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 Peregrine wrote:
Are you forgetting about ANH and ROTJ?

Lucas didn't direct RotJ but you have a point about ANH. The issue with that one is that the "Battle of Yavin" is really just the attack on the Death Star.

 Peregrine wrote:
prequels aging is that the CGI is 90% of the movie

There's actually not a lot of cgi in ep1. About 30% - there's actually a large amount of practical fx (miniature) work. The stadium for the podrace is a practical model, not as many think, a CGI artifact. The CG just wasn't up to the task yet. The R2 units were all either R/C or had people in them for example.
I know several prop makers and set builders who worked on it (since it was partially shot in Sydney). It's about 50% CG/prac in ep2 and 80% in ep3. They added in more CG FX as the tech got better and it (the hardware) DID get better between films. Exterior shots for ep2 (Geonosis dunes) were filmed at my local sandhills in Stockton (North of newcastle).

*If you watch the BTS featurettes on ep1, where george waxes lyrical on how good CGI is now, the scenes where he says that stuff, feature very little in the way of actual CGI. He's conspicuously silent on the scenes that DO have CGI in them* Three of the mythbusters crew also worked on ep1 (Adam, Tori and Grant).

Chirrut's staff is called a "lightbow" and was a customary weapon of the "guardians". It's capable of both impact energy release and directed (ranged) shots - it's not just a (walking) stick. He carries it in two parts normally, he uses it later, assembled, on scarif, as his crossbow thing.

That Later CGI song in the SE of Jedi is "Jedi Rocks" and you can blame Williams for that one. He's also responsible for the one that it replaced, "lapti nek" and the ewok "Yub nub" song. Well, you can blame Joseph Williams, son of John and singer/songwriter for TOTO for them. Since he did them all.

Went to see it last night with the wife, wasn't expecting too much. Came out loving it to be fair. Enjoyed all the little cameos and thought the space battle was great. Grew up with the originals and for me it fitted in nicely.

There's bound to be people that didn't but sod it I came away as a young boy again.,. So for me it's job well done Disney. Now bring on a Bobafett movie damn you ....

Sorry to say this, but Boba Fett IMO, has to be the most useless and overrated character in modern popular culture.

People often overlook what he actually did in the films i.e nothing, in favour of ideas that a lot of fans have projected onto him, being this hard as nails character, when in reality he was no such thing.

Yeah, I have no doubt that there is a million spin-off novels chronicling his greatness, but that doesn't detract from his feeble big-screen appearances.

A similar reaction occurred with Captain Chrome in the Force Awakens trailer - a two second glimpse morphed into projections about how bad-ass this character was going to be, in the Fett tradition, and in the end, the character ended up as being useful as a bucket of horsegak.

http://www.glixel.com/news/how-a-dd-style-rpg-brought-star-wars-back-from-the-dead-w457301

Slavicsek was like Adam in the Garden of Eden, giving names to all of the creatures in God’s creation. For instance, there’s a bizarre alien that’s glimpsed briefly in the famous cantina scene from Star Wars that has a long curving neck and eyes on either side of its wide, flat skull. The Kenner toy line simply referred to the creature as Hammerhead. “I convinced Lucasfilm that ‘The Hammerheads’ wasn’t a good name for a species,” he says. “If anything, they’d take that name as an insult.” Slavicsek renamed them Ithorians, and the sourcebook described the herd-like society they had developed on their lushly forested homeworld.
He also declared that the alien creatures with conical protuberances on top of their heads, like Oola, the dancing slave girl at Jabba the Hutt’s palace, were the Twi’Lek. “It’s neat to see names I invented 25 years ago show up now in toys and cartoons and novels,” says Slavicsek.
The sourcebook was studded with short stories and narratives, written as if they were excerpts from actual works from within the Star Wars universe. “We put it together in such a way that statistics were just a small part of it,” says Slavicsek. The book didn’t just describe the characteristics of the giant space slugs that almost devoured the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back. There was also a clever pastiche of Moby Dick presented as a brief snippet from the autobiography of a spacefarer who had witnessed one ship captain’s destructive obsession with hunting down a space slug.

Oh I'm aware that he didn't really do anything on screen but a movie of his own would be a great chance to flesh him out.

 xKillGorex wrote:
Oh I'm aware that he didn't really do anything on screen but a movie of his own would be a great chance to flesh him out.

I'm uneasy about these spin-offs. Han Solo is a great character but this new young Solo film fills me with dread.

