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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Or, you know, that they were traveling with the rebel fleet.

[Sirus]

Well yes, that goes without saying. But if Tantive IV had managed to escape, Leia would almost certainly have needed protection if the Rebel Alliance had tried to make the Death Star and its planet-busting abilities public knowledge. I'm pretty sure that at least some of the Rebellion's leaders wanted to do exactly that.

[Cthulhu]

I'm really more of the Plinkett mind on this one, that it's entirely dependent on brand recognition and that if you're not fiending for more star wars it's a pretty paint-by-numbers sci-fi movie with an ugly non-ending (everyone dies?!  They dont' even destroy the thing?!).  But it's got lots of references and fanservice and other things to get your dopamine receptors going off and hopefully distract you.

I like to compare it to Fury Road.  What would Fury Road be if Mad Max didn't exist?  What would Rogue One be if Star Wars didn't exist?

[Dorsidwarf]

I'm really more of the Plinkett mind on this one, that it's entirely dependent on brand recognition and that if you're not fiending for more star wars it's a pretty paint-by-numbers sci-fi movie with an ugly non-ending (everyone dies?!  They dont' even destroy the thing?!).  But it's got lots of references and fanservice and other things to get your dopamine receptors going off and hopefully distract you.

I like to compare it to Fury Road.  What would Fury Road be if Mad Max didn't exist?  What would Rogue One be if Star Wars didn't exist?

I'd never watched a mad max movie and Fury Road is one of my favourite movies of all time. (Because it's bonkers fun)


Also you're being reductionist ab adsirdio there. You might as well say "Bluh, episode IV sucked, it's just boring classic archetypes in space" or "Episode V sucked, the ending was boring all they did was run away there was no major conclusion"

Treating films from a series , especially one like Star Wars , as if they exist in a vacuum is silly

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I've never even seen Fury Road and I'm pretty sure it would have been the bomb had it been solo. Everybody I've seen rave about that movie will just not shut up about Furiosa and talks about Max like he's barely in the film, so the Mad Maxness of it seems irrelevant.

[catoblepas]

I have some very mixed feelings about the movie. It felt very rough around the edges- I think those reshoots ended up making some rather drastic changes to the movie-and it shows. This is pretty noticeable when comparing it to the trailers. There were points in the movie where it seemed pretty disjointed.

I felt that they cut back and forth between way too many different planets. Three would have been enough the movie was jumping all over the place in the beginning. I felt the plot in general could have been a lot less convoluted in general.

The fanservice was far less intrusive than in Force Awakens, with some noticeable exceptions.

Lots of new designs introduced. I liked the new Rebel lander/gunship. The TIE striker seemed like the Imperial equivalent to the Rebel snowspeeder/airspeeder and I liked it. I bought the black stormtroopers as a sort of elite Imperial soldier, though it wasn't clear to me if they were supposed to be krennic's unique personal bodyguard or not.

However....

Nitpicks Incoming

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Imperial Army (ATAT/ATST crew) already had three uniforms, they didn't need another. Why not just reuse the ATST or ATAT uniforms?

The shoretroopers seemed very superfluous as Imperial special forces when Deathtroopers were already in the film-besides they didn't seem terribly special in their combat abilities or fighting style, and didn't seem to be amphibious assault soldiers despite what their name would imply. They could have replaced them with Imperial Navy troopers and it wouldn't have mattered.

The AT ACTs were really silly. Me and my friends speculated from the trailers that they were being used to transport materials for the construction of the death star, which rebels were attacking to sabotage the construction of the death star. But they were just kinda....there. Popping up out of nowhere and then evaporating in seconds as soon as the rebel air force arrived. It was just bizarre and their poor combat performance makes their cousins the AT AT look less intimidating by hindsight-like the rebel base on Hoth could have been saved if they had just peeled off a X-wing or two to take out the Imperial assault force. ATSTs probably should have been used instead.

Capital Ships are made out of paper in this movie. Three Y-Wings knocked out one star destroyer, and I'm pretty sure I saw an X-wing drill a hole through the command tower of the other one at one point as well. On the Rebel side, aside from the Hammerhead, none of them really seemed to do anything except explode.

It was neat to see nods to the EU like the Juggernaut or the Hammerhead. It would have been nice to see some old clone wars tech in the rebel fleet or perhaps some Z-95s.

No Kyle Katarn.

The general disjointed-ness and nitpicks aside, I had a few somewhat bigger problems with the movie:

1) They really changed Tarkin.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In Rogue One he's clearly Vader's subordinate, rather than his equal or superior. The Death Star is no longer his creation, but rather he's just some backstabbing politician that stole the credit for it. This seems like a rather big retcon IMO. He even goes on his knees before Vader in one scene!

2) How Leia and the Tantive IV was handled in the movie. Other have gone over this-it was really clumsy and odd.

3) The Final Battle

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The final battle seems to be a far cry from the Rebel victory described in the opening crawl of ANH. Pretty much the entire Rebel Alliance was destroyed.

I enjoyed the movie, but I don't think it really measures quite up to Original Trilogy standards.

[Sirus]

Was that actually Tarkin kneeling before Vader? What would Tarkin even be doing there instead of hanging out on the Death Star? I thought that was just some random dark side disciple.

[Dorsidwarf]

Capital ships have always been paper-thin and vulnerable to single-man bombers. Remember how in VI the Executor, the most powerful warship in the galaxy, was destroyed after some fighters blew up its main shields and another one went kamikaze into the bridge?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's not Tarkin, no. And Tarkin's power is lesser in Rogue One than A New Hope, specifically because of his secured command of the Death Star.

