Rogue One Vs The Last Jedi - Stay with me on this one

Rogue One. Easily. I liked it better than TFA. It feels like the most earnest film in the new era. Brilliant lighting and shot composition.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 11, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 11, 2018 ---

thats interesting. RO made you feel bored, but you liked TLJ more. I'd never seen that sentiment before. Hmmm.

 

TLJ to me. But as said above it's really comparing apples to oranges. R1 has a very simple story. It is all about atmosphere. It's Star Wars porn basically. But it failed on the character front. All the individual storylines (Jyn-Galen, Galen-Krennic, Baze-Chirrut etc.) sound great on paper, but fail on screen. The main reason to this is the oversaturation. It crammed way too many characters into a two hours long movie. The pacing is terrible imo. Not as bad as TFA, but not good nevertheless. Same with the editing.
Many scenes have incredible sets and costumes (like Jedha), but we barely get to see any of it, because there is barely a shot which dosen't cut away in like a few seconds... Very annoying.
The Bor Gullet scene leads nowhere. And why does Bodhi jarringly interupt the ending battle with an overlong plot explanation about putting a cable to the right place? And so on.

It's the most atmospheric Star Wars movie though. But without proper character developement it dosen't worth too much. Basically all you need to watch is the final 10 minutes. I think some of the fans overrate it because of the great music and sentimentalism.
It's all up to your taste. I personally find great character arcs far more important than atmosphere or lightsaber porn.

You may downvote now, when ready...

 

I don't disagree with virtually anything you said...but a lot of that makes me like Rogue One. Because it feels frenetic and intense. It feels like an old war movie to me.
Pacing problems in Star Wars never bother me because every single Star Wars movie has them. Every. Single. One. lol

The character thing is the big issue for me with placing Rogue One in the upper tier of SW films. They either really needed to lean into the war movie and just give us rough edge character or dive full into Star Wars mode and make it all about the characters. They tried splitting the difference and it felt...odd.

 

The 'making of' Rogue One should be fascinating (probably it won't be, but it should be).

Because it seems like one version had a doubly long battle on Scarif with the data tapes having to be transported to the comm tower, and that would be a cool 'war' film.

But that wasn't the one we got. We got a more complicated Seven Samurai with a war film ending.

So I wonder if the reshoots were to establish Jyn and Galen's meeting and Galen's end on Eadu? Without which, we have little for Jyn to go full 'rebel' if we go directly from her seeing Galen's message on Jedha and then they're just straight on to Yavin and set up the elongated Scarif invasion.

I don't know. I liked the film so I don't really care, but I really want to know what Edwards originally had in mind.

 

Same. I feel like it went too "war" film.

I'd really like to see Edwards get his own war film someday. Feel like it could really suit his style.

His relationship with Disney/LFL seems to be good though.

 

Siege of Mandalore
Directed by Gareth Edwards
Story by Dave Filoni

Starring Tessa Thompson as Ahsoka Tano and Temuera Morrison as Captain Rex.

 

Yes. On that matter it absolutely prevails. It perfectly nailed ANH's Death Star atmosphere. Nailed the language, the determinated military-feel and the cold professionalism of the leaders (a matter which both TFA and TLJ seems to belittle for some inexplicable reason). It even improved it because of the magnitude and modern effects. Although I found it dissapointing that the Empire yet again was portrayed virtually ineffective without the Death Star.

I find the Lucas made movies pretty well paced. The OT very definitely. Especially ANH and ESB. Considering what ANH had to do (introducing you a whole world) it did an incredible job. I love how by every scene the world and lore gets bigger and bigger with the least amount of exposition.
No wonder it won an Oscar for editing. The only Lucas made movie where the pacing bothers me the way it does in TFA or R1 is RotS.

Rogue One should have been a two part movie. Instead of Solo we could be getting part 2 now... Imagine the same story with proper character developement and arcs, where you actually get to know and care about the characters by the ending. It could've easily been the best Star Wars ever made (mainly, because it has the best theme of the bunch).