Part of Solo's charm was his indifference and that was due to Ford's portrayal, and if you know Ford's history, then you'll know how much he struggled with getting on in Hollywood and had a life away from Hollywood. That life experience filtered into the cynicism of Solo.

In short, it's very difficult to replicate that.

He did outsmart the heroes and at least attempted to talk back to Vador. And his armor's cool.

Il go in to watch the solo films like I did with rogue one last night by not expecting too much. Saves having high hopes dashed if it's not so good. As it is i can't wait to watch rogue one again. Ps damn right Bobthehero, Fetts armour is beyond cool.

 chromedog wrote:
There's actually not a lot of cgi in ep1.

It didn't come across that way when I watched it with Rifftrax not long ago. Seems like the vast majority of it is actors against a green screen. It looked awful. Liam Neeson was awesome though.

Saw it this morning, got home and watched ANH (ANH Revisited, obviously!) straight away... very cool!

I loved seeing Dr Evazan and Ponda Baba in it. I can just imagine them getting off-planet, heading to Tatooine, sinking some space beers in Chalmun's Cantina when they find out how they just got out before the massive mining disaster hit.

Thinking themselves to be the luckiest, most-wanted men in the galaxy, they decide that they can do anything - "I know! Let's pick on that on that dopey looking farm-boy!"

I've got a small issue with Rogue One; I've just watched the scene in ANH were Vader confronts Leia about the stolen plans. Vader says that several transmissions were beamed aboard this ship (the Tantive IV) by rebel spies. But now according to rogue one, that's not what happened. The plans were beamed not directly to the Tantive IV but to the rebel capital ship instead, where they were then literally carried onto the Tantive IV by hand, with Vader directly behind them.

This also makes the "diplomatic mission" cover story even less plausible. Vader could have just told them that he literally watched this ship flee the battle after personally chasing the plans onto it. At least in the past they could have reasonably expected to get away with that lie. Now they look as stupid those idiots on bait car who deny stealing it even though they're literally caught red handed doing so.

I'll be very grateful if anyone can help me reconcile this conflict.

Plausible deniability that it was the same ship? They probably did the spaceship equivalent of 'switching the plates' in hyperspace.

Maybe the 'several transmissions' weren't the plans themselves, but instead various instructions?

I think that beaming to a ship that contains a ship still qualifies, and is a much more logical line of questioning than "the plans were beamed to the ship that contained this ship and hand carried along a long corridor while I slaughtered everyone in there.

Regarding the Corvette itself, I don't know if ships have transponders or other identifying signals, and if so I would imagine that they were turned off. The Empire likely just knew that they were chasing after a Corvette, but couldn't be sure about which specific Corvette. Another explanation is that the Senate still existed and that having Leia on board gave it certain immunities that prevented Vader from just blowing it up.

 d-usa wrote:
I think that beaming to a ship that contains a ship still qualifies, and is a much more logical line of questioning than "the plans were beamed to the ship that contained this ship and hand carried along a long corridor while I slaughtered everyone in there.

Regarding the Corvette itself, I don't know if ships have transponders or other identifying signals, and if so I would imagine that they were turned off. The Empire likely just knew that they were chasing after a Corvette, but couldn't be sure about which specific Corvette. Another explanation is that the Senate still existed and that having Leia on board gave it certain immunities that prevented Vader from just blowing it up.

I assume they intended to destroy it, but then they scanned it and didn't see any lifesigns so they assumed it misfired for the cruiser it launched from.

It's worth noting that Leia's story is given absolutely zero credit in ANH anyway. Vader doesn't even consider it a remote possibility. Now we know why.

I watched it last night and really enjoyed it.

The battles in space and on the planet at the end were very well done and the appearance of Vader's Star Destroyer was fantastic, as was the use of the Hammerhead Corvette.

Lots new ships for X-wing and Armada to come.

Was very suprised how it ended for the main characters as I thought endless spin offs aside but in the same timeline as the old movie would be the direction they would head in.

Much more enjoyable that the force awakens and IMHO if this had been released before TFA alot of the expectations for that would have been released.

I saw it for the second time, this time with the wife. I felt the last few minutes just made the movie. This second time I was trying to watch a lot of the background stuff and just waiting for those last few minutes. I give the first 90% a C+ while the last few minutes brings the whole thing to an A-.

The wife is not a huge SW fangirl, but has a passing familiarity with the SW movies. She felt the same way about the last few minutes as I did. She also did not know Tarkington or Leia were CGI until I told her in the car afterwards and even then she thought I was pulling her leg.