There's no clear relation of Tarkin and Vader in the Imperial hierarchy at all. Vader doesn't have any rank outside of being the Emperor's second, and Tarkin is just a governor, but once he obtains command of the Death Star I can guarantee you no other governor matches him. That's the Empire for you.

Vader not killing that one guy in A New Hope is out of a combination of respect for Tarkin's competence and being the commanding officer of the Death Star, much in the way that nobody on a Navy vessel can countermand the ship's captain, even if they outrank them.

Tarkin's character is absolutely one who seeks to attain practical power through any means available, it's no surprise he intended to command the Death Star regardless of who technically created it.

[Taricus]

Capital ships have always been paper-thin and vulnerable to single-man bombers. Remember how in VI the Executor, the most powerful warship in the galaxy, was destroyed after some fighters blew up its main shields and another one went kamikaze into the bridge?

That was less the ship being made of paper as it was a rebel pilot going 'REPUBLIC ACKBAR' through the bridge and basically knocking out it's command systems. A little hard to fight when the systems managing all the information goes down and you can't co-ordinate weapon batteries. And given it's shields were down prior to that, it'd effectively mean it's a sitting duck for the rebel's larger ships.

And it was technically a rebel victory. They aren't exactly able to be choosy about what's a victory in space or not.

[Sirus]

That's not Tarkin, no. And Tarkin's power is lesser in Rogue One than A New Hope, specifically because of his secured command of the Death Star.

There's no clear relation of Tarkin and Vader in the Imperial hierarchy at all. Vader doesn't have any rank outside of being the Emperor's second, and Tarkin is just a governor, but once he obtains command of the Death Star I can guarantee you no other governor matches him. That's the Empire for you.

Vader not killing that one guy in A New Hope is out of a combination of respect for Tarkin's competence and being the commanding officer of the Death Star, much in the way that nobody on a Navy vessel can countermand the ship's captain, even if they outrank them.

Tarkin's character is absolutely one who seeks to attain practical power through any means available, it's no surprise he intended to command the Death Star regardless of who technically created it.

Also no surprise that he was so prepared to destroy an Imperial installation that just so happened to have his chief rival sitting on top of it.

This is the same guy who, in the EU, landed a warship on top of a peaceful protest and killed hundreds. Dude's basically a sociopath.

REPUBLIC ACKBAR

[catoblepas]

That's not Tarkin, no. And Tarkin's power is lesser in Rogue One than A New Hope, specifically because of his secured command of the Death Star.

There's no clear relation of Tarkin and Vader in the Imperial hierarchy at all. Vader doesn't have any rank outside of being the Emperor's second, and Tarkin is just a governor, but once he obtains command of the Death Star I can guarantee you no other governor matches him. That's the Empire for you.

Vader not killing that one guy in A New Hope is out of a combination of respect for Tarkin's competence and being the commanding officer of the Death Star, much in the way that nobody on a Navy vessel can countermand the ship's captain, even if they outrank them.

Tarkin's character is absolutely one who seeks to attain practical power through any means available, it's no surprise he intended to command the Death Star regardless of who technically created it.

It was a balding CGI Imperial officer wearing a cowl over his head with the same voice actor. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Tarkin.

And going by ANH, Tarkin is pretty clearly either Vader's equal or superior. Remember Leia's comment about him holding Vader's leash? He breaks up the 'bickering' between the Moffs officers and Vader, and even gives him a few orders.

As of Episode III, Tarkin had been working on the Death Star, or at least prototypes of it, for two decades. Apparently put in charge of it by the Emperor himself. So it seems a bit....odd that he'd find the need to steal credit for the Death Star.

As for the Executor from RoTJ, it was taken out by two critical attacks first to the shield generator, then to the bridge. R1 has simple blaster cannon runs from starfighters will really trash space ships and stations.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It was a balding CGI Imperial officer wearing a cowl over his head with the same voice actor. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Tarkin.

Do not pass Go, do not collect 200 Imperial credits, they're no good out here.

And going by ANH, Tarkin is pretty clearly either Vader's equal or superior. Remember Leia's comment about him holding Vader's leash? He breaks up the 'bickering' between the Moffs officers and Vader, and even gives him a few orders.

As I said, there's no formal rank between the two of them. One's a governor who attained command of the Empire's most powerful weapon, one is the Emperor's boogieman. Vader simply respects Tarkin, and Tarkin is probably on the short list of people who Vader would actually get shit from the Emperor for killing, unlike, say, certain Moffs who aren't as important as they think they are.

As of Episode III, Tarkin had been working on the Death Star, or at least prototypes of it, for two decades. Apparently put in charge of it by the Emperor himself. So it seems a bit....odd that he'd find the need to steal credit for the Death Star.

It's called delegation. Tarkin is a military man, he has no skill set to be responsible for the breakthroughs in the Death Star project. Krennic assumed he'd be rewarded for his genius with personal command of the end result, an assumption that would prove very false. He was no good to Tarkin after finishing the Death Star, and if anything was a liability for his security leaks or his capacity to be one of Tarkin's rivals.

[Cthulhu]

I've never even seen Fury Road and I'm pretty sure it would have been the bomb had it been solo. Everybody I've seen rave about that movie will just not shut up about Furiosa and talks about Max like he's barely in the film, so the Mad Maxness of it seems irrelevant.

That's what I mean.  Fury Road is a great movie that stands on its own merit, whereas Rogue One felt like it was 100% riding on nostalgia and image-recognition.

[Starver]

Rogue Twenty-Right  No, wait, it's Twenty-Left...

Another near miss for Solo.