I thought the "throw in" of R2D2 & C3PO was worse....almost FORCED so the SW fanboys can be all like "heyyyyy! Its R2 and C3PO!!" nerdgasm

@movie_nazi said:

You eyes just might roll out of your head with the way they shoehorn in things from the original film... ... Christ, these people have no imagination.

But that's exactly what the StarWars audience wants... They want StarWars... over and over again... from the big themes to the tiniest of minutia...

Have you been to any of these movies in theatre? I remember seeing the one prior to Rogue at it's first showing in my area... They cheered whenever there was any of these callbacks to the earlier films...

R2 and 3P0 were bad but i'm willing to look the other way for the sake of tradition in their case.

the Cantina bullies were so forced and out of place. it vexes me that some people actually liked it. if people aren't vocal against this sort of nonsense it will only get worse going forward.

@BarkingBaphomet said:

R2 and 3P0 were bad but i'm willing to look the other way for the sake of tradition in their case.

the Cantina bullies were so forced and out of place. it vexes me that some people actually liked it. if people aren't vocal against this sort of nonsense it will only get worse going forward.

Oh man, it was real bad. Even the blue milk within 2 minutes of the movie starting where they pan the camera like RIGHT on it and I was like, Oh man, this is gonna be a helluva fan-service jerkoff -o-rama. Don't get me wrong. I totally get it. It's really cool to see stuff that is familiar from the previous film you loved. But please, have a little finesse with it. Don't put the camera RIGHT on it and don't be so damn clunky as the ugly cantina guy. Come on people, you can do better than that.

I, too, have a hard time enjoying films without my pretensions getting in the way.

I mean, stormtroopers and "may the force be with you", again? :eyesroll:

@WithADoveInOneHand said:

I, too, have a hard time enjoying films without my pretensions getting in the way.

I mean, stormtroopers and "may the force be with you", again? :eyesroll:

Don't be an ass dude. Stormtroopers are a necessary fixture to story. May the force be with you" is also as common as someone saying "god bless you" when someone sneezes in the SW universe. But come on man, don't show me the ugly guy that gave Luke shit uttering the same exact line. That's just clunky as fuck.

@movie_nazi said:

You eyes just might roll out of your head with the way they shoehorn in things from the original film. The worst one has to be when she literally runs into the ugly guy that Luke has trouble with in the cantina. I mean, he even says the same thing he says to Luke? Christ, these people have no imagination.

Indeed, the droid and bar-bully cameos were truly cringewave inducing.

But this cannot be extrapolated to the entire movie, which is a massive creative and artistic improvement over The Force Awakens - the latter consisted almost exclusively of shoehorned repetition, from rehashed plot points, characters, designs to recycled arcs.

These 2 cameos in RO just serve as a gentle reminder how forced and awful this film could have been

@WithADoveInOneHand said:

I, too, have a hard time enjoying films without my pretensions getting in the way.

I mean, stormtroopers and "may the force be with you", again? :eyesroll:

And X Wings and AT ATs and Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin! In a Star Wars movie that takes place in the same time period as the original trilogy! What a fan service circle jerk. Dumb ass star wars fans.

Have you seen the red letter media video on Rogue One? I think the OP would like it.

There were a couple of things that seemed force, like the ugly guy from the Cantina. Most of the references to the original movies made sense though.

I'll admit that the presence of "death sentence" guy was very weird and jarring. I didn't feel that Rogue One was a bad film, but it'll only ever warrant one viewing for me. Some of the stuff seems pretty natural, and I like how they wove Darth Vader into the movie without making him a primary focus. Hell, I don't even remember seeing R2 or C3P0, they were that inconsequential. But overall, it was a bit less fan service than TFA even though some of the sequences were clearly major callbacks to other films in the franchise. (The activation of the Death Star cannon and the Hoth callback battles with AT-AT's spring to mind.)

Disney is trying to milk the franchise and they feel as though using callbacks is the best way to tap the nostalgia for older viewers while also giving enough new material (and new faces) to keep younger viewers interested. As I've said before in other comments on TFA and RO, it all feels extremely calculated and designed rather than an organic, creative process. But that's Hollywood for you.

Please view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfJRm0WssOE

See, the movie takes place immediately before A New Hope. The ending of Rogue One comes right up against the start of that movie.

I REALLY don't understand how people are criticizing things like AT ATs or the Death Star appearing in the movie as some sort of shoehorned fan service callback.

Now Star Trek Into Darkness, that was a movie full of forced, nonsensical references to previous movies, to the point it got painful. Yes, there was a little bit too much of that i Rogue One but I don't think it was nearly as bad as people make it out to be.

