangelove, but once the station is operational, telling everyone about it is the whole point. Why attempt the coverup after the superlaser has been tested?



Unrelated:
But related to what I was talking about earlier on the page, with Chirrut and Baze feeling ultimately underutilized compared to how they were set up. Since a big part of how necessary I view main characters (in action movies) to be is how they ultimately contribute to the finale in a way that only they can, I was disappointed in how they jsut didn't really have anything to do at the end. Sure, Chirrut flipped a switch, but there was really nothing about that specifically that couldn't have been given to any other nameless grunt. Hell, that wasn't even really that necessary, since all they were trying to do was tell the Rebel fleet to destroy the gate, which is literally what they were already doing.

I looked around on the web some and found out that in the original teaser, there's a shot of Jyn and Andor running across the beach with the Death Star files (https://youtu.be/Wji-BZ0oCwg?t=1m21s). This makes me think that, originally, the comm tower and the archives were in two different locations. Thus, I'm beginning to think that the ultimate fates for the two Guardians were originally for them to give their lives by drawing/returning enough fire to ensure that Jyn and Andor could cross the beach safely, but when the movie was recut/reshot to remove this for whatever reason, we were left with two characters that just ended up feeling superfluous. Which is sad, because I really liked them.

Also, have we gotten far enough down that we can abandon the spoiler tags?

Very much agreed.

-H

[Rakaydos]

Yeah, this actually brought up a conversation I had with my friend at the end.


Why was Leia there? Seriously. I get why she's in the movie, they have to set up how the princess got the plans at the start of New Hope. Sure. But why is she at the battle? Her entire purpose was to secretly provide assistance to the rebels while being the senator for Alderaan. Why would she ever take part in a pitched, last ditch battle like that?

She wasn't in command of the forces. So she wasn't providing any tactical capabilities. She isn't a pilot, she isn't a gunner. She's wearing her pristine dress, showing she is definitely not ready for battle. All she is doing is jeopardizing her position as secret rebel leader. Did she just want to watch people dying? Well I can't really call her out on that, since I paid to go to a movie to do just that, but still. Why is she there?


HHere's my guess:
Original plan- the fleet shows up, receves the plans, jumps to deep space. Leia gets a copy of the plans (not the original) and takes them to Tatoine in a vessel with diplomatic immunity to talk to her father's old jedi friend, under the guise of a diplomatic mission from Alderan. Meanwhile the Flagship with the original goes to the rebel base.

What went wrong- Vader shows up, devastates the rebel fleet, cripples the flagship, and personally boards. Only Leia's copy of the plans makes it out of the battle, and Vader personally saw the ship the plans escaped in. a hot pursuit leads us to the opening of a New Hope, and leia trying to pull out the original "diplomatic mission" BS, with vader not buying it. Fortunately, she recorded a coverletter just before her capture explaining to general kenobi that the plans need to go to the rebelion. It's her only hope.

[Hatu]

HHere's my guess:
Original plan- the fleet shows up, receves the plans, jumps to deep space. Leia gets a copy of the plans (not the original) and takes them to Tatoine in a vessel with diplomatic immunity to talk to her father's old jedi friend, under the guise of a diplomatic mission from Alderan. Meanwhile the Flagship with the original goes to the rebel base.

What went wrong- Vader shows up, devastates the rebel fleet, cripples the flagship, and personally boards. Only Leia's copy of the plans makes it out of the battle, and Vader personally saw the ship the plans escaped in. a hot pursuit leads us to the opening of a New Hope, and leia trying to pull out the original "diplomatic mission" BS, with vader not buying it. Fortunately, she recorded a coverletter just before her capture explaining to general kenobi that the plans need to go to the rebelion. It's her only hope.

That seems highly unlikely.


The fleet scrambled to attack Scarif without any plan ahead of time. If we assume they went there with the intent of recovering the Death Star plans, there's no logical reason for Leia to be at Scarif in the first place. The fleet would bring the plans back to the Rebellion directly, so bringing a redundant copy to Kenobi would just be a pointless delay in the mission of recruiting him. The plans would be waiting for him once Bail convinced him to join the Rebellion.

Meanwhile, if we assume they didn't intend to get the plans until after Rogue One explained things to them, there's no reason for the Tantive to sit the battle out in a docking bay. The Tantive is a viable combat ship, so why isn't it helping fight if it decided to go in the first place?

-H

[Rakaydos]

That seems highly unlikely.

The Tantive is a viable combat ship, so why isn't it helping fight if it decided to go in the first place?

-H
Diplomatic immunity is a powerful weapon when Darth Vader doesnt decide you're full of crap.

[Hopeless]

I haven't seen the movie yet so...
Wouldn't it have made more sense that they transmitted a copy of the plans after the Rebel ship was crippled to any other non-imperial ship in range and it was Darth Vader himself who singles out the Tantive IV pursuing it specifically leaving the others to the remaining Imperial warships?

Only received the Visual Guide for this movie today it looks impressive and includes details on the Rebel Council and the fact Saw as an extremist wasn't that much different from the rebels on Yavin IV!

Ordering Galen's death when even Saw realised he was being forced to work on the Death Star and wouldn't a living expert be just as useful as the plans?!

I hope they're not getting into the habit of not releasing the full movie so they can release their own "ultimate edition" like BvS!😤

[Peelee]

Midway through the movie Mon Mothma asks Bail Organa to find Obi-Wan, and he says he'll send Leia to do so (though they don't use either name directly). Since Leia's message in ANH specifically asks Obi-Wan to deliver the Death Star plans safely to her father on Adleraan, she must go directly to Tatooine after Rogue One (or at least she doesn't go home first).

Clearly her father had already given her that mission before he left Yavin 4. So either she diverted from a rather important mission to fetch General Kenobi just so she could sit around in the docking bay during a massive space battle, or she was the worst astrogator in history and was only wound up at Tatooine next because she was actually trying to find Yoda on Dagobah.

Less problematic but more amusing is when you realize R2 and 3PO already knew about the 'secret' base on Yavin 4 and could have sent Ben and Luke there at any time. I was actually wondering if there'd be a throwaway scene at the end where Space Jimmy Smits wipes 3PO's memory again, but sadly no such luck.


-H

So Leia is sent to fetch Kenobi, and knows where he is. It's totally legit that she jumps to Tatooine, because that's where her objective is. The only issue now is, why was she at the space battle? Best answer I can come up with is her ship was already docked with the flagship when word came that the Imperial base was being raided, Admiral Gung-Ho took the fleet before she could undock, and then they just stayed hidden because they're supposed to be a diplomatic vessel, and openly attacking an Imperial base would strip them of that real quick. When they got the Death Star plans, they bolted, since it was all they could do, and gave the super lame "we're on a diplomatic mission, ignore that we blasted our way past you during a big space battle like ten minutes ago" was the only card they had left to play when Vader called in ANH.

It's not the best explanation, but it has the events in the film make sense.

[Aran nu tasar]

I also didn't realize until I looked it up that Donnie Yen was the one portraying Chirrut, the Rebel warrior with the big guns who hung out with the blind monk the whole time. It seems an odd part for him, but at least he didn't get typecast.


Chirrut was the blind monk, not the gunner. Which seems more in line with Yen's past work.

[Dilvish]

So Leia is sent to fetch Kenobi, and knows where he is. It's totally legit that she jumps to Tatooine, because that's where her objective is. The only issue now is, why was she at the space battle? Best answer I can come up with is her ship was already docked with the flagship when word came that the Imperial base was being raided, Admiral Gung-Ho took the fleet before she could undock, and then they just stayed hidden because they're supposed to be a diplomatic vessel, and openly attacking an Imperial base would strip them of that real quick. When they got the Death Star plans, they bolted, since it was all they could do, and gave the super lame "we're on a diplomatic mission, ignore that we blasted our way past you during a big space battle like ten minutes ago" was the only card they had left to play when Vader called in ANH.

It's not the best explanation, but it has the events in the film make sense.

That is my theory as well. The corvette and passengers found themselves along for the ride when the sortie was ordered.

[Demon 997]

So Leia is sent to fetch Kenobi, and knows where he is. It's totally legit that she jumps to Tatooine, because that's where her objective is. The only issue now is, why was she at the space battle? Best answer I can come up with is her ship was already docked with the flagship when word came that the Imperial base was being raided, Admiral Gung-Ho took the fleet before she could undock, and then they just stayed hidden because they're supposed to be a diplomatic vessel, and openly attacking an Imperial base would strip them of that real quick. When they got the Death Star plans, they bolted, since it was all they could do, and gave the super lame "we're on a diplomatic mission, ignore that we blasted our way past you during a big space battle like ten minutes ago" was the only card they had left to play when Vader called in ANH.

It's not the best explanation, but it has the events in the film make sense.

It also fits with what I remember from a ANH, which is that Vader didn't buy the diplomatic mission bit for a second. I agree that it might have been better to have them just sent the info a pure logic perspective, but I think the way they did it was the best for keeping up the tension in Rogue One, and that most viewers don't care.

[hamishspence]

The Visual Guide also shows Scarif as right next door to Tatooine:

which might explain why Leia didn't suggest undocking the moment the fleet started scrambling - since she was planning on going that way anyway.

[HardcoreD&Dgirl]

so I have a question that isn't really spoilery but the answer is...so

the monk played by donnie yen supposed to be force sensitive? I thought the point was he wasn't... just a priest but the review I saw said he could sense but not effect the force... https://youtu.be/tZxzI_bU7XE

[Olinser]

Saw it last night. It was actually better than I expected from the trailers and information - it looks like the director actually took some of the criticism of the trailers and eliminated some of the more cringe-worthly lines and scenes from the trailers.

Absolutely 100% the best scene in the movie was right at the end with Vader going to town like an absolute BOSS on that squad of rebel troopers. On the big screen Vader finally gets to be the unstoppable badass we all know he is. I'd watch the movie again just for that scene.

Other than that there were some definite plot holes and plot threads that went nowhere (probably got eliminated in the re-shoots), but they werent that critical to the overall story.

The only 2 big things that I actively disliked was:

1) I DEFINITELY could have done without Uncanney Valley CGI Tarkin, everything he said could have been delivered by another person

and

2) STAR WARS HAS TO START WITH SCROLLING YELLOW TEXT. I know thats kind of petty, but seriously, you don't start Star Wars without the explosion of the theme song and giant yellow letters.

I'd give it probably a 7/10, as an overall movie its decent but forgettable, but I'd watch it again just for the Vader scene at the end.

[thorgrim29]

so I have a question that isn't really spoilery but the answer is...so

the monk played by donnie yen supposed to be force sensitive? I thought the point was he wasn't... just a priest but the review I saw said he could sense but not effect the force... https://youtu.be/tZxzI_bU7XE



He can sense the force, like when he knew that captain whatshisname was about to kill Galen, also like when he fights like Daredevil and senses Kyber crystals.

Anyway, I liked the movie a lot despite not liking the different parts of it weirdly enough...

