For our last podcast of 2016, we present our Spoilercast discussion of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story! As always, we start off with spoiler-free discussion about a bunch of new films, but then dive deep into the new Star Wars film. Plus, Adam shares what might be his favorite film of the year!
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Awesome spoilercast!
You do need to do everything it takes to bring Gary back to talk about this movie! This just has to happen
Princess Leia was really bad. sorry but she was…
To Norm and whom else it might concern: since you mention the premium membership option and I think I might maybe have perhaps, perchanche, peradventure noticed or perceived that you feasibly possibly have had a drop-off in your youtube viewership: According to Roberto Blake, the channels losing views after YouTube’s changes are the ones who don’t put enough work in writing a proper description of the videos, especially with regards to tagging. Even if I’m wrong and you haven’t noticed any changes, I think it is telling that tested.com was the first thing that popped into my head when Roberto said that. According to him, the chance of popping up in peoples suggestions are now unrelated to how many views or subscribers you already have. It’s mostly text based SEO now
Really enjoyed the Spoilercast. If you haven’t seen the film yet, I would recommend not reading any more of my comments below, though I keep my comments intentionally vague, I’d stop reading now.
I could have happily watched another 60 minutes worth of the podcast discussion, where you could delve nto the perfectly earned motivation that Jyn gets as a result of her last scene with her father and how that fuels her actions in the third act of the film. Also worth discussing is the interesting interplay between the two rebel factions and the internal struggles the film portrays regarding ‘how far is too far, when rebelling’, and the parallels that theme has with current real world events. An interesting concept that many seem to barely parse through during their reviews is the prevalent notion that this isn’t a Saga film, nor should it have the accoutrements of a Saga film. I would completely disagree. This IS, by it’s very subject matter, a Saga film! I do not understand how it is not so. And referencing the OT triad of Luke, Leia, and Han as the basis for Saga status is not a strong enough argument for me to exclude it. The story of the Empire, the Rebellion, Vader, and the plans to destroy the Death Star is about as ‘Saga Canon’ as it gets folks. It’s entirely deserving of Saga status. After all, it has a Skywalker in the movie! (that’s not giving anything away from the trailers). I could make stronger arguments here for character inclusion warranting Saga status, but will leave it at that. Oh, and the battle scenes, and the Y-Wing attack run, and the last ship we get to see at the very end of the film…and other ships we see at the end…simply heaven for a man who was 11 years old in 1977, watching the wonder of Star Wars on the big screen for the first time, and 14 when Empire came out in theaters. I am so, so happy with this movie.
It was great! Please try to get Gary in to chat about it 🙂
Hell, make it a Talking Room episode!
Glad to hear you enjoyed it, but alas, I did not. The pacing seemed off to me and the writing fell flat. There is the aforementioned issue of the uncanny valley which constantly jarred me to the point I couldn’t look directly at the character. But my biggest issue was that the characters didn’t feel fleshed out at all and the chemistry that supposedly developed between them felt dictated rather than portrayed, which took away any kind of emotional stake for me. Just my take.
OTOH, I completely agree with Adam about La La Land, which absolutely took my breath away and left me buzzing long after. Though, too, I agree with Adam’s nitpick about the vocal mix during the songs, which seemed oddly muted.
Great discussion guys! Rogue One is amazingly well done.
I didn’t mind Tarkins look too much, I was just glad to see him. I thought Leia was much worse.
I recommend for those who haven’t to read Catalyst and Tarking by the way, it improves this movie so damn much.
My wife and I saw the movie in Imax yesterday, and she didn’t even notice that Tarkin was CGI until I pointed it out after the movie. Granted, we don’t watch a lot of movies in the theaters thanks to toddlers in the house, but I thought the effect came off really well and didn’t detract from the story at all.
I also wanted to comment that I didn’t realize Tarkin was CG. I had forgotten that Peter Cushing had died. I was a little confused about how the same guy could look the same 30 years later, but mostly I was just too excited that everything was falling into place for Episode IV, and that they got all those people together to make it happen. (Bail Organa!) Without any spoilers or trailers, you just had to know that Leia was goin to be in the last scene, but I thought it would just be the back of someone with the same hair and robe, and there would be shadows or something. So at the end, when they open the room and she’s there, I was like “yup, knew it.” Then she turned around it was amazing. That was the only time I got a little bit of the uncanny valley, but was too excited to let it ruin the scene.
Another possibility: I should get new glasses…
Some advice for a Rebel Alliance (or any alliance really) that wants to keep a secret base, well secret. Don’t send strike pilots to a battle where they can get captured and interrogated FROM the base that you are trying to keep secret 🙂
There is ABSOLUTELY no way that the Empire doesn’t know about Yavin 4 after the events of Eudu or . Scarif.
At the beginning Adamn and Norm spoke about The Expanse not being available for streaming. It’s on Netflix at least here in Europe. Isn’t it available in the US?