I think the space battle at the end was legit. I thought it was just two star destroyers against the rebel fleet and the rebels enjoyed the upper hand in space. I think the rebel ground forces, after enjoying success in the beginning, got bogged down and eventually taken out by superior numbers for troopers.

I totally understood why Tarkin blew up the records base. From TFA they tell us the Death Star had a copy of all Imperial records. With the DS becoming operational the records facility at Scariff became obsolete and a liability.

 LunarSol wrote:
It's worth noting that Leia's story is given absolutely zero credit in ANH anyway. Vader doesn't even consider it a remote possibility. Now we know why.

Yeah, it actually explains why he's so pissed off after immediately boarding the Tantive IV; everyone is lying right to his face and he (more or less) knows the truth.

TBF Vader being angry and homocidal never required to explanation.

Those explanations are plausible. Now I can go back to enjoying it!

The battle above/on Scarif while good, suffers from movie numbers. Something like five rebel ships make it through the shield, yet during the battle something like twenty are flying around planetside. Even my wife laughed and commented on it.

Characters and tone were better than TFA, and I enjoyed it a lot more. Which is amazing as going in I was dubious over yet another trip down Death Star Lane.

 d-usa wrote:
I think that beaming to a ship that contains a ship still qualifies, and is a much more logical line of questioning than "the plans were beamed to the ship that contained this ship and hand carried along a long corridor while I slaughtered everyone in there.

Excellent

DarthDiggler wrote:
I saw it for the second time, this time with the wife. I felt the last few minutes just made the movie.

Yeah I did the exact same, and felt the same way! The ending is really, really great. The movie itself develops a bit slowly, but when you know the battle that's coming at the end it gives you a lot to look forward to, and they really tie it together well

Saw it. Loved it. Think that that may be the best Star Wars space battle ever (I may be a little biased, because Y-wings are my favorite ship).

 Manchu wrote:
TBF Vader being angry and homocidal never required to explanation.

Exactly!

Now Kylo Ren on the other hand...

One of the best things about Rogue One is getting to see Vader in his armor go on a rampage on the big screen. Not only was it equal parts awesome and terrifying, it also makes his reputation in the eyes of the rebellion justified now. It really canonizes what he know of him in the expanded universe stuff, and it shows that the original era can still keep up with modern standards of awesomeness. Plus, the way it was done really suited him. Rather than going in fast, it was calculated and relentless. I think he barely moved his arms above his shoulders. It befits a seven foot tall cyborg.

I always thought that Vader suffered from space marine syndrome and couldn't actually lift his arms above his head without causing himself severe pain.

Just back from the theater. Really good movie. Good retcon of the stupid exhaust port.

Two things

1) I am appalled that the next wave of X-wing ships does not have a K2SO crew card yet.

2) The air strike at the science base. That made no freakin' sense. Firstly, they were using exclusively lasers for what was obviously a torpedo type target. Secondly, what the hell are you air striking a subterranean base for? The only reason the strike did anything at all was that every relevant person on site happened to be conveniently standing in one big pile outdoors at the time.

 Alpharius wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
TBF Vader being angry and homocidal never required to explanation.

Exactly!

Now Kylo Ren on the other hand...

I always thought Kylo's behavior was a really nice nod to someone trying to imitate someone else without really 'getting' them. He's an angry young kid who's been told how scary his grandfather was, how he executed minions for failing him and kept everyone intimidated with displays of the Force...but he's viewing it through this warped lens of stories, his own emotions, and Snoke's manipulation. He's not making examples, he's throwing tantrums, because this is how he thinks Darth Vader acted and nobody's got the guts to tell the angry Sith kid that he isn't doing it right.

Darth Vader didn't need to hack up computers. Darth Vader hacked up rebels.

 Manchu wrote:
TBF Vader being angry and homocidal never required to explanation.

I didn't imply that it was required at all, I just find it to be an interesting backstory nugget.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Just back from the theater. Really good movie. Good retcon of the stupid exhaust port.

It didn't retcon anything. It was a way to exploit the weakness, not the weakness itself (the briefing in ANH says that the exhaust port leads to the reactor, and a torpedo would cause a chain reaction which would destroy the death star). It's more of an expanded explanation, not a retcon. Galen probably expected them to do some daring commando insertion to plant a bomb, but everything moved too quickly and they just needed to get it done so they looked for a way for a fighter to do it.