Rogue One Discussions: SPOILER ALERT!

Interview with Doug Chiang on the design of all of the Rogue One gear: "We Set the Bar So High": Doug Chiang on Designing Rogue One | StarWars.com

Could say that in most every landing scene in the movie.

Did anyone else notice pretty much everyone makes great time on foot?

I thought Jyn was 1-dimensional. Could have brought the whole thing down if the rest wasn’t so good.

Total waste of Mads Mikkelsen. He’s awesome. His role was not. I would have had him switch roles with Forest Whitaker.

Vader was epic on Ackbar’s ship.

Nice easter eggs for the fanatics.

CGI Tarkin was OK. CGI Leah was creepy.

ATMO

  1. ANH
  2. ESB
  3. TFA
  4. R1
  5. ROTJ

I have a hard time dismissing knowing the ending of R1 for the last 40 years. While the journey to the end was quite good, it being so obvious takes away from the story.

agreed. Most of the Tarkin scenes were dark which probably helped. I agree on Jin. She really didn’t have a character development arc. She went from “F this” to full on rebel leader within the span of one scene. I liked her earlier in the movie when she was skeptical and kicking the butts of people who were trying to ‘rescue’ her… but the rest of the cast and story I found entertaining… of course you are right, you know the ending. Same reason I never saw Apollo 13… you know they get home. I heard it was a great movie though :slight_smile:

Someone with similar thoughts, presented in a creative and humorous (IMO) way"

LOL, exactly. It was kind of a hard pivot of a total perspective shift. Nitpicking, I still loved it.

My opinion at the moment:

1: ESB
2: ANH
3: R1
4: ROTJ (really a close tie for 4, I really liked Jedi, particularly the Luke/Vader fight scenes… but maybe I just have father issues :slight_smile: )
5: TFA 9some of this will depend on where they take the new characters, but loved the nostalgic ride)

Interesting to think about R1 and ANH both having someone come in at the last moment to essentially save the film. R1 had the Tony Gilroy rewrites and reshoots. ANH had Marcia Lucas make some critical changes during shooting (she’s the one who decided to sacrifice Obi Wan), and then really come to the rescue during the editing process, as George Lucas’s original rough cut was apparently an incoherent mess.

Contrast that with the countless films where studio meddling or a second creative force comes in to run a potentially good movie completely off the rails (Blade Runner and Alien 3 come to mind specifically with respect to sci-fi.) It’s really a wonder that both R1 and ANH came out as well as they did.

Maybe because with ANH no one was really expecting anything? Alien3 had to top Aliens so i could see the pressure being on. With Blade Runner i think it was probably just too weird, but luckily we have the director’s cut (and like 8 other cuts), it is almost hard for me to imagine the original ending and voiceover now. I had to rematch it on youtube.

And then of course there was this alternate ending that never made it:

In the end, the movie could never hold up to the complexity of the book, but I still think it is a great film, especially given the context of the time.

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Saw this recently and I have a theory. The character that confronts Luke in the cantina in A New Hope, don’t know his name, but it’s the guy who gets his arm cut off by Obi Wan. In Rouge One they bump into this character in the city before it is blown up by the Death Star.

So, this may mean two things. One, he and his accomplice somehow miraculously escape before the city is destroyed, since they appear in A New Hope. And two, this may also mean that Han and Chewie were in the city at the same time.

The Falcon may have possibly been one of the few ships fast enough to escape, and I theorize that the cantina characters were on it, maybe due to paying Han, or Han owing them a debt, but regardless this may explain how they all ended up in the cantina together on Mos Eisley.

Eh?

I like it.
Would Greedo also have been in Jedha as well, then? Silently pursuing Han Solo from planet to planet?
On the other hand I like thinking about Han and Chewie just down and out on Tatooine, chilling in the cantina with the other regulars from 9am, drinking blue milk and gin.

Finally saw it last night.

Likes:
-Space battles were incredible
-Set details throughout were perfectly inline with continuity of ANH
-Crashing two Star Destroyers into each other to destroy the deflector shield was very well done
-Ending was amazing. How close they came to losing it so many times.
-Rebel Fleet jumping to hyperspace, only to collide with a Star Destroyer - whoa.
-Death Star laser sniping the top of the tower… on-par with cutting Darth Maul in half.
-Also loved how Forrest Whittaker’s character had a, sort of, hand built Vader-style suit to keep him alive.
-Death Star has more than one power setting? Who knew?

Dislikes:
-CGI Tarkin and Lea blew it. Uncanny valley is not ready for prime-time (although, certainly some of the best close to human character animation I’ve ever seen on the big screen. Hats off to the crew behind those characters)
-Must every building in the Star Wars universe be infinately tall/deep caverns? How do you build such a thing?
-Building the Death Star - Would have been cool to see something actually being constructed, or some kind of equipment being used, rather than what seems like “the force” propelling the weapon in place.