@movie_nazi said:

@WithADoveInOneHand said:

I, too, have a hard time enjoying films without my pretensions getting in the way.

I mean, stormtroopers and "may the force be with you", again? :eyesroll:

Don't be an ass dude. Stormtroopers are a necessary fixture to story. May the force be with you" is also as common as someone saying "god bless you" when someone sneezes in the SW universe. But come on man, don't show me the ugly guy that gave Luke shit uttering the same exact line. That's just clunky as fuck.

I took that comment as sarcasm. I thought the poster was mocking the people complaining about things that were a major part of the original trilogy appearing in Rogue One.

@Jedan Archer said:

But this cannot be extrapolated to the entire movie, which is a massive creative and artistic improvement over The Force Awakens - the latter consisted almost exclusively of shoehorned repetition, from rehashed plot points, characters, designs to recycled arcs.

Please don't get me started on TFA. Worst SW film since TPM. Yes, I agree that creatively R1 was a HUGE improvement from the farce awakens. However the film suffers from poor character development where you can give 2 squats of who eats it and when. Definitely better but still lacking.

@movie_nazi said: Please don't get me started on TFA. Worst SW film since TPM. Yes, I agree that creatively R1 was a HUGE improvement from the farce awakens. However the film suffers from poor character development where you can give 2 squats of who eats it and when. Definitely better but still lacking.

I have to say that this really applied to me. I felt nothing for Jyn, Donnie Yen, Forrest Whitaker, or anyone else in the end. They all seemed like caricatures scientifically constructed to pull specific heart strings. Little girl orphaned when mom killed and dad abducted. Raised by some strange, mysterious, disfigured hermit whose origins and connection to her family are never adequately explained. (BTW, why does one character always seem to have a respiratory problem in EVERY movie?!) Dad, ethically challenged, still constructs a WMD but feels REALLY bad about it and designs a flaw so it can be destroyed. (Doesn't the head of engineering ever proof read his diagrams?) Scrappy, but ethically challenged, team leader torn between his attraction to the girl and his sense of duty.

I'm not saying RO is bad, I'm really not, only that the lack of originality is striking. At the end, as the bodies fell, I truly felt nothing. And when the final sequence happens (SPOILERS) it was almost a photocopy of the ending of Deep Impact. Weird. It just feels like they cribbed an awful lot of the story beats from other movies. (see my postscript.)

And as for the presence of AT-AT's and other machines, yes I agree that they fit the movie. What I call a "callback" is when a particular shot nearly mirrors the original, such as (as I said) when they activate the Death Star laser cannon and you see the beam pass behind one of the gunners on its way out to destroy the planet. You have to believe that some of those shots were intentional, you just have to.

PS: This is my problem as I get older. I've seen lots of movies in my youth that, while they were technically inferior, felt much like movies such as Rogue One. This is probably why that coveted "18-49" demographic exists, at least partially. By the time you reach your late 40's, you've pretty much seen all the tricks Hollywood has to offer. These movies lean too heavily on action and too little on characters. At some point, you begin to want more meat on the bone you're chewing on.

Star Wars re-scripted to accommodate the prequels:

Leia: I'm a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan.

Vader: You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Plus, like, I just saw your exact god damn ship in a warzone five minutes ago! There were like a million other people who saw your exact ship leave that zone and me following you here!

Leia: No I wasn't.

Vader: Ah, yeah you were.

Leia: No I wasn't.

Vader: Are we really doing this? dude, I just murdered like a bunch of your guys as they were rushing away with what was clearly the plans!

Leia: No you didn't, I just saw your troops murdering them and then you sauntered in afterwards like a total badass.

Vader: No, no. That was after the blood thirsty murder spree.

Leia: Wait, you murdered a bunch of people then decided to just stand there while your troops came in and murdered the second group of people? That kind of ruins the image of you being above doing the dirty work.

Vader: Mate, I murdered a bunch of kids while the clone troopers murdered the Jedi alright? I ain't above anything. Speaking of dirty, look out the window! it's Tatooine, that stupid sand planet. Yuck! I hate sand. It's coarse and rough and...

Leia: Irritating!

Together: and it gets everywhere!

Vader: Oh my god! It's like we're kindred spirits!

Leia: I know right! Wouldn't it be crazy if you were like my father or something.

Vader: Hahaha totally! but no, if you were my daughter, I'd totally force sense it and stuff right now. But I'm frankly feeling nothing.

Leia: Is that so?

Vader: Or it could be less than nothing.

Leia; Good to know. So you agree?

Vader: That's right.

Together: What a waste of a lovely night.

they break out into a La La Land dance number