Good movie. I agree, I like that Rogue One was self contained and didn’t end as a cliff hanger.
Just for fun, I imagined how I would have preferred to see the character of Chirrut develop.
So, he’s not a Jedi but he kinda wishes he was. So let’s say he carries around a little marble. During a down time he sets the marble down onto some flat surface.
Baze, disdainful: “Here he goes again.”
Chirrut holds out his hand and concentrates, eyes focused in the direction of the marble. “Did it move?”
Baze: “For the last time, no, you idiot! Besides, if you did have the force you wouldn’t have to ask!”
…
At least once more, during a down time, we see Chirrut pull out the marble and try again.
…
Chirrut’s final moment. He needs to get to that switch. He starts walking. “I am with the force, the force is with me, I am with the force…” He gets gunned down. Broken, unable to stand. He raises his hand and looks toward the switch. “The force is with me.” He closes his eyes. The switch flips.
Baze rushes to him. “You did it, Chirrut!”
Chirrut: “I know.”
yeah, the tarkin cg was a bit of hubris. the state of the art is pretty advanced, and they can easily get away with cg-ing background characters or people we only see for a short time (leia), or pretty flat characters.
but to try cg-ing peter cushing, an actor who oozes an incredible amount of presence just by standing around and looking, and as a role that had some actual high-fidelity acting to do, not just, say, a hologram transmission? that had to fail as badly as it did.
in more topically appropriate words: the ability to replicate a dead actor’s likeness in cg is insignificant next to the power of acting.
other than that, i’m pretty damn happy with rogue one. much happier than with the force awakens, which fell really flat to me. i guess there is more good to be had in telling stories in the star wars universe (i.e. going the expanded universe route) than in expanding the mainline star wars saga.
Thumb Wars reference for the win!
Not Kurusawa, but … come on, that was Zatoichi!
I had a (decidedly non-uber-fan) friend of mine also tell me they didn’t realize tarkin was CGI. Who also did no know about Peter Cushing’s death. So I don’t think you are by yourself in not realizing this.
For myself, seeing Tarkin in the early scene as cgi was jarring and took me completely out of the movie. I almost wish they had shot the scenes with his back to the camera or via hologram messages or something else to get the character there without having to have the actor…
That being said, I loved the fact that he was in there as the “antagonist to the antagonist” as yall so eloquently put it. It made it seem right!
I didn’t like that the Tantive 4 was running from the battle in that last scene. In Ep4 vader says the plans were beamed to the Tantive 4… the entire time I was watching the end sequence of Rogue one and they were talking about beaming the plans I was expecting to see them jump to the Tantive in deep space (or even on approach to a desert world) with someone receiving the plans…
Somethings I liked about this Star Wars film: (almost) no Force, about more for less ordinary people living in extraordinary times.
I wonder if they could have done with even less of the “upper echelons of power” in this film. The power struggle for the ownership of the Death Star? Who cares — it could have been cut from the film. Grand Moff Tarkin, et. al. you could have cut as well. Put them in the extended edition for the fans. Film goers can connect the dots.
I felt even that the opening bit with Jyn as a child was unnecessary. The few seconds of flashbacks later in the film was enough.
i agree about the grunt-level perspective working really well. and i also agree about the zatoichi-ness of donnie yen’s character. 🙂 both his acting of the role, and the role itself were perfect, in my opinion.
you could’ve put pretty much any jedi/force-user in the troupe and they’d be extraordinary just by what they can do. to have a character whose skill level is above and beyond, and yet its exact source and workings is never fully revealed, puts the film’s perspective that much more on the eye level of normal people.
i guess part of why tarkin was featured so much was the amount of groundwork in the clone wars series. the way he took command of the death star in rogue one aligned pretty well with his portrayal there.
another parallel: vader at the end of rogue one and in star wars: rebels. in both, he’s got that slow, but brutal and unstoppable-tank kind of style.
Did Cushing/Tarkin being CGI jump out at me, sure.
At the same time, this is a Star Wars movie and a lot of the characters are going to be either CG or enhanced by CG, so I figured “Cushing has passed, so just think of this as Tarkin, not Cushing” and got right back into it. 🙂
OK really guys, a spoiler-cast ALREADY?!?!?! Damn how about wait a week at least before you do this next time.
Correct.
Very shortly after K2 dies – heartbreakingly and badassedly at the same time, by the way, holy cr*p! – I realized, “Oh god, none of the leads are making it out of this movie alive”, and only minutes later, my daughter (fellow nerd of 17 whom I took to see this) turned to me and whispered, in a hushed-even-for-a-whisper, breathless tone, “I don’t think any of them are going to live…”.