The plot is pretty barebones. Go there, find the macguffin, then go another place, fail, finally big climactic battle. Most of the characters are paper-thin (except the captain and the droid. I like them) I really don't see why everybody is raving about Jin being an awesome character and a feminist icon or whatever... There's a cool character in there I'm sure, but we never really got to see anything except a few glimpses of a disillusioned child soldier that quickly gave way to a bog standard tough person who gives cliche speeches. Tarkin and Vader are cool but they have all of 5 minutes of screentime or so (though bringing Peter Cushing back to life had to have been incredibly expensive so I give them a pass on that one) and Krennick is nothing special. The blind monk/big gun guy duo and the pilot were pretty cool but again, not enough time to really shine. The battle scenes were really well done though.

[Chromascope3D]

I'll be completely honest, I didn't even notice that Tarkin was CG. I thought that they had just miraculously found an actor that looked just like him, and it wasn't until the Leia reveal that it hit me.

[Demon 997]

STAR WARS HAS TO START WITH SCROLLING YELLOW TEXT. I know thats kind of petty, but seriously, you don't start Star Wars without the explosion of the theme song and giant yellow letters.

I believe this was a very deliberate choice to separate the "Star War Story" movies from the "Star Wars Episode" movies. I kind of agree that it should be there, but if they make a dozen spin offs it cheapens it, especially if some are meh or bad.

Also, not sure we needed the whole backstory infodump that those are for.

[Douglas]

I'm carefully not opening any spoiler blocks here, but I do want one specific spoiler: Do, in fact, "many Bothans die" to acquire the Death Star plans, and is that part better done than its first treatment in the old novels, where it was a briefly shown squadron of Bothan fighter pilots who got blown up in a rather perfunctory manner by (I think) a single missile? As I recall the whole thing seemed mostly incidental to the acquisition of the plans, like the author was just filling in a checkbox because he had to though it didn't really fit his plot.

[hamishspence]

That was only the second Death Star's plans. This is the first Death Star. As far as we can tell, no Bothans died at all.

[Douglas]

Oh, right, that line is from Return of the Jedi, not A New Hope. Oops.:smallredface:

[huttj509]

Oh, right, that line is from Return of the Jedi, not A New Hope. Oops.:smallredface:

No worries, not like you have any thread titles possibly confusing you.

[LongVin]

He can sense the force, like when he knew that captain whatshisname was about to kill Galen, also like when he fights like Daredevil and senses Kyber crystals.

Anyway, I liked the movie a lot despite not liking the different parts of it weirdly enough...

The plot is pretty barebones. Go there, find the macguffin, then go another place, fail, finally big climactic battle. Most of the characters are paper-thin (except the captain and the droid. I like them) I really don't see why everybody is raving about Jin being an awesome character and a feminist icon or whatever... There's a cool character in there I'm sure, but we never really got to see anything except a few glimpses of a disillusioned child soldier that quickly gave way to a bog standard tough person who gives cliche speeches. Tarkin and Vader are cool but they have all of 5 minutes of screentime or so (though bringing Peter Cushing back to life had to have been incredibly expensive so I give them a pass on that one) and Krennick is nothing special. The blind monk/big gun guy duo and the pilot were pretty cool but again, not enough time to really shine. The battle scenes were really well done though.


I'm going to have to disagree about Jyn I think she has far more motivation and plot background than Rey.

Rey is just sort of thrown in there with no explanation about her skills or motivations. She's there to advance plot and show force powers. That's about it. There's no motivation behind anything. At least Jyn has a reason to be mad at the empire and have some of the skills she had.

[LongVin]

I believe this was a very deliberate choice to separate the "Star War Story" movies from the "Star Wars Episode" movies. I kind of agree that it should be there, but if they make a dozen spin offs it cheapens it, especially if some are meh or bad.

Also, not sure we needed the whole backstory infodump that those are for.

It also has something to do with Canon I believe. The star wars stories aren't considered full canon only the main movies are.

So there's no ewok adventure movies being considered full canon.

[The Glyphstone]

It also has something to do with Canon I believe. The star wars stories aren't considered full canon only the main movies are.

So there's no ewok adventure movies being considered full canon.

That is true, but not for that reason. The Ewok Adventure movies aren't canon because they were pre-Disney, and are considered part of the Legends continuity now. Post-Disney material, Rogue One and the Han Solo^2 movie will be as canon as the Episodes., and presumably anything else they make like Rebels.

[druid91]

So, I liked it. Overall. Though there were a few disappointments.

Namely, the scene at Eadu. When the whole "Rebellion wants to assassinate Jyn's dad." thing came up. I was sure she would turn on them at that point. Jyn rushing onto the scene to grab her dad just in time for Cassian to shoot him. Her having a luke "NO!" moment and opening fire on Cassian. (Thereby making the K-2SO scene earlier on foreshadowing.) The X-wings come in just in time for Krennic to grab her and pull her out of there.

Fast forward to the scene at the tropical place who's name they said 100 times but I forgot. Jyn is with Krennic when the rebels do their thing. Only now Cassian, and the guys from Jehda have to convince her to help. They succeed and bam.

Then end the story pretty much the same way.

K-2SO was gold. And I liked the Gun and Staff pair from Jehda. I also liked that the imperial stormtrooper marksmanship academy was NOT in effect.

I did not like the way they treated hyperspace, or the jumpy nature overall.

[Ranxerox]

So, I liked it. Overall. Though there were a few disappointments.

Namely, the scene at Eadu. When the whole "Rebellion wants to assassinate Jyn's dad." thing came up. I was sure she would turn on them at that point. Jyn rushing onto the scene to grab her dad just in time for Cassian to shoot him. Her having a luke "NO!" moment and opening fire on Cassian. (Thereby making the K-2SO scene earlier on foreshadowing.) The X-wings come in just in time for Krennic to grab her and pull her out of there.

Fast forward to the scene at the tropical place who's name they said 100 times but I forgot. Jyn is with Krennic when the rebels do their thing. Only now Cassian, and the guys from Jehda have to convince her to help. They succeed and bam.

Then end the story pretty much the same way.

K-2SO was gold. And I liked the Gun and Staff pair from Jehda. I also liked that the imperial stormtrooper marksmanship academy was NOT in effect.

I did not like the way they treated hyperspace, or the jumpy nature overall.

You are the second poster to be upset that the movie didn't go where it it was foreshadowed that it might with Cassian's mission. Isn't it horrible when movies aren't as predictable as we want them to be? :smallyuk:

[druid91]

You are the second poster to be upset that the movie didn't go where it it was foreshadowed that it might with Cassian's mission. Isn't it horrible when movies aren't as predictable as we want them to be? :smallyuk:

Hope =/= Predictable.

Honestly I knew it wasn't going to go that way for reasons.

Primarily the fighter squadron. When I heard that, I knew they were going to take the blame off of Cassian, and then from there Cassian would reel her in to helping the rebellion. Also the whole thing with her father being found out by the empire.

[enderlord99]

http://www.hackettstownlife.com/images/forum/2014/04/2fe6e5067ccff6ed68a312644ce988f57f1bbf69.jpg

[Admiral Squish]

I felt like I needed a cigarette after that movie.
It was just so satisfying.
I do hope that, in the future, they'll branch out into Star Wars movies that don't revolve around the main storyline quite so heavily. I loved this but I also think the Star Wars universe has a lot of potential for interesting stories that aren't explored because they aren't directly related to the main characters. I'd kill to see something more like Clone Wars but in movie form with a massive budget.

[Fri]

There are some points I can nitpick, but I love it a lot, because it's a specific premise I really like.

That is, if you don't mind obtuse annoying comparison, story about GM squadron in a Gundam setting.

My friends should know that it's a specific premise I like a lot.

[Ranxerox]

Hope =/= Predictable.

Honestly I knew it wasn't going to go that way for reasons.

Primarily the fighter squadron. When I heard that, I knew they were going to take the blame off of Cassian, and then from there Cassian would reel her in to helping the rebellion. Also the whole thing with her father being found out by the empire.

Yeah, but you saw it go the other way because of K-2SO's comment, another poster saw it going to other way due that comment and the comment had me thinking it might go the other way too. So if it had gone like that, I think people would be calling it predictable.

Now had Cassain killed the father, that certainly would have added angst and drama but would it have made for a better movie?

"You killed my father but I forgive you since you were following orders and from a big picture perspective it might have been the right thing to do" just isn't a thing. It is not going to be a thing for Jin unless they write her really poorly and it is unlikely to be a thing for audiences.

Still, I grant you, seeing them try to walk back an unforgivable crime like that would have been interesting, and I can see why would hope they would go that route. However, it is only interesting if they succeed. Anyone can poise a really hard film making challenge and then fail at it, and Gareth Edwards is no Martin Scorsese, so fail they would.

They went the right route by allowing the Cassian, and by extension the Rebellion, to have a conscious and a soul. The K-2SO remark was there to create tension by pointing to another possible plot and it worked in that regard.

[druid91]

Yeah, but you saw it go the other way because of K-2SO's comment, another poster saw it going to other way due that comment and the comment had me thinking it might go the other way too. So if it had gone like that, I think people would be calling it predictable.

Now had Cassain killed the father, that certainly would have added angst and drama but would it have made for a better movie?

"You killed my father but I forgive you since you were following orders and from a big picture perspective it might have been the right thing to do" just isn't a thing. It is not going to be a thing for Jin unless they write her really poorly and it is unlikely to be a thing for audiences.

Still, I grant you, seeing them try to walk back an unforgivable crime like that would have been interesting, and I can see why would hope they would go that route. However, it is only interesting if they succeed. Anyone can poise a really hard film making challenge and then fail at it, and Gareth Edwards is no Martin Scorsese, so fail they would.

They went the right route by allowing the Cassian, and by extension the Rebellion, to have a conscious and a soul. The K-2SO remark was there to create tension by pointing to another possible plot and it worked in that regard.

Alternatively, there could be no forgiveness at all. Jyn would join the empire in a moment of passion and anger. Then when she cools down, realize she still has to complete her fathers work by turning over the plans to the death star so that it could be destroyed. Or else their family was torn apart for nothing. Or else her father bowed and scraped for nothing.

While this way certainly portrays the rebellion in a more heroic light. That's someone at odds with Cassian coldly shooting his collaborator in the back at the start of the movie.

[Darth Ultron]

The movie was OK, but not great. I get the feeling that it really suffered from Executive Meddling, Too Many Bosses, Political Correctness and an agenda. The whole movie is built around the Death Star Plans in a very transparent ploy to ''force'' fans to go see it as it reveals ''unknown secretes of Star Wars''. After that ''plot thread'' they just add on the ''needed'' things: Female lead action anti-hero, Diverse cast of good guys, All white bad guys, Space Battles, The Droid, the TV show/video game tie ins and CGI explosions.


When they release this so you can buy it, think the ''special edition'' will add ''donuts of fire'' when the Death Star blows up things on the planets?


So, you get a movie full of the ''things it must have'', but then little else....

Take poor Jyn Erso...

I was very disappointed in this character. She gets introduced with the roar of ''look at her, a woman in a Star Wars movie''.....but then after a couple minutes she is just there for the rest of the movie. She sure gets lost in the diverse group of good guys, evil white guys, and CGI guys in the movie.

I remember watching the trailer were they read her crimes and she answers ''this is a rebellion, I rebel'' and thought she might have been a interesting character. A rouge rebel. A tough, strong, powerful character that does things her own way. But that line is cut from the movie, as is anything close to that character.