The Uncanny Valley is real, Tarkin was really distracting, I feel like the movements were what gave it away first, so much like a video game character.

Really enjoyed this one a lot, saw it two days after Chrismas with my kids, wife, dad, sister, and brother-in-law. Everyone enjoyed it, my wife thinks it feels much more like an action movie than what Star Wars is for her, but had no major complaints and she liked it.

After enjoying the movie so much, it was great to see Doug Chiang’s name among the first three to run in the credits. Art of Star Wars Episode One (in spite of the movie) was a great inspiration for me learning design sketching and I remember trying to find anything and everything about Doug Chiang at that time, still use the Grey marker sketching technique that I first learned about from his website.

K2SO was funny and my kids loved him without going the Jar-Jar route. The visuals on Lah’mu at the beginning we so striking, I wasn’t thinking, just absorbing. Looking forward to seeing it again.

I just picked up the ‘Art of Rogue One’ book, which is very similar in format to the ‘Art of TFA’ book. Forewords by Doug Chiang among others. He is now some VP of Creative but still picks up the stylus and contributes spaceships and monsters. Lucasfilm has a real dream team of concept artists to work on their marquee franchises; Ryan Church did a lot of work, big fan of his, and a ‘creature concept designer and sculptor’ named Luke Fisher did the big push on K-2S0. Matt Allsopp also did some spaceship work. Really cool learning about their process - these guys can really PRODUCE good work on deadline - they even did the “one minute sketch” drill on the U-Wing. Recommend the book!

I was told by a friend that R1 was crap so had low expectations going in.

Loved K2, Chirrut and Baze because I’m and IP man fan. The battle scenes were epic. Love Ben Mendleson because I’m an Aussie. If anyone on here hasn’t seen his early work like Idiot Box get into it.

Great movie. Will definitely see it again before it leaves the theaters.

Also agree that Jin’s character could have developed more. She’s certainly no Rey, who IMO is one of the best Star Wars universe characters of all time.

I need to pick that up.

I actually hold the exact opposite opinion. I would need to watch Rogue One again to ensure my analysis is correct, but I thought that Jyn was one of the greatest SW characters of all time, and much better than Rey. This is probably because I have a good amount of familiarity with the Extended Universe and I could see a lot of the inspiration for several characters and plot points. Jyn’s personality and character is based on that of Kyle Katarn (who stole one part of the Death Star plans in the EU, and my favorite SW character of all time) from the Star Wars: Dark Forces series of games and thus my brain kind of filled in the character development areas that were glossed over in the movie. Like Kyle, she has a cynical outlook and disdains politics, but that is because of a perceived betrayal by Saw Gerrera, (both Jyn and Saw were rebels in the past) which made her distrust even the alliance. Deep down inside she supports the rebellion (not necessarily the alliance) because of the Empire’s oppression, taking of her father, and killing her mother. People talk about how it seems she made a complete 180 very quickly, but it wasn’t a 180 as much as a rekindling of her past convictions, which was a result of seeing her father again in his message (and his death) and witnessing the destruction of Jedha that confirmed the danger of the Death Star. This explains how she was willing to even lead the Rogue One team at Scarif and die for the cause (all of this part was inspired by the Battle of Toprawa and Red Hand Squadron from the EU.) So while the movie probably did this part too quickly, she didn’t necessarily lack character development, we just needed more time for it.

Rey of the other hand felt to me like a wannabe that got sucked into the conflict she always wanted to help out with despite not putting in much effort on her own to make a difference other than reacting to the situation she was dropped into. Rey was way too over powered for being a newbie of a force user. Her most interesting facet to me was her willingness to forsake her involvement with Han or the Resistance to wait for her family again of Jakku, but that part wasn’t very developed either. Rey wasn’t the only character to suffer in TFA though since I’ve seen much better imperial defector stories than that of Finn (Like Brenn Tantor from Star Wars: Force Commander.) This combined with J.J. Abrams shallow style, and the TFA story seeming like a lazy mashup of ANH, SW: Threads of Destiny (fan made movie,) the typical defector story, and Jacen Solo from the EU.

Overall my rankings would be:

R1
ANH
Revenge of the Sith
Empire
TFA

Call me a heretic for putting a prequel above Empire, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I think R1 was the best combination of my favorite story and characters, the good old trilogy art style, not overdoing the nostalgia like TFA, and that amazing ending.

Allright Mr Markers were going to have to give you a 30 day suspension from the forums for your heretical Star Wars rankings :slight_smile: Just kidding, interesting to read a different point of view on it from someone who has read the EU novels… personally “I Love you… I know” catapults Empire to the top not withstanding Hoth, Lando, Boba Fett, Cloud City and all the rest of it… :slight_smile:

Ditto, appreciate the other perspective from someone familiar with EU. Seems like the current Lucasfilm leadership would be dumb to omit so much of that material and alienate the fanbase. Makes scriptwriting (and mechanical and creature design) that much more difficult, right? Good thing designers are used to working within constraints.