I didn’t have the pre-velation (is that a word? A revelation you have about something you haven’t experienced yet?) that Will had, that since it’s stand-alone it must be sequel-free etc. – I mean, yeah, there’s *a* sequel to it, but since this is an intergalactic war there’s bound to be more stories to tell, even set during the same time as the Skywalker-based one. You could easily have imagined, as I did, that one or more Rogue characters would pop up somewhere in the not-about-the-Skywalker-family SW films we are now definitely going to get.
At least, though, as that daughter of mine pointed out, they all got to have meaningful deaths – and moreover, this: You know the usual trope of someone intoning “for [person/event]” as they do something important, and then die – the one where, in-universe, those characters receive the recognition, sometimes completely explicitly, of having died for [person/event]? Well, the way Rogue One was written, that recognition falls on us, the audience. We already know, of course, that the contribution of the fighters who stole the Death Star plans is recognized (“…many bothan spies died…” etc. Now we also know why Mon Mothma’s delivery of that line was so somber) – but the emotional “s/he did it for her father/friend/freedom/peace” etc., the moment of pathos, that fell to us, the audience, because everyone else around was dead.
What was up with the uneccesary, rapid open & close iris that Jyn has to climb thru to get to the transmitter dish? It felt like the crushers in Galaxy Quest.
Yah. but there’s a big difference between a CGI alien and a CGI human face. The phoniness and weird plasticity is immediately obvious when you’re looking at something you see every day. I also didn’t think the guy they got to imitate his voice sounded very good.
Overall, it was a stunt that didn’t add much to the story. Putting Tarkin on screen was unnecessary.
As of today, is available on Amazon Prime in the US but not Netflix.
*A Interesting. Here in Europe it’s on Netflix but not Amazon Prime. These content deals seem to vary greatly depending on location.
I really enjoyed this movie. Right as the movie ended I had the thought, Wow, this was like a Shakespearean Tragedy, everyone dies.
I was also a little confused. While in Jedha’s Temple our Jyn and Cassian bump into Ponda Baba and Cornelius Evazan in the streets. Then the Temple not moments later gets blown sky high. How did they live and get transported to the Cantina Bar in a new hope.
First thought: They put waaay too much faith in their ability to make believable CGI humans.
Second thought: Doesn’t feel very Star Wars-y which could be seen as a positive or a negative depending on the viewer but I think it’s a good idea to pull back on that stuff a bit. Especially with these side films that aren’t part of the main series.
Third thought: Pretty OK film! Not tremendous or amazing or anything like that and it had a decent amount of illogical decisionmaking in the story (as these films usually do) but all in all I thought it was a solid effort. Definitely didn’t leave nearly as much of a sour aftertaste as ep VII did. (Although it lacked ep VII’s new charismatic cast.)
My biggest gripes with it are that the characters don’t get a lot of development or have a lot of charisma and that the plot of the film is very standard for this type of film. There are no real surprises or interesting developments. It’s just another film in the same vein as the Dirty Dozen and The Wild Bunch, only PG-13.
You Guy’s nailed all the great points to which I loved this Film . Seen it twice and going back .
Not sure if someone else has already posted (waited to watch this until I saw Rouge One), but The Expanse is available to steam on Amazon Prime in the US.
I must admit, when Jen’s mom got shot, I turned to my wife and whispered, “Never be a parent in a Disney film.”
R.i.P Carrie Fisher
Sad news: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/27/entertainment/carrie-fisher-obit-star-wars/index.html
Glad I wasn’t the only one to notice the resemblance between Jedha and Masada. I actually went back and looked for the concept art they used in designing it. It looks like they painted over a picture of Masada.
We saw it as a family this week, I did enjoy it. It was fun seeing some of the characters we first saw in May 1977.
The last scene was a bit more special since the recent death of both Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. I plan later to watch both “Singing in the Rain” and “Star Wars IV” (I wish I had the original version, but it was on laserdisk!). Movies done by mother and daughter when they were only 19/20 years old.
Much better than Episode 7, some of the characters were a bit one dimensional, some of the cg was a bit dodgy including the doubles, but overall not a bad movie. Couple of nice Spaceballs nods.
It was beautiful. It took me 30 minutes or so to get that.
I wasn’t a fan of the planet hoping with labels at the start but when they stopped it was nice to have it all established.
Caught me when they blew the doors of the prisoner transport Jyn was in. I was transported back to Ep4, blowing open the airlock, it looked, sounded & smelled the same and from there it took me along for the ride.
Tarkin threw me the first time but it was easy to drop back in to the Star Wars galaxy & ignore his cgi.
Didn’t see them all dieing till K2S0 went down then it all sank in, like ALLLLLL of the weight of their sacrifice & everything in EP4 all hit at once and just kept building right up to Carries departure (in my mind EP4s opening sequence started rolling while Vader watch the ship leave)
Vader plowing through the rebels was exactly what I’ve been waiting to see him do. It felt like a gift for being a loyal Star Wars fan.
Loving the way it’s all coming together & looking foward to The Last Jedi waking up from his nap & Han Solos Solo.