It gets worse as she is not even picked as she is ''good'' at anything, she is just picked as ''she knows a guy''.

The ''dad'' plot was a bit weak....but if it is there, why not use it? We missed her big confrontation with Orson Krennic. It would have been great for them to fight and for her to kill him for ''ruining her family''. Or you know, if you did not want her to be that ''dark and tough'' she could have just dropped her blaster and said the old ''I won't do it, I'm better then you'' line.



I was not so happy to see him. The pointless bit with him and Krennic is just pointless. And sure Krennic is a dumb, pointless, useless, non-villain who follows Imperial Dumbness by talking back to Lord Vader like it was his first day on the job.

The 20th level Darth Vader vs the zero level mooks was fun to watch....but again pointless. Like everyone knows Vader could wipe out the whole rebellion, someday. But to show it is just dull.

Really....it would have been so much better to have Darth Vader kill off all the diverse characters. Give them better deaths then ''oh a vague explosion'' death.

And right before he got to kill Jyn and her new boy friend, the blast hits! They hug and die, but Vader uses his light saber to make a little bubble shield(you know like he does in Star Wars Commander).

[Peelee]

Political Correctness and an agenda.... All white bad guys

Oh man, tell me about it. I had that same gripe with the original Star Wars movies. And Schindler's List. And Die Hard. Back to the Future. All the Batman movies. The Terminator. Memento. Dr Strangelove. HOME MOTHER****ING ALONE.

Man, that agenda these days.

[Razade]

Oh man, tell me about it. I had that same gripe with the original Star Wars movies. And Schindler's List. And Die Hard. Back to the Future. All the Batman movies. The Terminator. Memento. Dr Strangelove. HOME MOTHER****ING ALONE.

Man, that agenda these days.

If anything all that proves is that Europeans are evil. Not white people.

[Peelee]

If anything all that proves is that Europeans are evil. Not white people.

Well, only in Schindler's List and Die Hard, of my list.

[Razade]

Well, only in Schindler's List and Die Hard, of my list.

The Imperials have a British accent so clearly they're from Space Europe. Strangeglove's Cold War...Russians are Europeans?

[Fri]

Also one thing that many people here apparently hate but I actually like, is the villain. He's just an ineffective middle management paper pusher. I love it. Just with how the heroes are mooks in "main character" story, the villain is also mook if seen from the main character story. His villainy is petty and personal.

Once again, to confirm, this is a premise my friends know I personally love. Mook story in the middle of an existing superhero story. GM and Zaku squad personal story in the middle of Gundam battle. SWAT team or paramedics on the ground while superheroes duke it out in the sky.

[Peelee]

The Imperials have a British accent so clearly they're from Space Europe. Strangeglove's Cold War...Russians are Europeans?

Some Imperials have British accents. Virtually no stormtroopers do, Vader does not, the Emperor does not, Admiral Motti does not...

Russians are not Europeans. Russians are Russians. And the villains in that film were American.

[Zalabim]

FWIW, I thought Orson Krennic seemed way too eager to personally report his success to the Emperor. No one should want to be in the same room as the Emperor. As far as roads not taken, seeing him finally get that audience and then die in a failed assassination attempt would be on my list.

[Fri]

FWIW, I thought Orson Krennic seemed way too eager to personally report his success to the Emperor. No one should want to be in the same room as the Emperor. As far as roads not taken, seeing him finally get that audience and then die in a failed assassination attempt would be on my list.

As I said, petty middle manager. In fact I saw someone made a summary of his story.



I actually do like it as "Krennic's horrible middle management experience".

- First, he goes the extra mile to finish his project. Top management set unreasonable expectations and so he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He's good at engineering and the test is the only time he looks happy.
- But then, his manager shows up, decides that the real genius was coming up with the concept, that all of the practical work is for proles, and that he can leave the entire engineering team out of his report.
- He goes to complain to HR. But guess what? The HR management is in another building, likes to spend its time lounging around in bubble baths, is totally out of touch with the common employee, and threatens him with firing for even bringing up the issue.
- Like any good engineer, he decides to work harder to prove himself once and for all. Surely finishing the leftover action items will get him to employee of the month again! So he goes back to the factory floor, to deal with urgent issues. But guess what? Top management decides that they'd rather not deal with him anymore, and fire him. Or, well, at him. With a death star.


Honestly, that's pretty much the story of my previous job. Except for the death star superlaser part

[Frozen_Feet]

All white bad guys

Clearly, someone missed all the new, shiny Black Stormtroopers. :smallamused:

[Jan Mattys]

I just saw the movie and it was, honestly, pretty good.

The only things that really bothered me are these:
- At the imperial facility where Galen dies, the whole thing gave me a strange sense of wrong distances. There are multiple shots of great distances, a huge pit and a few cliffs, but still all the characters seem to be able to reach the platform with relative ease and really quick (yeah, I know Jyn climbs from down under, but still...). The scene felt spatially - and more importantly, temporally - inconsistent to me.

- In the same facility, the Rebel bombing not hitting the imperial shuttle anchored just outside the platform is just stupid. First of all, because it would certainly be a primary target, and because it was the LARGEST SINGLE THING hanging out of a narrow open hangar. The pilots ignoring it makes no sense, and the pilots missing it even less so.

- This is just a very little nitpick, but during the same scene all that I could think was "didn't imperials invent umbrellas yet?". Seriously, it is already convenient enough that the whole interrogation/threating of Galen by Krennic happens in the open to let Captain Andor have his chance at snipe-killing Jyn's dad, but doing it all during a huge storm under heavy rain just made me laugh and made it all too evident that the scene makes no sense.


Yeah, I am strange that way. I really feel the part on Eadu was very poorly executed.
The rest of the movie was enjoyable, though. It was a fun ride and a true Star Wars movie in its own right.

[Darth Ultron]

Clearly, someone missed all the new, shiny Black Stormtroopers. :smallamused:

They would only count if they have black humans inside of them....''Space Black Tigers'' or such. (but really the phase 2 dark troopers are just from Star Wars commander)

[Admiral Squish]

These are the non-clone troopers, so in truth, there's no way to know how many of those stormtroopers were non-white. Finn being the most obvious example.

Unrelated, but did we actually see any bothans? I thought many bothans were supposed to die for this. Or was that death star 2?

[hamishspence]

Unrelated, but did we actually see any bothans? I thought many bothans were supposed to die for this. Or was that death star 2?

From the first post in the thread:




Note: I am aware that many Bothans died to bring information about the second Death Star and this movie is a prequel.

The title of the thread is a joke.

[Cikomyr]

Wait. Someone didnt understant that the Nazi stand-in for a Sci fi recreation of pulp WW2 movies, with uniforms designed by Hugo Boss, whose soldiers are named Stormtroopers were.. ya know, suposed to be Evil White Guys?

Thats the entire point of the iconography since Star Wars was created in 1977. The entire Empire is based on the trappings of the Third Reich.

Theres a reason people of a certain religion were tracked down and "purged". Also a reason why the Empire is all about a democracy who turned dictatorial. Why its treating other species like subbeings.

It aint exactly have been subtled up to now. And NOW of all time you pick up on it?

[druid91]

Wait. Someone didnt understant that the Nazi stand-in for a Sci fi recreation of pulp WW2 movies, with uniforms designed by Hugo Boss, whose soldiers are named Stormtroopers were.. ya know, suposed to be Evil White Guys?

Thats the entire point of the iconography since Star Wars was created in 1977. The entire Empire is based on the trappings of the Third Reich.

Theres a reason people of a certain religion were tracked down and "purged". Also a reason why the Empire is all about a democracy who turned dictatorial. Why its treating other species like subbeings.

It aint exactly have been subtled up to now. And NOW of all time you pick up on it?

Considering most of that was of questionable canonicity until recently.

[Chromascope3D]

Considering most of that was of questionable canonicity until recently.

I don't it's ever been in question, actually. True, it has only become more obvious in recent canon, but the undertones have always been there.

[Cikomyr]

Considering most of that was of questionable canonicity until recently.

Which part? Every single element i mentionned were clued in the original 1977 movies.

- the Empire being an outgrow of a fallen Republic
- The Jedi being a Religion, and being wiped out
- Imperial uniforms are directly inspired by Nazi
- the Bad Guys soldiers are Stormtrooper

[druid91]

Which part? Every single element i mentionned were clued in the original 1977 movies.

- the Empire being an outgrow of a fallen Republic
- The Jedi being a Religion, and being wiped out
- Imperial uniforms are directly inspired by Nazi
- the Bad Guys soldiers are Stormtrooper

The part where the Jedi were purged because they actively opposed the new empire.

The fallen republic hadn't actually fallen until a new hope.

The part where the empire displayed no more distaste for aliens in the first two movies than the rebellion had.

And while the Nazi parralels are there in the uniforms. That's not sufficient evidence.

[Cikomyr]

There is no indication of the reasons that Vader killed all the Jedi in he original movie. Just that he did.

And the Empire definetely existed. It just has some trappings of the Republic still living (until he dissolved the Senate).

[hamishspence]

There is no indication of the reasons that Vader killed all the Jedi in he original movie. Just that he did.

Or at least that he "helped the Empire hunt down and destroy" them.

[Chromascope3D]

That's not sufficient evidence.

You don't need evidence. A creative work does not need to wear its inspiration on its sleeve for it to still be inspired, and a viewer does not need confirmation from a creator to infer what is implied. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people have been making this connection, even since the first movie, is evidence enough for me.

Also, Episode III is over a decade old. That ain't recent no more. :smalltongue:

[BRC]

Some thoughts


First of all, I loved it. Altogether a great movie, they managed to do more about reminding everybody why they loved A New Hope than The Force Awakens did, without doing what The Force Awakens did and basically retreading Episode 4 shot-for-shot.

Even though we knew how it would end, they managed to keep the tension high and the central cast likable.

That said, I have some Beef.

Here is the characters, in order of how much I liked them.

K2-SO
Blind Monk
Pilot
Heavy Weapons Monk
Cassain
Jyn Erso.


The fact that Jyn is at the bottom of my list should reveal something.

The Trailers presented her as some sort of rough "Too Rebellious for the Rebellion" character, which could have been interesting. The Rebels send her because she's a loose cannon who gets the job done.

The Movie had her selected because of her connection with Saw Guerra, and her father. In this one she was a criminal, who had been raised by Too-Radical-For-The-Rebellion Saw Guerra. This gives her two potential sources for unique skillsets, her time as a criminal, or her time as a guerrilla fighter with Saw. Neither really came up, except for her knowing her way around a blaster.

I'm fine with her getting pulled in because of her connection with Saw Guerra, but the movie didn't really do anything to make her a unique part of the team after that, besides her general protagonistitude and the brief conversation she had with her father.
Like, I didn't hate the character, but I felt there was wasted potential there. They either could have done more with her, or made the movie more focused on the ensemble cast.

I appreciate what they were going for with CGI Tarkin, but I think they overused him. The CGI was acceptable, but not exactly convincing for either him or Leia. It felt like they were showing off by having him make multiple extended appearances, but it didn't really work.

[VoxRationis]

Krennic is not a compelling villain, I agree, but the thing is he doesn't need to be. The villain of the piece is the Empire, and its power and menace are sufficient that individual officers aren't important in that regard.

