Star Wars: Rogue One

[Wild_Kraken]

I just watched Rogue One for the second time earlier today. The first act is pretty scatterbrained and oddly paced, but like others have said it pulls together in act 2 and 3. Unfortunately it's too different from the other SW movies to really rank relative to them.

[ORCACommander]

the vader scene is pure fan service. But it does a good job illustrating that without overwhelming numbers infantry stand no chance against a sith

[Fixer]

I do love this movie but the first half is discordant wit hte second half and a lot of that boild down to Jyn's motives or lack there of. But one big glaring issue is that war council meeting where everyone in the room is like, we can't go to war that would be uncouth! god damn it you are the REBEL alliance. you have been conducting an insurrection for years at this point and now you balk at a little bloodshed?

I would also like to add the United Federation of Planets Admiral to that. That's not his name or title, but you know who he is.

He's the guy that gives stupid, illogical orders that end up sabotaging the heroes efforts, so the main cast can look braver for having disobeyed them.

I left the theater unable to recall anyone's name, wondering why characters did the things they did, baffled at the performance of Forest Whitaker, baffled at the opening sequence taking place a decade before anything else and adding nothing to the characters.

It you've read the prequel to Rogue One, Catalyst, it fills in a lot of those blanks.

Orson Krennic was a skilled manipulator who over several years managed posing as their friend convinced Galen Urso, a staunch pacific, to put his scientific skills towards developing the technology for the death star superlaser by convincing him the research was for power generation. In the end he discovered the ruse and fled from Coruscant with his wife and child in tow. Having been marked as fugitives. The opening sequence was Orson finally catching up with them.

Sadly those character traits aren't really on show from either Galen or Orson in the movie.

What's most glaring for me is the issue with Jyn's past and motivations. She's raised as a militia fighter and has a convincing skillset regarding that background but nothing that should really motivate her to fight for the Rebellion to the point of giving her life for it. In fact UFP Admiral's actions should have convinced her to do the opposite of that.

[Rocketboy1313]

You know what else I dislike about this movie? They kind of illustrate how silly the idea of a Death Star is.

That thing fires twice and creates an extinction level event on each of the planets it hits. So what exactly is so horrifying about blowing up the WHOLE planet when you are perfectly capable of scorching a world? Hell putting an engine on a big enough asteroid would be a cheaper way of accomplishing the same goals having a Death Star would accomplish without all the hassle.

You can't put harder science fiction depictions of devastation in a science fantasy film it just draws attention to how silly the concept is on its face.

[Fixer]

The Death Star is a terror weapon and a symbol.

The idea behind it was that it's mere existence would force worlds into compliance as it would be utterly unstoppable by any force brought against it, and would end any rebellious world quickly and decisively.

Plus Roks are more of an Ork thing.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Death Star is overkill, but aside from the above-mentioned symbolic reasons, a certain amount of firepower is going to be needed to punch through the strongest planetary shields, perhaps?

Hmm, was Scarif's up when the powered-down shot hit? I can't recall.

[Wargriffin]

They take the Shield down cause thats the only way to transmit the codes

[Wild_Kraken]

The Death Star is overkill, but aside from the above-mentioned symbolic reasons, a certain amount of firepower is going to be needed to punch through the strongest planetary shields, perhaps?

Hmm, was Scarif's up when the powered-down shot hit? I can't recall.

The shield itself is up when the Death Star destroys the base. That's one of the reasons for the Death Star, that level of fire power is needed to break through planetary shields. Remember in Empire, Vader's fleet couldn't touch the rebel base from orbit and it had the Executor in addition to however many ISDs.

[Rocketboy1313]

The planetary shield thing just had me thinking of "Space Balls".

"1-2-3-4-5? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard of in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!"

And further begs the question, "Why wasn't Death Star II shielded from a facility on its own surface if this shit is possible?"

[Fixer]

Death Star II was still under construction when the battle of Endor was under way. There were huge gaping holes in the structure.

Death Star I had no shield generators except over a few crucial points, as the thing was so large and powerful they didn't consider extra protection to be necessary.

Starkiller base, for all it's idiocy, did have shields. Which can be deactivated from a random unmanned control room... with no-one noticing or being able to countermand that order. Okay, just forget Starkiller base.