It's still good nevertheless, but could have been far better.

 

I think we will have to agree to disagree about the pacing in the OT.
ANH and ESB can really bog down and come to a crawl.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 11, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 11, 2018 ---

I'd be down for that.
I don't particularly care about Tano but the general idea of that works for me.

Speaking of Filoni, in the recent video with the story group, I really found it interesting how much input Filoni had with certain things in TLJ considering how afterwards a good chunk of folks have been asking for him lol

 

Rogue One is one of the best Star Wars movies ever made.

The Last Jedi is probably the worst.

 

Rogue One - Star Wars eye candy with some of the most forgettable, bland characters ever created for Star Wars, in a completely unnecessary
story about stealing a hard drive.

I'm absolutely baffled as to why some people think it's so great.

 

Guys it is very emotional. But how can it be as impactful, or as emotional, after the first time. After you know what will happen. I guess I disagree there.

Great movie though. Really great.

 

believe me, not as baffled as some of us are as to how people are saying TLJ is the greatest SW movie ever made. Like....how sway?!

 

Absolutely!

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 12, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 12, 2018 ---

I love that moment! Bodhi's excitement is incredible and realistic to me: he is the only one on the ground who understands how the Rebels can win, and he is in a rush to get that information out so they can help him.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 12, 2018 ---

Couldn't you say that about any movie you love that you've seen over and over?

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 12, 2018 ---

Art will always be a matter of personal taste. I am baffled that some people think Pink Floyd music is boring, or that there are folks who just don't find Star Wars interesting.

 

I prefer Rogue One, i've grown to love that film over the last year, granted the film defiantly has some issues, but for me it works better as a film the the Last Jedi.

 

At least I actually gave a crap about the people in TLJ.

 

Frankly the only character with an actual personality in Rogue One was KS20 (Did I write well his name?). For me Rogue one was kinda meh, I did not like it but i did not hate it. Also for me the last scene of darth vader (although it was spectacular) ruined a little bit the death of the main characters, since I felt that they took away the weight of it by focusing the attention on darth vader, it's like they wanted the people to forget what happened.

 

Rogue One in my opinion is the only decent star wars film disney has made so far. It was a genuine surprise as I thought the whole idea of making a film solely around how the death star plans were stolen was ridiculous. So I was really surprised that the film turned out to be quite entertaining. It was great to see more weird planets back in star wars again and I was impressed with how disney fleshed out a pretty decent story over such a small line that was in a new hope's opening crawl.

I think the reason RO is a much stronger film than TLJ is the way the story and characters are fleshed out. TLJ just felt like it existed solely to blast on fans expectations.

 

It is really interesting to see the wide variety of opinions we SW fans have. I liked R1 but it is personally my least favorite of the recent SW movies. I agree the last 1/3 of the movie was fantastic. However, I had trouble connecting with the characters. K2SO was the best character and he was a“sidekick” character. I enjoyed TLJ much more than R1. I won’t say that R1 is a bad movie because I did enjoy it. Rewatchability (nice made up word) is a problem for me. I have seen TLJ more than R1 and I own a copy of R1. I can watch R1 and enjoy it but it is not one I will just think to grab and watch. I think it is due to the lack of connection to the characters.

On a side note, my daughters liked TLJ the best of the current SW films and my wife who is more of a casual fan, hasn’t been able to make it through all of R1 when she has tried to watch it. She liked TLJ.

 

Last Jedi is not only the best Star Wars movie since Empire but before it as well. It hit me to my core like no movie in 35 years easily.

Rogue One is excellent but more of 5th place level of excellence. Definitely the best prequel so far though I'm hoping Solo takes over that spot. The last third and superior world building allow Rogue One to edge ahead of The Force Awakens though.

 

In regard to writing, direction and acting; I prefer "Rogue One". In fact, I prefer "Rogue One" over both of the Sequel Trilogy movies. I think the ST are directionless crap.