[BWR]

Just got back from it and was mighty pleased. Much, much better than TFA. I want more movies like this, which are very definitely SW but don't have to regurgitate older sources and repackage it. A few minor issues and some questionable links to ANH, but this was genuinely a damn good movie and unlike TFA actually gives me some hope for the future of SW.

[druid91]

There is no indication of the reasons that Vader killed all the Jedi in he original movie. Just that he did.

And the Empire definetely existed. It just has some trappings of the Republic still living (until he dissolved the Senate).

The Empire WAS the Republic. If you have a senate that actually does stuff, as evidenced by the senators using their positions to fund the rebellion and the concerns that that was an actual thing that could happen. Then you are still a democracy to some degree.


You don't need evidence. A creative work does not need to wear its inspiration on its sleeve for it to still be inspired, and a viewer does not need confirmation from a creator to infer what is implied. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people have been making this connection, even since the first movie, is evidence enough for me.

Also, Episode III is over a decade old. That ain't recent no more. :smalltongue:

It can still be inspired by it all they want. Besides, Episode 3 reinforces MY argument. The Jedi were largely purged because, as Palpatine said. "There would be civil war without end." And they don't show any oppressing of aliens in literally any of the movies.

The worst is their "Where are you taking this.... thing." in A new hope. And that's matched by Leia calling Chewie a walking carpet.

Honestly. I always thought the empire were bad guys, just because the wise old wizard who saves the hero's life in the middle of nowhere says they are. Pretty simple logic there.

[BRC]

Honestly. I always thought the empire were bad guys, just because the wise old wizard who saves the hero's life in the middle of nowhere says they are. Pretty simple logic there.

Also, they blow up a populated planet.

Like, that gets kind of glossed over. But they blew up a planet.

They also dress like space Nazis, kill Luke's family, are declared evil by the wise old wizard, and have evil theme music, and literally the first time they are mentioned is when the opening crawl calls them the "Evil Galactic Empire".

But, as far as Single acts of Evil throughout the series, nothing really beats blowing up a planet.

[druid91]

Also, they blow up a populated planet.

Like, that gets kind of glossed over. But they blew up a planet.

They also dress like space Nazis, kill Luke's family, are declared evil by the wise old wizard, and have evil theme music, and literally the first time they are mentioned is when the opening crawl calls them the "Evil Galactic Empire".

But, as far as Single acts of Evil throughout the series, nothing really beats blowing up a planet.

Right, they blow up the hot princess', (Who is secretly the hero's sister leading to squick later on.) , home planet for little to no reason.

But yeah. They blow up planets, are ruled by an evil wizard who shoots hate-lightning from his fingers, and another evil wizard who strangles people to death for mistakes. They kill innocent moisture farmers.

But never once. EVER. Do they oppress aliens. IN THE ENTIRE SERIES. Aside from the wookies in Episode 3, and it's strongly implied that that was caused by Yoda being one of the few jedi to escape. Aided by the wookies.

Again, discounting the clone wars/rebels cartoons and the EU where examples of this are more abundant. Heck, even in the two latest movies they don't.

[Chromascope3D]

The Empire WAS the Republic. If you have a senate that actually does stuff, as evidenced by the senators using their positions to fund the rebellion and the concerns that that was an actual thing that could happen. Then you are still a democracy to some degree.
Emphasis was. The Emperor dissolved the Senate and assumed direct control. Can't be a republic without a representative legislative branch.


It can still be inspired by it all they want. Besides, Episode 3 reinforces MY argument. The Jedi were largely purged because, as Palpatine said. "There would be civil war without end." And they don't show any oppressing of aliens in literally any of the movies.

The worst is their "Where are you taking this.... thing." in A new hope. And that's matched by Leia calling Chewie a walking carpet.

Honestly. I always thought the empire were bad guys, just because the wise old wizard who saves the hero's life in the middle of nowhere says they are. Pretty simple logic there.

What is your argument specifically, then? Because I'm not sure how the Empire sharing key aesthetic and philosophical similarities with the Third Reich, and the Empire also being the bad guys, are necessarily incompatible. :smallconfused:

[tiornys]

But never once. EVER. Do they oppress aliens. IN THE ENTIRE SERIES. Aside from the wookies in Episode 3, and it's strongly implied that that was caused by Yoda being one of the few jedi to escape. Aided by the wookies.
We may not see them ever actively oppressing aliens, but can you think of a single instance of an alien serving in the Imperial military?

[druid91]

We may not see them ever actively oppressing aliens, but can you think of a single instance of an alien serving in the Imperial military?

Yes. In the first movie.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/d/d7/Garindan_trooper.png/revision/latest?cb=20130312010939

Also in Empire Strikes Back.

http://tinypic.com/n2ki92.jpg

They're lacking in Return of the Jedi, but that could be argued to be because they had just had the confrontation with Jabba with all the aliens that involved.

But then, in Revenge of the Sith, the only remaining movie aside from Rogue one that arguably features the empire...

http://img.lum.dolimg.com/v1/images/wookiee-2_7733e09d.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C800%2C341

But wait, they did turn on the wookies after that so....

Wait a minute, who is this guy, standing at Palpatines right hand when the announcement to reform the Republic into the Empire is made?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VqVSt0_Zmuk/maxresdefault.jpg

The Empire is evil. To be sure. But just going on the movies? Their species-ism is something of an informed trait.

[Dienekes]

We may not see them ever actively oppressing aliens, but can you think of a single instance of an alien serving in the Imperial military?

Yes. Well, one glorious example.

http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/07/thrawn-zahn-tall-1536x864-145742485579.jpg

Admittedly, not in the movies, which only had bounty hunters. Though the only real proof of speciesism would be when one guy who calls Chewie a "thing."

[Razade]

Yes. In the first movie.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/d/d7/Garindan_trooper.png/revision/latest?cb=20130312010939

An informant is not a member of the Empire nor its military.


Also in Empire Strikes Back.

http://tinypic.com/n2ki92.jpg

Bosk is a bounty hunter. Not a formal member of the Empire.



But then, in Revenge of the Sith, the only remaining movie aside from Rogue one that arguably features the empire...

http://img.lum.dolimg.com/v1/images/wookiee-2_7733e09d.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C800%2C341

But wait, they did turn on the wookies after that so....

This wasn't the Empire anyway, it was the Republic.


Wait a minute, who is this guy, standing at Palpatines right hand when the announcement to reform the Republic into the Empire is made?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VqVSt0_Zmuk/maxresdefault.jpg

The Empire is evil. To be sure. But just going on the movies? Their species-ism is something of an informed trait.

Still not the Empire as we see it in the original trilogy and a hold over from its transition between the Republic which was made up of other races.

[druid91]

The guy is dressed in black, has no face, and is working with stormtroopers. Clearly he must be an imperial.

Your right. Bosk is just the guy that the second highest ranking imperial official in the entire galaxy has no problem calling onto a star destroyer in full view of however many officers to offer a job.

The borders of the two are blurry, and I would judge those troops to be more imperial than not.

Is there any evidence this particular guy went away? I mean we never see him again. But we never see the senate at all again. Or any imperial officials aside from Vader, Tarkin, The Emperor, and a handful of naval officers.

[Razade]

The guy is dressed in black, has no face, and is working with stormtroopers. Clearly he must be an imperial.

Well with air tight logic like that! The only clothing Chewie is wearing black. Imperial!!

[druid91]

Well with air tight logic like that! The only clothing Chewie is wearing black. Imperial!!

Chewie never works with stormtroopers and also has a face.

[Ranxerox]

Alternatively, there could be no forgiveness at all. Jyn would join the empire in a moment of passion and anger. Then when she cools down, realize she still has to complete her fathers work by turning over the plans to the death star so that it could be destroyed. Or else their family was torn apart for nothing. Or else her father bowed and scraped for nothing.

While this way certainly portrays the rebellion in a more heroic light. That's someone at odds with Cassian coldly shooting his collaborator in the back at the start of the movie.

Cassian felt immense guilt about shooting the collaborator and other hard hearted acts done in the name of the rebellion. He made this clear in his explanation why he was going on the mission to get the Deathstar plans.

That being said, killing the collaborator in the alley was totally the right call to make. The guy was going to get caught, and he was going to spill every bean he had about the Rebellion and he was going to finger every Rebel and Rebel sympathizer that he knew. So sparing him would have been sentencing many other to death. Nor would it have even benefited the collaborator, who would merely have been executed immediately after Empire tortured all his information out of him or alternately sent to a work camp and worked literally to death,

[Razade]

Chewie never works with stormtroopers and also has a face.

What? Never works with Storm Troopers? I think you should rewatch the movies.

http://i.imgur.com/j8rHRCU.jpg (http://imgur.com/j8rHRCU)

There's Chewbacca, unbound and standing between two Storm Troopers. Clearly making some nefarious report!

[druid91]

Touche.

But if you'll notice, he's holding his hands together, clearly he's pretending to be their prisoner for his own purposes. And he still has a face, clearly visible.

Also, if you'll see, he's wearing brown in that picture. Not black.

[Razade]

Touche.

But if you'll notice, he's holding his hands together, clearly he's pretending to be their prisoner for his own purposes. And he still has a face, clearly visible.

Also, if you'll see, he's wearing brown in that picture. Not black.

That's how he blends in with Rebel Scum. He's also not bound in that picture, his folding his arms because he's thinking something sinister like a true evil mastermind. Bossk also showed his face and according to you was a member of the Empire. More proof by selectively picking photos that back up your argument!

[tiornys]

Yes. Well, one glorious example.

http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/07/thrawn-zahn-tall-1536x864-145742485579.jpg

Admittedly, not in the movies, which only had bounty hunters. Though the only real proof of speciesism would be when one guy who calls Chewie a "thing."
Granted, and this is the exception that proves the rule. To be clear, I was talking about direct service, not merely working with the military as with the informant or the bounty hunters. The Empire is certainly willing to use aliens when it suits them, but it seems to be extremely rare for the Empire to give aliens any kind of official rank and/or status.

[Chromascope3D]

Yes. In the first movie.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/d/d7/Garindan_trooper.png/revision/latest?cb=20130312010939

How do we know he's an alien, and not just some creepy dude in a mask? :smalltongue:

[druid91]

That's how he blends in with Rebel Scum. He's also not bound in that picture, his folding his arms because he's thinking something sinister like a true evil mastermind. Bossk also showed his face and according to you was a member of the Empire. More proof by selectively picking photos that back up your argument!

Fair fair. Anyway, this has been fun, but I concede this line of reasoning to you.

But my point, in a more general sense. Is that the movies are very tell not show. And in a lot of cases aren't even telling us about the empires crimes against aliens.

That's entirely an EU thing.

In the movies, the Empire is all about faceless goons crushing all opposition. Be it human or alien. Why are they all human? Because they're meant to be conforming. And honestly you can't see 90% of the imperials faces anyway.

[hamishspence]

While the Legends EU introduced it, the "newcanon EU" kept it.

Rebels TV series did give us references to the enslavement of the Wookiees, genocide of the Lasat, and the disappearance of the Geonosian population (which the comics revealed to have been due to the Empire).

