Star Wars ~ Rogue One: revisited

Just watched it for what must be the 5th time in 2.5 years.

Yes I know we’ve been here a few times since its release in 2016, but this film is just what we Star Wars original generation have been waiting for since just before the Ewoks appeared in Return of the Jedi and it all started to go horribly jar-jar binksingly wrong.

Why do I like this movie?
Well it’s a “proper” Star Wars movie and neat prequel to A New Hope, the original. It’s gritty, tidy, fighty and employs excellent use of CGI which doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a cartoon.

It’s also true “Rebellion” and dumps a lot of the usual Star Wars “Force” mumbo-jumbo and gets back to the in-your-face hand-to-hand combat that threaded through the early movies but is up a level for all us old enough to have seen the originals 40 odd years ago. I remember queuing in Leicester Square in the early ‘80s to see Retern of the Jedi after a meal at the Hard Rock Cafe. Good times.

Here’s a review by Variety which I think nicely sums up the movie and why the Boomer generation like it so much. But if you’re still not Star Wars viewer, like @FMF for example, then I suggest watching this followed by the the original A New Hope and then The Empire Strikes Back. After that Lucas starts to oil himself but Return of the Jedi is still worth a viewing if you are smitten.

Thoughts?

https://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-review-1201939299/

@divegeester said
Just watched it for what must be the 5th time in 2.5 years.

Yes I know we’ve been here a few times since its release in 2016, but this film is just what we Star Wars original generation have been waiting for since just before the Ewoks appeared in Return of the Jedi and it all started to go horribly jar-jar binksingly wrong.

Why do I like this movie?
Well it’s a ...[text shortened]...

Thoughts?

https://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-review-1201939299/

True, I'm not a Boomer, but I'm still a SW fan. I think that Rogue One IS a better film than the prequels or the last trilogy, but I am a fan of Lucas' story, and the lore behind it, including parts and stories you didn't get if you only see the movies. Because of this, I read a lot of the background stories before Disney selfishly dropped them from the canon. The entire storyline is probably way too expensive to bring to the big screen and so it survives through other media, like books, animated tv series, and comics. It is a far-reaching story, truly epic in reach, and far too big to be confined to cinema. Heck, I even liked the movie Solo from 2018. I can't wait to see a big screen treatment of the Admiral Thrawn story, if they ever get that far.

@suzianne said
True, I'm not a Boomer, but I'm still a SW fan. I think that Rogue One IS a better film than the prequels or the last trilogy, but I am a fan of Lucas' story, and the lore behind it, including parts and stories you didn't get if you only see the movies. Because of this, I read a lot of the background stories before Disney selfishly dropped them from the canon. The entire ...[text shortened]... I can't wait to see a big screen treatment of the Admiral Thrawn story, if they ever get that far.

Can you tell me a little about “Solo”, how good is it compared to Rogue One for example?

@divegeester said
Can you tell me a little about “Solo”, how good is it compared to Rogue One for example?

I have to say, it wasn't quite as good as Rogue One. RO comes off as more polished, it's a good film even if sci-fi is not your genre. Solo is a little more rough around the edges, and it suffers from having characters that we know from the first trilogy played by different actors (after all, the characters were younger at the time of this story). Alden Ehrenreich as Solo and Donald Glover as Lando were passable, but still not the obvious star quality of Ford and Williams.

I liked the story, though, as I said. I think in all of Lucas' stories, the actual story is so good that I can look through bad acting and hokey plot devices as long as I get to fill in the gaps in the already existing storyline. This is why I didn't think the prequel trilogy was nearly as bad as everybody said it was. I thought being able to see the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi in his prime and seeing just what drove Boba Fett to be who he became later was actually worth sitting through the entire rest of the trilogy. In Solo, I loved the scenes around the Sabacc tables that fleshed out the story we've heard before of how Solo took possession of the Falcon from Lando and just where the dice came from (not to mention the whole Kessel Run scene, which was fabulous).

Solo was another Disney movie that came out without enough marketing (John Carter, anyone?) and the box office suffered as a result.

@divegeester said
Can you tell me a little about “Solo”, how good is it compared to Rogue One for example?

Solo is a great film if you like the genre.
I liked to see the relationship between han Solo and Chewbacca.
I am with Suzianne about Lando.

Solos has a "happy" ending as opoosed to Rogue one if you like that.