Why the Amount of Vader's Screentime Was a Mistake

Yup.

 

The hell would the Emperor do? "No Lord Vader, I'm going onto Scarif to cut up these rebels in a sequence that would ruin the movie." On the Vader part, I thought it was done brilliantly and if there was more of him it would seem they were just taking the essence and phenomenon of Vader just for the film to be awesome.

 

Politics.

Killing Rebels on a rebel ship during a ruthless rebel attack completely justified. Once the plans made it to the Princess' hands aboard a senator's ship far away from the action the rules of engagement changed. Once they caught the Tantive 5 they boarded the ship and searched for evidence. Hence the very different approach.

Again politics. The senate wasn't disbanded until the first act of ANH. That's why the Alliance had disavowed Saw. Because they were still apart of the Senate trying to work the system. The attack to get the plans was their largest and most daring act. It was likely also used as grounds to disband the Senate once and for all.

 

Plausible deniability. Any record of the transmission - which could have been intercepted by the Rebels, who were able to intercept Scarif base's communication with Tarkin - would have been proof that the Emperor knew about the DS prior to the Senate being disbanded, and, in Tarkin's words, "rally new systems" to the Rebels cause.

 

Rogue One spent a decent amount of time discussing the political ramifications of the Death Star. In fact (getting back to the theme of this thread), the entirety of Vader's first scene was all about politics.

 

Except for the bureaucratic infighting within the Empire, Saw Gerrera's dismissal from the Alliance for being too radical, and the Bloodline novel.

{insert quote about war and politics being the same thing}

 

Suggesting that there were political things you would have liked to see isn't the same as saying "Disney doesn't give a crap about politics." We're getting galactic politics.

I think we'll have plenty of opportunities to see things on capital worlds. IMO, Rogue One didn't need to go there.

 

The importance of this mission to the Empire is established by the fact that the Rebels have the plans to the Death Star. These plans might contain the key to destroying it and thus it is important to get them back. How does showing the emperor build on this? It is already clear, at least to me.

As for the Imperial Palace.... Not sure why we need to see that now. How is this going to advance the plot? There will probably be other films set in the period between Episodes III and IV and those will present opportunities to show the Imperial palace.

 

This is some of Ralph McQuarrie's concept art for Had Abbadon (later Coruscant) for Return of the Jedi, right?

In the new canon from James Luceno's Tarkin novel, the Emperor has renovated the former Jedi Temple, which rests atop an ancient Sith shrine, and transformed it into his Imperial Palace.

 

By "this timeline", do you mean the OT, or Galactic Civil War era? Because I think we're going to be seeing a lot of that in these spinoff films, to be honest.

 

Klai, they didn't make your film. You seem to take that personally.

 

Well that's an ambitious claim. Be careful not to choke on it.

I do think it'd be cool to see Coruscant at some point, and see how different it is. I think a lot of people think that planet would not fit in with the GCW, but that's likely because they're thinking of PT Coruscant. I think GCW Coruscant would be a different, darker place.

Interesting that you have your own versions of the films out. I'm sure a lot of fans, myself included, have our own headcanon of how things should or shouldn't have happened. Not really sure much more politics is needed. Maybe some ethical deliberations of the Death Star, but even if we got that, I don't think Palpatine would be necessary. We already have plenty of cameos that people are raging over for better or for worse- another unnecessary one would be more bloat.

 

The problem with this is, Star Wars didn't really become "kids films" until Lucas decided to dump a bunch of teddy bears onscreen in Return of the Jedi. Originally, when he made the 1977 film, Lucas was aiming at moviegoers between the ages of about 12 and 18. Check Rinzler's "making of" book for this. Kids liked it, of course, but part of what captured my nine year-old attention was the fact that this WASN'T a kiddie film. I'd seen Benji and Charlotte's Web in the theater by then, but Star Wars was something entirely different and far more interesting to me. Look at the violence of the first five minutes of that movie and tell me that Lucas was aiming at the Jiminy Cricket set. He absolutely was not. Yes, for 1977 moviegoers there was the wonder of having never seen anything quite like Star Wars before, and it did get a bit more fun and humorous once Han and Chewie showed up, but it was as much a war picture as anything. Had it been a "kids film", as you insist it was, I can't imagine that I'd have glommed onto it the way I did. I loved it at age 9 because it wasn't yet another warm, fuzzy bit of kiddie fare.

I still remember when word came out that the sequel would feature a puppet-based character voiced by Frank Oz, there was some concern among fans (at least from what I saw in letters to some of the sci-fi magazines at the time) that Empire Strikes Back would be a muppet-ized version of Star Wars aimed at small children. Fortunately, of course, it turned out not to be that at all.

I respect your opinion about Rogue One, though I do not personally share it. However, I'd humbly suggest that you not support your opinion using an erroneous view of what the original film was, or what it was intended at the time to be.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 9, 2017, Original Post Date: Jan 9, 2017 ---

So, Leia gets the plans to an Imperial planet killer in hand, the Empire knows they have the plans, she's just watched the Death Star glass a large chunk of one of the Empire's own planets, and... she decides to take a couple weeks vacation and jet around the galaxy for awhile before she gets around to picking up Obi Wan Kenobi and then delivering the Death Star plans to the Rebellion?

Even if they made a few random hyperspace jumps first to try to throw the Empire off their scent, they'd have still arrived over Tatooine hours later at most.