Aftermath book 2: Life Debt, made a point about how there is distrust of "near-humans", and outright dislike of and propaganda against more alien-looking aliens.

[druid91]

While the Legends EU introduced it, the "newcanon EU" kept it.

Rebels TV series did give us references to the enslavement of the Wookiees, genocide of the Lasat, and the disappearance of the Geonosian population (which the comics revealed to have been due to the Empire).

Aftermath book 2: Life Debt, made a point about how there is distrust of "near-humans", and outright dislike of and propaganda against more alien-looking aliens.

Oh, I'm fully aware and never denied that. When I started off I said "Discounting the cartoons and the EU."

I don't generally differentiate between the legends and new EU.

[Cikomyr]

The Empire WAS the Republic. If you have a senate that actually does stuff, as evidenced by the senators using their positions to fund the rebellion and the concerns that that was an actual thing that could happen. Then you are still a democracy to some degree.
.

You mean, the Imperial Senate?

Republic: a government body not rules by a monarch (King/Emperor). Does not have to be democratic.

The Republic died when Palpy was crowned Emperor/President for Life. Just because there were remnants of Democracy doesnt mean it wasnt the Empire.

[thorgrim29]

Also the Republic was a democracy kind of like the UN is a democracy. Member states send representatives and those representatives have votes, but there doesn't seem to be an obligation for the representatives themselves to be democratically appointed.

[Devonix]

Watched it, loved it. Only had one major problem that took me out of the film. And that problem is that they made an entire movie who's plot is to explain away the flaw in the Death Star, and come up with some reason for why it was there.

I hate the idea of the flaw being put there by a rebel collaborator. First of all it's not really a flaw in the system. It's a coolent tunnel for Gigantic Space weapon. You can't have the damn thing completely insulated, the heat has to go somewhere or else the thing blows up. You bomb the reactor of anything, and it blows, that's not a flaw, it's a feature.

It seemed like they were trying to placate people who need an explination for everything, yet forget that it didn't need any explaining. It would be like doing a movie about why Stormtroopers are bad shots. But forgetting that Stormtroopers aren't bad shots, they just can't hit heroes who have plot armor firmly attached. Or who like in A New Hope, there were under orders not to hit in the first place.

[huttj509]

Watched it, loved it. Only had one major problem that took me out of the film. And that problem is that they made an entire movie who's plot is to explain away the flaw in the Death Star, and come up with some reason for why it was there.

I hate the idea of the flaw being put there by a rebel collaborator. First of all it's not really a flaw in the system. It's a coolent tunnel for Gigantic Space weapon. You can't have the damn thing completely insulated, the heat has to go somewhere or else the thing blows up. You bomb the reactor of anything, and it blows, that's not a flaw, it's a feature.

It seemed like they were trying to placate people who need an explination for everything, yet forget that it didn't need any explaining. It would be like doing a movie about why Stormtroopers are bad shots. But forgetting that Stormtroopers aren't bad shots, they just can't hit heroes who have plot armor firmly attached. Or who like in A New Hope, there were under orders not to hit in the first place.

I've got a water heater in the closet. If I shoot it, it's not gonna explode.

If you go to a coal power plant, and set off a bomb, the plant's not gonna explode. Oh, it'll stop working, but won't explode.

If you go to a nuclear reactor, and throw a grenade in the coolant tank, the reactor does not explode.

Military grade technology the size of a planet, + 2 torpedos, = complete boom.

[Peelee]

I've got a water heater in the closet. If I shoot it, it's not gonna explode.

If you go to a coal power plant, and set off a bomb, the plant's not gonna explode. Oh, it'll stop working, but won't explode.

If you go to a nuclear reactor, and throw a grenade in the coolant tank, the reactor does not explode.

Military grade technology the size of a planet, + 2 torpedos, = complete boom.

What happens if you throw a grenade in the fuel tank of a military tank?

[Devonix]

I've got a water heater in the closet. If I shoot it, it's not gonna explode.

If you go to a coal power plant, and set off a bomb, the plant's not gonna explode. Oh, it'll stop working, but won't explode.

If you go to a nuclear reactor, and throw a grenade in the coolant tank, the reactor does not explode.

Military grade technology the size of a planet, + 2 torpedos, = complete boom.

You disable the coolant system of a Nuclear reactor, I'm willing to bet bad things happen.

[The Glyphstone]

You disable the coolant system of a Nuclear reactor, I'm willing to bet bad things happen.

If they can't shut it down in time, at least.

[Devonix]

It's also that the " Flaw " For Decades now existed as simply something designed into the system. The canon was that it was just part of the design and there was no conspiracy. This seemed like trying to appease people who make exhaust port jokes.

[Razade]

Also a coal plant has the possibility to explode if things go wrong. Or how about a fire at a fertilizer plant. Which caused it to explode. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROrpKx3aIjA)

Because you know. The Death Star had a ton of things on it that could explode independent of the Station itself like Tie Fighters and munitions. Bad analogies all around.

[Olinser]

Watched it, loved it. Only had one major problem that took me out of the film. And that problem is that they made an entire movie who's plot is to explain away the flaw in the Death Star, and come up with some reason for why it was there.

I hate the idea of the flaw being put there by a rebel collaborator. First of all it's not really a flaw in the system. It's a coolent tunnel for Gigantic Space weapon. You can't have the damn thing completely insulated, the heat has to go somewhere or else the thing blows up. You bomb the reactor of anything, and it blows, that's not a flaw, it's a feature.

It seemed like they were trying to placate people who need an explination for everything, yet forget that it didn't need any explaining. It would be like doing a movie about why Stormtroopers are bad shots. But forgetting that Stormtroopers aren't bad shots, they just can't hit heroes who have plot armor firmly attached. Or who like in A New Hope, there were under orders not to hit in the first place.

I mean they did a REALLY bad job of explaining it, but it sounded to me like what he did was conceal something in the automatic emergency procedures that would activate only when that particular reactor was hit.

Remember, the Death Star isn't a power generator - it's a planet killing weapon. Most likely he left some kind of subroutine or structural failure that would culminate in the energy from the weapon discharging into the superstructure when that reactor was hit.

[Razade]

I mean they did a REALLY bad job of explaining it, but it sounded to me like what he did was conceal something in the automatic emergency procedures that would activate only when that particular reactor was hit.

Remember, the Death Star isn't a power generator - it's a planet killing weapon. Most likely he left some kind of subroutine or structural failure that would culminate in the energy from the weapon discharging into the superstructure when that reactor was hit.

Where is it getting the power to blow up planets if not an internal power generator?

[Devonix]

Where is it getting the power to blow up planets if not an internal power generator?


Yeah and it's generating enough power to blow up multiple worlds. one full power shot and a planet goes boom. But it's capable of putting out quite a few of those shots without the need to refuel. It's got to be putting out some massive energy even when not in use. Massive ammounts of heat that need to go somewhere

[Chromascope3D]

Watched it, loved it. Only had one major problem that took me out of the film. And that problem is that they made an entire movie who's plot is to explain away the flaw in the Death Star, and come up with some reason for why it was there.

I hate the idea of the flaw being put there by a rebel collaborator. First of all it's not really a flaw in the system. It's a coolent tunnel for Gigantic Space weapon. You can't have the damn thing completely insulated, the heat has to go somewhere or else the thing blows up. You bomb the reactor of anything, and it blows, that's not a flaw, it's a feature.

It seemed like they were trying to placate people who need an explination for everything, yet forget that it didn't need any explaining. It would be like doing a movie about why Stormtroopers are bad shots. But forgetting that Stormtroopers aren't bad shots, they just can't hit heroes who have plot armor firmly attached. Or who like in A New Hope, there were under orders not to hit in the first place.

Because I've seen more than a few geniuses who've all asked, 'Well why didn't they just put a bend in the exhaust pipe?"

[Devonix]

Because I've seen more than one genius who's asked, 'Well why didn't they just put a bend in the exhaust pipe?"

Because they were designing an exhaust port, they just did the most efficient thing. They didn't even consider that it was a flaw. The rebels just realized that Hey, we might be able to use this as a way to break it.

The empire was undone by their hubris in thinking there were no weaknesses. Now the story is changed to internal sabotage.

[Peelee]

Because I've seen more than a few geniuses who've all asked, 'Well why didn't they just put a bend in the exhaust pipe?"

It wouldn't have mattered. The torpedos didn't go straight to the rsactor, they set of a chain reaction that went to the reactor.


Because they were designing an exhaust port, they just did the most efficient thing. They didn't even consider that it was a flaw. The rebels just realized that Hey, we might be able to use this as a way to break it.

The empire was undone by their hubris in thinking there were no weaknesses. Now the story is changed to internal sabotage.

Imean, I agree about the hubris, but the Empire DID realize it was a weak point. They ray shielded it, after all.

[Devonix]

Don't get me wrong, I flat out loved the movie. It's just worrying that they seemed to base the plot around explaining away a fan complaint. What next a movie about where the blue milk comes from?

[Razade]

Yeah and it's generating enough power to blow up multiple worlds. one full power shot and a planet goes boom. But it's capable of putting out quite a few of those shots without the need to refuel. It's got to be putting out some massive energy even when not in use. Massive ammounts of heat that need to go somewhere

Not to mention it has its own thrust and it can go into Hyper-Space. So it had to power that too. And all the power to keep people alive because it had a military presence. And to repower said tie fighters and ... the list goes on. The thing had to be mostly Power Generation.

[Hatu]

I've got a water heater in the closet. If I shoot it, it's not gonna explode.

If you go to a coal power plant, and set off a bomb, the plant's not gonna explode. Oh, it'll stop working, but won't explode.

If you go to a nuclear reactor, and throw a grenade in the coolant tank, the reactor does not explode.

Military grade technology the size of a planet, + 2 torpedos, = complete boom.

Clever Disney, this will set them up for years of extra Star Wars movies!

In 2019, we can learn the tragic backstory of the scientist who helped build the second Death Star. Inspired by the tale of Galen Orso, he attempts to sabotage the project by making the power regulator explode if hit with proton torpedoes.

In 2020 we'll meet a scientist enslaved by the Trade Federation. Forced to design their giant command space ships, he secretly arranged for the whole ship to explode if a reactor near the main hanger was damaged.

In 2022 we'll get the dark tale of the arrogant rebel technician who eventually betrayed the Alliance. Tasked with designing the generators for the Hoth base, he secretly arranged for them to explode if hit by an AT-AT.

Finally, in 2023 we'll get a fresh new tale. A scientist who ran away from the First Order will be forced to continue his work on Starkiller base when his family is threatened. Realizing they'll eventually complete the project without him, he builds a crippling flaw into the design. Only his daughter can learn of his plan and get the stolen plans to General Organa in time to save the day!

And I'm sure by then the new movies will give us something else that explodes to keep the gravy train rolling!

-H

[Legato Endless]

Clever Disney, this will set them up for years of extra Star Wars movies.
-H

You forgot the Imperial Engineer who decided to give ATATs legs. He wasn't actually a rebel sympathizer, he just happened to own a lot of tow cable he needed to drive up demand for.


Don't get me wrong, I flat out loved the movie. It's just worrying that they seemed to base the plot around explaining away a fan complaint. What next a movie about where the blue milk comes from?

That's a perennial hobby though for Star Wars fans especially. It's why everyone no matter how brief their appearance in a film has a dedicated wookipedia entry. Less charitably, it exists to fix 'flaws' in the series. Finn is totally a force sensitive because only special people may wield light sabers. Large concentrations of the force in an area can warp time, which is why Luke actually trained for x amount of time with Yoda to justify his development in the force. Admiral Ozzel was actually a rebel sympathizer. Because a totalitarian regime like the Empire would never allow anyone inept in its leadership.

[VoxRationis]

Because I've seen more than a few geniuses who've all asked, 'Well why didn't they just put a bend in the exhaust pipe?"

Aside from the modern explanation of internal sabotage, one might be inclined to conclude that cutting the entire exhaust system of a moon-sized, planet-evaporating space station to a single 2m-wide tube might mean you have to make that one tube really, really efficient. Perhaps the thermal exhaust would have melted the surrounding metal if the tube had included bends. Perhaps increased length would have increased heat exchange with the Death Star main decks, reducing efficiency of heat loss.

[Cikomyr]

Watched it, loved it. Only had one major problem that took me out of the film. And that problem is that they made an entire movie who's plot is to explain away the flaw in the Death Star, and come up with some reason for why it was there.

I hate the idea of the flaw being put there by a rebel collaborator. First of all it's not really a flaw in the system. It's a coolent tunnel for Gigantic Space weapon. You can't have the damn thing completely insulated, the heat has to go somewhere or else the thing blows up. You bomb the reactor of anything, and it blows, that's not a flaw, it's a feature.

It seemed like they were trying to placate people who need an explination for everything, yet forget that it didn't need any explaining. It would be like doing a movie about why Stormtroopers are bad shots. But forgetting that Stormtroopers aren't bad shots, they just can't hit heroes who have plot armor firmly attached. Or who like in A New Hope, there were under orders not to hit in the first place.

I think what it really solve is not the presence of the flaw, but the reason Princess Leia talked about it knowing there was a flaw to exploit.

The entirety of ANH rested on the assumption that there WAS a flaw. What if after all, they analyzed the plans and.. discovered the thing has no problem to exploit?

Why did a bunch of rebel technicians have been able to discover in 2 days what the Imperial engineers failed to see in 10 years?

[hamishspence]

I think what it really solve is not the presence of the flaw, but the reason Princess Leia talked about it knowing there was a flaw to exploit.


And Leia still sounds uncertain that there is a weakness:



Princess Leia: At least the information in R2 is still intact.
Han Solo: What's so important? What's he carrying?
Princess Leia: The technical readouts of that battle station. I only hope that when the data's analyzed a weakness can be found. It's not over yet.

Which fits with them only having Jyn's word for it that Galen did put in a weakness.

If Tagge knows about Galen's suspicious behaviour right before his death, his fears also work quite well:


Tagge: ... it is possible, however unlikely, that they might find a weakness and exploit it.

[JoshL]

It's also possible that Galen is overselling the "trap" he built in. He recognized the weakness for what it was, and maybe didn't bring it to anyone's attention, but it's not something he put in. To asuage his guilty conscious, he says, maybe even to his self, that he is sabotaging the death star. Telling his daughter where to steal the plans, and giving the station a code name she would recognize certainly counts as a redeeming act. And it's not like you would have seen the exhaust vent by flying around, so you do need the plans. Knowing that your work is going to literally destroy planets and everything that lives on them is certainly guilt enough to convince yourself you are doing more than you are to stop it.

And speaking of extinction events, man, that slow horror of watching those Star Destroyers...

[Cikomyr]

I really love the sequence of events, if seen from a normal citizen, and how the Empire could spin it.

- Subject governments of the Empire have amassed a fleet and declared open rebellion by striking an imperial facility.
- Following this clear show of escalation, and meaning to placate local government, the Emperor has reluctantly dissolved the centralized political authority of the Empire, and gave each star system full authority without inteference from the (now abolished) Senate.
- (propaganda) wit Alderaan declared independence from the Empire/open support for armed violence
- the Empire, seeing that even FULL autonomy, was not enough to calm the dangerous radicals of Alderaan, decided to destroy the planet.
- the Rebels retaliated with a terrorist strike against millions of Imperial soldiers.

(Again, as seen per a random Imperial citizen's PoV)

[Hopeless]

And here I thought Obi-Wan met a rebel collaborator aboard who gave him the frequency to allow missiles to home straight into the interior of the Death Star and set off a system Palpatine had secretly built in case Tarkin turned on him?

So when Luke switched off his targeting computer whilst listening to Obi-Wan's force Ghost he fired missiles that were homing in on a signal inside the Death Star itself so it wasn't a miracle shot but Tarkin's hubris catching up with him!

[Peelee]

I think what it really solve is not the presence of the flaw, but the reason Princess Leia talked about it knowing there was a flaw to exploit.

The entirety of ANH rested on the assumption that there WAS a flaw. What if after all, they analyzed the plans and.. discovered the thing has no problem to exploit?

Why did a bunch of rebel technicians have been able to discover in 2 days what the Imperial engineers failed to see in 10 years?

.....the same engineers who
A.) Ray shielded the exhaust port, strongly implying that they new it was a weak point, and
2.) Told Tarkin there was a danger after literally minutes of the rebels attack?

Those silly, unknowing engineers.

[Admiral Squish]

One thing I particularly liked about the movie what the way it sorta shifted your perspective on the rebellion.
It wasn't a GOOD organization. They were doing things for a good cause, ultimately, but the first half or two-thirds of the movie was all about the dark crap they had to do to make it happen. Shooting the collaborator, ordering the dad killed, the extremes that the splinter group went to... You don't beat something like the empire in open warfare without doing some seriously shady stuff. The splinter rebels were kinda blatantly comparable to middle eastern terrorist groups.
But as the movie progresses, you sorta see the heart come out. People sacrificing themselves for the good of others, a willingness to defy orders if it's the right thing to do...
The rebellion at the start of the movie was rapidly running out of hope, running out of the idealism that started the rebellion in the first place. Their alliance is full of discord and disagreement, some of them even wanting to just give up. At the end, they have a chance, a slim one, but still, a chance, and that hope brings the movement as a whole back from the edge.

[pendell]

.....the same engineers who
A.) Ray shielded the exhaust port, strongly implying that they new it was a weak point, and
2.) Told Tarkin there was a danger after literally minutes of the rebels attack?

Those silly, unknowing engineers.

Fun fact: Once upon a time I worked with electronic counter measures (ECM). I was told that most of the ways to jam, spoof, or otherwise foul up radar was to exploit a manufacturing error that *we* knew about that *they* -- the original builders -- did not. That's why it was classified.

At any rate, although there are many implausible things in that movie, that entire sequence with the plans was actually extremely plausible.

First of all, the existence of the flaw in the first place. Of *course* there's a flaw. Give me any machine of any kind more complicated than a screwdriver, you're going to find any number of flaws, vulnerabilities, and mistakes to exploit. I know, because as a software engineer it is my job to fix those issues. Across three different jobs and multiple different products, however many tickets I patch the trouble list just keeps growing. Hardware isn't much different, but it's a *lot* harder to patch in the field.

Second, it's entirely reasonable that the rebel techs could find *something* to exploit because , unlike the original engineers, they were not working against a specification or potential threats. They knew what they had on hand, and they had an extremely good reason to find *something* which would work in the time and tools they had. They found one -- an extremely low-probability chance that was pushing the boundaries of the technology that they had , a shot 'impossible' for their targeting systems.

By contrast, the original engineers weren't thinking about an attack by snub fighters at all -- all the Death Star's shielding and defenses were designed for combat against heavy capital ships like the Star Destroyer. It appears, in the original movie, that the rebels were flying the equivalent of Sopwith camels armed with machine guns against WWI battleships -- they could not damage the larger vehicles and posed no threat to them. The engineers , likewise, weren't even thinking about starfighters as any kind of real threat. Tarkin wasn't either, or he certainly wouldn't have entered the Yavin system unescorted -- and he would at least have launched ALL fighters and had them on CAP before the battle started.

At any rate, the attack occurs and some bright engineer asks "Odd. Why are those fighters flying down *that* particular trench?" So they look at what's there, compare to what the fighters are capable of, and realize what they're aiming for. They then report to Tarkin the possibility of the station's destruction.

From a gambler's perspective, Tarkin made the right call. As discussed earlier, it's a ray-shielded port and it would take a one-in-a-million golden-bb shot to actually destroy the station. Risks must be taken in war, and any officer worth zir salt would happily gamble on a one-in-a-million chance if it's in zir favor. Normally, you're happy to get odds of three-to-one.

So that part was actually plausible; it's the laser swords and what not that are ridiculous.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Devonix]

Exactly, that's why it didn't need to be explained away as sabotage. Everything else was great, just have Her father be an engineer who knew about the possible flaw. But having him be somene who worked for years on it and put the flaw in as part of a master revenge plan... that's a bit silly.

[BRC]

Exactly, that's why it didn't need to be explained away as sabotage. Everything else was great, just have Her father be an engineer who knew about the possible flaw. But having him be somene who worked for years on it and put the flaw in as part of a master revenge plan... that's a bit silly.
Not really? People have been making fun of the Thermal Exhaust Port Of Doom for 30+ years now.

Like, sure, it didn't "Need" explaining. Flaws happen, sometimes catastrophically, especially with a machine of unprecedented size and complexity. But does it take anything away to have it be a subtle piece of sabotage, rather than a flaw he discovered.

In the context of the other movies, the origin of the flaw isn't relevant.
In this movie, it makes Galen an ultimately heroic character, since he rejoined the project with the intention of sabotaging it. Had he rejoined the project anyway (Despite, you know, them killing his wife and not having his daughter as leverage), and stumbled upon the flaw, that would have put him in very different light.

Finally, what's "Silly" about the flaw being part of a revenge plot? The flaw was a catastrophic one, and Galen had more than adequate means, motive, and opportunity. Just because we should assume stupidity before malice doesn't mean that malice isn't a perfectly acceptable explanation. Galen's sabotage is just another act of heroism leading up to the death star's destruction.

[Cikomyr]

.....the same engineers who
A.) Ray shielded the exhaust port, strongly implying that they new it was a weak point, and
2.) Told Tarkin there was a danger after literally minutes of the rebels attack?

Those silly, unknowing engineers.

Yes. Those very engineers who figured the flaw only, and only when the Rebels fighters started aiming for that specific location.

Intel analysts were going "why would they attack THERE?" And figured this out.

Otherwise, why wouldnt the Imperials spend the last 5 years running the Death Star's specs through the same FindTheWeakness software the Rebels obviously had?

The idea that the Rebels knew where/what to look for makes the whole thing more plausible. Because the Imperials also immediately picked up on it the moment they knew where to look for.

[Peelee]

Not really? People have been making fun of the Thermal Exhaust Port Of Doom for 30+ years now.

Like, sure, it didn't "Need" explaining. Flaws happen, sometimes catastrophically, especially with a machine of unprecedented size and complexity. But does it take anything away to have it be a subtle piece of sabotage, rather than a flaw he discovered.

In the context of the other movies, the origin of the flaw isn't relevant.
In this movie, it makes Galen an ultimately heroic character, since he rejoined the project with the intention of sabotaging it. Had he rejoined the project anyway (Despite, you know, them killing his wife and not having his daughter as leverage), and stumbled upon the flaw, that would have put him in very different light.

Finally, what's "Silly" about the flaw being part of a revenge plot? The flaw was a catastrophic one, and Galen had more than adequate means, motive, and opportunity. Just because we should assume stupidity before malice doesn't mean that malice isn't a perfectly acceptable explanation. Galen's sabotage is just another act of heroism leading up to the death star's destruction.

And those people are wrong. Just like people who make fun of stormtrooper aiming. Yeah, it's an easy joke to make, but it's not actually supported by the films.

The thermal exhaust port was ray-shielded, so they had to use proton torpedoes. So, right off the bat, there's already protection around the exhaust port. Then, they had literally tons and tons of gun emplacements around it, and who knows how many TIE fighters to throw into point defense against small ships. And even then, according to one of the pilots in the Rebellion (who just happened to be the only non-main character to survive all major battles in the trilogy as an active combatant) says the shot is impossible, even for a computer. Sure, some cocky farmboy claims he can make it, but later on, we actually see a figher pilot (who is the leader of his squadron, and thus likely a seasoned veteran) totally miss the shot, even with his targeting computer. Luke was able to make it because he was a goddamn space wizard who used a power that was realistically unavailable to practically everyone in the galaxy who wasn't the Emperor or the Emperor's BFF.

Now, the revenge plan not only requires a virtually impossible shot on a very well-defended station, but it also requires the Rebellion to be able to find a weakness. Now, keep in mind, the flaw built in was explicitly called out as the destruction of the station if the reactor is hit. The reactor was never targeted, the exhaust port was. Which was completely left out of the "revenge" plan. So in order to hit the damn thing to begin with, they Rebels have to find an actual flaw that El Revenge-o doesn't even take into consideration. If that hadn't existed, then his revenge reactor would still be in place, without any way to get to it. Yeah, stellar plan there.

Even assuming he did design the thermal exhaust port in a way to allow the chain reaction to hit the reactor and blow the station, then his plan still revolves around the Rebels getting access to the plans, which they could only do because his daughter stole an Imperial shuttle (without his knowledge), then stole it from the Rebels (without his knowledge), then the Rebels intercepted transmissions saying that Jyn and Co. were able to infiltrate the base (without his knowledge), then an admiral happened to be all gung-ho on taking action and flew out to help, again against the wishes of the entire rest of the command structure of the Rebel Alliance (without his knowledge), then the ground team had to succeed in a large number of increasingly difficult challenges just to beam the plans off-planet to the fleet (without his knowledge), and then the main flagship, which was apparently the only ship in the fleet that could receive the plans (without his knowledge).

Yeah. Great plan there. There's more moving parts in these mechanations than there are in a a damn gear factory that makes more gears. But wait, you say, all this wasn't his plan, because he didn't even have a plan. His entire revenge was, "Hey, I put a weak spot in a place that you have no realistic way to access, even if you had the schematics, which you don't. Hahahaha! Revenge is a dish best served limp and ineffective!"


Yes. Those very engineers who figured the flaw only, and only when the Rebels fighters started aiming for that specific location.

Intel analysts were going "why would they attack THERE?" And figured this out.

Otherwise, why wouldnt the Imperials spend the last 5 years running the Death Star's specs through the same FindTheWeakness software the Rebels obviously had?

The idea that the Rebels knew where/what to look for makes the whole thing more plausible. Because the Imperials also immediately picked up on it the moment they knew where to look for.

Stop ignoring that the port was shielded, and you'll start to have the foundations of an argument.

[hamishspence]

Presumably, he wanted Bodhi to carry his message direct to the Rebellion, which is why Bodhi is captured on Jedha by Saw Gerrara in the first place.

[Peelee]

Presumably, he wanted Bodhi to carry his message direct to the Rebellion, which is why Bodhi is captured on Jedha by Saw Gerrara in the first place.

Good point. The last paragraph I wrote in that takes care of it, though.

[-Sentinel-]

I just saw Rogue One, and I had a great night. I didn't expect the last act to be quite so action-packed; I thought the theft of the plans would play out as a caper, like Ocean's Eleven IIIIIIN SPAAAAACE, with perhaps some action near the end as the plan fell apart. Not complaining or anything, I love action scenes; it's just an observation.

I'm very cool with all the character deaths. I was kind of expecting it. Very much fits the tone and themes of the movie.

I may need to see the movie again and wait for some time before I pass definitive judgment, but I think I prefer Rogue One over Force Awakens. The latter, while entertaining, seemed afraid of taking chances and clung too tightly to familiar elements. I hope future stand-alone Star Wars movies are more in the style of Rogue One.


One thing though...

I've seen people complain that CGI Tarkin looked bad. But I, for one, was actually blown away by how far we've come in creating life-like CGI characters. Am I too easily impressed, or are some people just impossible to please? (I'll freely admit I'm less difficult than many when it comes to the quality of special effects.)

[hamishspence]

His role was as creator of the weapon component of the thing first and foremost, as a specialist in kyber crystals. Other components, like turret defences, he wouldn't have any say over - so, he could only sabotage the stuff he could control - then, try and let the Rebels know what had been sabotaged, while at the same time ensuring the Empire would not know until it was too late.

As a scientist rather than a soldier, he may have underestimated just how much talent (and The Force) would be required to take the thing down.

[BRC]

I mean, the movie's central theme is Hope in the face of overwhelming odds.

Galen Erso put the flaw in, because it's what he could do, even if chances were pretty low that it would actually lead to anything.

He dispatched the Pilot to bring his message to the one Rebel he knew: Saw Guerra. He may not have known that Saw was, at this point, an extremist cut off from the rest of the rebellion, or he may have just had no other option (it's not like he knew that Bail Organa was backing the rebel alliance).

So yes, get the message to Saw, who gets it to the Alliance, who steal the plans and then blow up the death star, it's a long shot, but Star Wars has ALWAYS been about Long Shots. Just about every movie boils down to "It's a long shot, but it's the only chance we have".

Galen Erso
"Okay, I need to build this subtle trap into the death star, hope that I can get a message to Saw, who hopefully tells the rebels, who hopefully steal the plans and are able to get in close and make the shot".
Rouge one
"Okay, we have the message. Hopefully we can get onto the planet, hopefully we can get inside the secure facility. Hopefully we can FIND the plans. Hopefully we can GET the plans. Hopefully we can get them to the Rebels. Hopefully the Rebels can get in close and make the shot".
Episode IV: "We have the plans. Hopefully we can get in close and make the shot".


As for the port being ray-shielded, that doesn't necessarily mean that they knew it was a "Blow up the station" button. They just knew it was an opening and a way past the armor.

Lets Consider the idea that you're an imperial engineer. You have TONS of resources, and you're preparing for the assumption that the Death Star is going to be attacked by a massive fleet, which will be deploying bombers and fighters and the like. You don't know that Galen Erso has hidden a giant weak point in this particular exhaust port, but you do know that this is an exhaust port connected to the reactor system, which means it would be a bad thing if fighters could shoot down it. Not "Blow up the Station" bad, but bad, nonetheless. Perhaps it could cause enough damage to tilt the battle in the rebel's favor, as their capital ships blast the thing apart by conventional means, especially if several such ports get hit.

So, you defend this weak point, you put on ray-shielding, and set up some point defense turrets.

They knew it was a weak point, they just didn't know exactly HOW weak.

Also, you're assuming that was the only such port on the station. It was the one Galen Erso set up as a trap, but maybe there were hundreds of thermal exhaust ports spread throughout the station, each one with ray-shielding and defense turrets, because the engineers recognized that thermal exhaust ports, by their very nature as a hole in the station's armor, were a potential weak point.

[Cikomyr]

Stop ignoring that the port was shielded, and you'll start to have the foundations of an argument.

I am not ignoring anything. The port was shielded against rays only. So it needed torpedoes.

Thats makes the flaw harder to exploit, and probably easier to hide for the engineer who put it there.

But the Death star is one massive, uberlarge installation. How can you comb its entire schematics to find the single weakness in a few days/hours while the people who designed the thing and had th schematics for way longer did not figured it out?

I like the idea that the flaw was hidden in the sheer scale of information that are those schematics. And only a direct clue as to its existence would have made it appear in a research.

[hamishspence]

One thing though...

I've seen people complain that CGI Tarkin looked bad. But I, for one, was actually blown away by how far we've come in creating life-like CGI characters. Am I too easily impressed, or are some people just impossible to please? (I'll freely admit I'm less difficult than many when it comes to the quality of special effects.)

Seconded. It might have been a little noticeable in the first shot - but it was good enough for me to stop thinking about it very quickly.

[Cikomyr]

Lets just say that any military design that blows up because of a single shot taken from the outside that does not need to bypass armor is majorly flawed.

It would be like if i could make a modern Aircraft Carrier by managing a 1 in a 1,000,000 shot with my rifle. There was a really major design problem along the way.

And you can say "oh but it was shielded against pellets" to which I answer: but it still vulnerable to slugs.

Crippling the Deah Star? Damaging its firing mechanism? Maybe. But making the whole thing ASPLODE? That is MAJOR

[Peelee]

His role was as creator of the weapon component of the thing first and foremost, as a specialist in kyber crystals. Other components, like turret defences, he wouldn't have any say over - so, he could only sabotage the stuff he could control - then, try and let the Rebels know what had been sabotaged, while at the same time ensuring the Empire would not know until it was too late.

As a scientist rather than a soldier, he may have underestimated just how much talent (and The Force) would be required to take the thing down.
That, I'll agree with.

I am not ignoring anything. The port was shielded against rays only. So it needed torpedoes.

Thats makes the flaw harder to exploit, and probably easier to hide for the engineer who put it there.

But the Death star is one massive, uberlarge installation. How can you comb its entire schematics to find the single weakness in a few days/hours while the people who designed the thing and had th schematics for way longer did not figured it out?

I like the idea that the flaw was hidden in the sheer scale of information that are those schematics. And only a direct clue as to its existence would have made it appear in a research.
Except you are ignoring it. It was shielded. They put a shield on it. This means that they saw that it was a weakness, and covered that weakness. Yeah, it needed torpedoes to bypass. It was also believed to be an impossible shot. A veteran pilot with a targeting computer couldn't make the shot. It was only made by someone who literally had space magic.

Lets just say that any military design that blows up because of a single shot taken from the outside that does not need to bypass armor is majorly flawed.

It would be like if i could make a modern Aircraft Carrier by managing a 1 in a 1,000,000 shot with my rifle. There was a really major design problem along the way.

And you can say "oh but it was shielded against pellets" to which I answer: but it still vulnerable to slugs.

If I could only hit it by being a literal sorcerer, then yes, I'm still calling it not a design flaw.

EDIT: Let me ask you a question. It's an exhaust port. It was made to exhaust. If they shielded it against every possible thing, so nothing could pass through the shield... then what the hell could it exhaust? They had to allow something to pass through so that it could function. We can reasonably assume that something was physical particles, since physical particles (as in, torpedoes) could go in the other way. Didn't someone around here say something one time about making assumptions that fit what we see, instead of making assumptions that don't and then crying foul?

[BRC]

That, I'll agree with.

Except you are ignoring it. It was shielded. They put a shield on it. This means that they saw that it was a weakness, and covered that weakness. Yeah, it needed torpedoes to bypass. It was also believed to be an impossible shot. A veteran pilot with a targeting computer couldn't make the shot. It was only made by someone who literally had space magic.


it was a Tricky shot.

IIRC, we saw exactly two people make the shot. One of them (A veteran pilot with no space magic) missed, the other (Space Wizard Farmboy) Hit.

It would hardly call that a reliable sample size, nor would I agree that "Literally only a space wizard" could make the shot.


Also, you haven't addressed the idea that they could have known it was a weakness without knowing that it would blow up the station. Letting people shoot inside your super expensive space station is a bad thing, even if it won't blow it up with one shot.

It's not an unreasonable assumption that exhaust ports are a weakness to be protected.

[Cikomyr]

For all we know, Galen himself added the Ray-only shield so it wouldnt look suspicious. So the rest of the staff didnt knew it was a Keystone for the entite Death Star.

[Markozeta]

Has this been touched on? Where were the Bothans? A lot more humans died then Bothans, by my tally. They held the main battleship, but still, they paled to the human death count.

[hamishspence]

Has this been touched on? Where were the Bothans? A lot more humans died then Bothans, by my tally. They held the main battleship, but still, they paled to the human death count.

The OP did say "yes, I know that Mon Mothma in ROTJ was talking about Bothans dying to get info about the second Death Star"

[Peelee]

it was a Tricky shot.

IIRC, we saw exactly two people make the shot. One of them (A veteran pilot with no space magic) missed, the other (Space Wizard Farmboy) Hit.

It would hardly call that a reliable sample size, nor would I agree that "Literally only a space wizard" could make the shot.


Also, you haven't addressed the idea that they could have known it was a weakness without knowing that it would blow up the station. Letting people shoot inside your super expensive space station is a bad thing, even if it won't blow it up with one shot.

It's not an unreasonable assumption that exhaust ports are a weakness to be protected.
It is a small sample size, but we have a third pilot who claims it is impossible, so it's at least larger than two. Still terrible, I'll admit.

Also, there is no way to affirm or deny that they knew the extent of the weakness. Again, it is surrounded by turbolaser guns, and they have a number of TIE fighters for point defense. Both were utilized, and the evil space wizard also went out to personally eliminate the fighters, directly taking out the fighters in the trench.

We can say that the Empire knew it was a weakness, but we cannot say the extent of which. Because, again, if they had shielded it to the point that nothing could get in, then conversely, nothing could get out, which would invalidate the purpose of the exhaust port.

For all we know, Galen himself added the Ray-only shield so it wouldnt look suspicious. So the rest of the staff didnt knew it was a Keystone for the entite Death Star.
Let me ask you a question. It's an exhaust port. It was made to exhaust. If they shielded it against every possible thing, so nothing could pass through the shield... then what the hell could it exhaust? They had to allow something to pass through so that it could function. We can reasonably assume that something was physical particles, since physical particles (as in, torpedoes) could go in the other way. Didn't someone around here say something one time about making assumptions that fit what we see, instead of making assumptions that don't and then crying foul?

[The Glyphstone]

They do seem to have unidirectional force fields over their hangar bays, though, that let solid objects in like shuttles while keeping all the air particles from going out. Installing one of those backwards over the exhaust port to let particles out while blocking things going in seems, on the surface, like something they could do.

[Cikomyr]

Has this been touched on? Where were the Bothans? A lot more humans died then Bothans, by my tally. They held the main battleship, but still, they paled to the human death count.

The fish people who were Ackbard's people and in command of the flagship are named Mon Calamari, not Bothans.

Bothans are fury weasel cat people.

[hamishspence]

Bothans are fury weasel cat people.

There were a number of depictions - some with more humanlike faces, some with very long muzzles.

The newcanon, via Sabine: My Rebel Sketchbook, has gone with one for the more "humanlike" versions:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bothan

[Peelee]

There's a Bothan on one of the planets destroyed by Starkiller Base in Ep. VII. I think that's the only time I've seen one on film.


They do seem to have unidirectional force fields over their hangar bays, though, that let solid objects in like shuttles while keeping all the air particles from going out. Installing one of those backwards over the exhaust port to let particles out while blocking things going in seems, on the surface, like something they could do.

Yeah, that's a good point. My best guess is they just can't install it backwards like that, but I dunno.

[Tyndmyr]

I've got a water heater in the closet. If I shoot it, it's not gonna explode.

If you go to a coal power plant, and set off a bomb, the plant's not gonna explode. Oh, it'll stop working, but won't explode.

If you go to a nuclear reactor, and throw a grenade in the coolant tank, the reactor does not explode.

Military grade technology the size of a planet, + 2 torpedos, = complete boom.

Considering the entire cast of this movie died in explosions, I'm gonna say this is normal for the Star wars universe, not something requiring flaws built in.

[hamishspence]

There's a Bothan on one of the planets destroyed by Starkiller Base in Ep. VII. I think that's the only time I've seen one on film.


This guy?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lanever_Villecham

Not a Bothan.

[Chen]

Let me ask you a question. It's an exhaust port. It was made to exhaust. If they shielded it against every possible thing, so nothing could pass through the shield... then what the hell could it exhaust? They had to allow something to pass through so that it could function. We can reasonably assume that something was physical particles, since physical particles (as in, torpedoes) could go in the other way. Didn't someone around here say something one time about making assumptions that fit what we see, instead of making assumptions that don't and then crying foul?

People seem to be overthinking here. An S bend conduit on the outside of the port (with sufficiently tight bends) would stop a torpedo. Hell an extra S bend PAST the ray shielding would probably be sufficient.

I can't fathom the amount of paperwork that would need to get messed with so someone would miss something like that. I work on significantly less complex things than a giant moon sized space station and the critical failure modes always get analysed. If this thing set off some obscure side system which caused the whole thing to somehow explode fine maybe you could miss it. But this exhaust port went DIRECTLY into the reactor core. When you're looking at failure modes I'd think the FIRST one would be "reactor explodes". You then work back to see what could cause that. I mean its a military installation. You'd be looking to see how nearby explosions would affect the reactor. Shouldn't be a large leap to "torpedo in exhaust port" in terms failure modes.

[pendell]

Lets just say that any military design that blows up because of a single shot taken from the outside that does not need to bypass armor is majorly flawed.

It would be like if i could make a modern Aircraft Carrier by managing a 1 in a 1,000,000 shot with my rifle. There was a really major design problem along the way.


Heck, that's easy. Wait until it's underway in flight operations and fire a shot into a fuel line on-deck. Or into the ammunition storage. Even if it doesn't sink you'll mission kill it but good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire).

In the Star Wars universe, IIRC the Death star uses a matter-antimatter reactor for power. While the exact details of their version of the SF tech are unclear to me, it appears that it's a wonder that Star Wars vessels don't undergo catastrophic conversion to energy and doesn't take much to push them over the edge. IIRC, Anakin in Episode 1 did exactly that to a Trade Federation battleship. One torpedo in just the right place blew the thing up. Which also has real world precedent in 'unsinkable' ships (http://www.sozogaku.com/fkd/en/cfen/CB1011023.html).


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Peelee]

This guy?

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lanever_Villecham

Not a Bothan.

Huh. And here I am just assuming his species. For reals, though, they can't just have a freaking Bothan for once?

People seem to be overthinking here. An S bend conduit on the outside of the port (with sufficiently tight bends) would stop a torpedo. Hell an extra S bend PAST the ray shielding would probably be sufficient.

Funny, since the torpedo explicitly doesn't go to the main reactor. It causes a chain reaction that goes to the main reactor. How do S bend conduits handle explosions?

[Cikomyr]

Heck, that's easy. Wait until it's underway in flight operations and fire a shot into a fuel line on-deck. Or into the ammunition storage. Even if it doesn't sink you'll mission kill it but good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire).



So you will miss this important part of my post?


taken from the outside that does not need to bypass armor

The point is, fuel lines and ammo depots are.. armored. Protected. The point of warships is to withstand some damage, so you need to pierce the armor before crippling them.

If there was location in the ship where such a critical system was exposed to the outside without any protection? Its stupid design, nothing else.

Also, if all techs from Star Wars were so volatile, then targetting the exhaust ports should ALWAYS be the tactical thing to do. But we dont see ships exploding left and right after one shot.

Nah. I like the idea that the Exhaust Post was rigged in a way that it would cause some overload of the Kyber Crystal generator or something. Id buy that.

[Peelee]

So you will miss this important part of my post?



The point is, fuel lines and ammo depots are.. armored. Protected. The point of warships is to withstand some damage, so you need to pierce the armor before crippling them.

If there was location in the ship where such a critical system was exposed to the outside without any protection? Its stupid design, nothing else.

Also, if all techs from Star Wars were so volatile, then targetting the exhaust ports should ALWAYS be the tactical thing to do. But we dont see ships exploding left and right after one shot.

Nah. I like the idea that the Exhaust Post was rigged in a way that it would cause some overload of the Kyber Crystal generator or something. Id buy that.

You don't see ships exploding left and right after one shot (actually, you do, but ignoring that) because they're not the size of a moon. It's not a stretch that the size and power requirements of the Death Star fundamentally change how to protect the thing. If a AA battery fails, it's gonna leak a little acid. If Chernobyl fails, it's gonna devastate the city.

[Devonix]

The Death Star was the Titanic of Starwars. It was too big too advanced to fail. It didn't need sabotage, it needed someone sneaking away with the plans and discovering a weakness that the Imperials in their hubris missed. or deemed unimportant.

To me explaining away the "weakness in the Death Star is the science equivalent of Explaining the force with Midiclorians. " Not quite that bad, but it did hinder my enjoyment even if just a bit.

[Starbuck_II]

Don't get me wrong, I flat out loved the movie. It's just worrying that they seemed to base the plot around explaining away a fan complaint. What next a movie about where the blue milk comes from?

Speaking of that... what about the green milk in this movie?

Only 1 Wilhiem Scream when the girl pushed the stormtrooper in the rain.

I loved that they can use lower tiers of Death Star Lasers. And the shock wave effect.

[Devonix]

Speaking of that... what about the green milk in this movie?

Only 1 Wilhiem Scream when the girl pushed the stormtrooper in the rain.

I loved that they can use lower tiers of Death Star Lasers. And the shock wave effect.

They used the Death Star on lower power during Return of the Jedi to take out the capital ships. And it was Blue milk. It even got it's own closeup.

[Cikomyr]

Don't get me wrong, I flat out loved the movie. It's just worrying that they seemed to base the plot around explaining away a fan complaint. What next a movie about where the blue milk comes from?

They wanted to make a good movie, that somehow tied in directly with the Saga. They went with something that was directly referenced since the first minute of Star Wars's existence, and yet never seen.

The movie isnt about explaining the flaw. Its about getting the plans. Its about overcoming the Titan that is the Galactic Empire and strike the first blow. Proving you can win against their juggernaut.

The Flaw Plot is there to give a personal vibe to the story. But the story isnt about that. Its merely the McGuffin. Just like the Plans were merely the move along plot coupon of Luke's Hero Journey.