@Snarkasm said:
Honestly, the mouths were the only truly almost-there parts for me. Tarkin, when he spoke, had a little too fluid movement in his lips, and Leia's upper lip didn't match well enough. Everything else I could easily look past - they did an absolutely fantastic job. We've come so damn far.
Ironically, Vader's voice sounded to me like they went and got somebody who could do a good Vader/James Earl Jones accent, but apparently that was actually him, so... that was interesting to me. Did he sound different to anybody else?
He sounded and even moved differently. I met David Prowse and we talked for a good ten minutes or so at the tail end of a signing when the special edition of Empire hit a local theater in Baltimore. He was super nice. For an aging fellow even, he still had a stature about him, tall, broad, wide shoulders, that isn't a costume, it's him. He was a bodybuilder, athlete, actor was sort of a side thing. Casting actually saw him doing a weekend gig where he would freelance from time to time in a pro wresting match in England. They loved how he moved, how intentional everything looked. Every pose was like he thought about it a half second before he did it, it's a very unique way of moving. It's weird, but physically the guy even in person, just moved and looked a certain way. You know when they say someone has "presence" well we are all present, but you know the expression, like you just notice a guy. David Prowse is just one of those people, if he is in a room and he stands up and walks across it, he is unique and I don't think you can ever totally replace that. What we got was fine, it was well done, but it did look and sound different.
Not much I can add to the discussion, other than: Tarkin's head looked too wide. Didn't even notice the mouth movement issues. CGI is definitely getting better.
Oh man, I have so many thoughts. Finally got to it last night.
Loves:
The whole premise of the movie. A background story that is incredibly important, yet nobody in the later films even knows how it went down.
The idea that the unsung heroes were not just of the rebellion, but the two people most responsible for the construction of the functioning Death Star are completely wiped from the record by Tarkin's actions.
Using a Hammerhead Corvette as a battering ram to slam a disabled star destroyer into another and drop them both on the shield generator gate.
The cinematography of the airlock scene. Holy wow. Everything about that scene. The panicked struggle to get the disk out to the other ship. The complete darkness broken by Vader's lightsaber (seriously, this was an amazing bit of film). Vader laying waste to everything in his path in order to reach his singular goal. This also explains why Vader is so mad in Ep4 when they board the ship. He was so close to stopping them and then had to chase them half-way across the galaxy. And he KNOWS that it is not a diplomatic ship because he watched them smuggle the plans away with his own "eyes".
The small bits of fan service that weren't over the top. I don't care what you think, but "I have the death sentence on 12 systems" man was so quick and done so well that I absolutely loved it.
K2-SO is new favorite droid.
Coming in thinking this is essentially Episode 3.5, when it's more like 3.9.
The relationship between Chirrut and Baze. Made their deaths that much more important and heartbreaking at the same time.
Showing the internal conflicts and moral ambiguity within the Rebel Alliance itself. Heroes who are not proud of things they have had to do (like Cassian straight up murdering that contact in the trading post to make sure he wasn't found out) for the sake of the rebellion.
"Meh"s:
CGI Tarkin was cool from a tech-nerd standpoint (seriously, the fact that they could do this at all is pretty insane), but it's still not close enough for me. I think they could have rewritten the scenes and had him appear as a hologram and nobody would have known better (aside from those of us who know he's dead). Even if there was a lessened impact of his presence, I would have taken it.
Wanted more IP Man
"Very Important Things" in weird places. I could possibly explain away the dish controls being out on a platform like that for maintenance purposes. Maybe because it's so high up they figured maintenance would be better performed by a shuttle or something. But the "master switch" being in some random place somewhere among the various landing areas was weird. Maybe because it was a different transmission station than the big dish on the tower, and the "master switch" was actually for a satellite transmitter on that particular pad, I dunno.
Data banks need to be accessed PHYSICALLY by a set of weird robot arms? For some reason?
Granted, they went way up on the scale for dramatic effect, but this is actually not bad. If you've ever been around an enterprise-level tape library (we had one at the U for Radiology that literally took up 650 square feet of the datacenter floor and was 9ft tall with 3 sets of robot arms that would swing around and shuffle tapes between storage and drives), this was not that different. That the most critical archives for the Empire would be stored in a secure location this way makes perfect sense to me.
I will probably have more to say. I'm going to see it again next weekend, so it will be interesting to see it with now some pre-existing opinions.
I love the fact that the Star Wars universe has technology so unbelievably advanced (sentient droids with emotions, creativity, and personality) yet lacks basic technology (Robots need to talk into microphones. No sir, no built-in transmitters). I always hated that the droids had to talk into finger-activated transmitters.
@primesuspect said:
I love the fact that the Star Wars universe has technology so unbelievably advanced (sentient droids with emotions, creativity, and personality) yet lacks basic technology (Robots need to talk into microphones. No sir, no built-in transmitters). I always hated that the droids had to talk into finger-activated transmitters.
Fly across galaxy at hyperspeed to retrieve data stored on tapes in a tower only accessible by activating a blinky light on the tape then retrieving it with clunky robot arms.
@primesuspect said:
I love the fact that the Star Wars universe has technology so unbelievably advanced (sentient droids with emotions, creativity, and personality) yet lacks basic technology (Robots need to talk into microphones. No sir, no built-in transmitters). I always hated that the droids had to talk into finger-activated transmitters.
Think of it as a security feature. Droids are re programmable, thus easy to hack, if you put a microphone on them how easy would it be to go all NSA on the Galaxy! Comm Links offer far better intergalactic communications security.
A built in comm-link would come with the side effect that a droid would be effectively hardwired into the Imperial communications network. Reprogramming one of them would be the cryptographic equivalent of stealing a German Codebook in WW2.
Even if it's comparatively low-tech it's a necessary security feature.
Retcon "bothans". Many.... something... died to bring us this information. They never mentioned Bothans once. RIP lore
I had the same reaction, until one of my buddies pointed out to me that the Bothans line was from Jedi, not A New Hope. No Bothan retcon. STRIKE THIS FROM YOUR LIST, NERD.
Watched it with my mom this morning. 2 seconds after credits roll, guy 2 rows behind us gets up and says, "that was a giant pile of shit" and walks out lol.
I liked it quite a bit. Not having a jedi being central to the story was nice. This is a galaxy with many more stories and heroes besides the jedi.
There were the usual "stormtroopers/empire is incompetent" tropes. I immediately noticed that Cassian was hella noticable with his scruff when every imperial officer is clean shave. The Director wasn't that impressive of a villain but they nailed Vader's role for the film.
The CGI wasn't a letdown for the movie, nowhere near as detrimental as it was for the prequels. This movie definitely sets up episode IV super well. The frenetic pace at the conclusion was awesome. Did Admiral Radis (sp?) end up not escaping? Couldn't tell if his ship made the jump before Vader got there.
K2's abilities didn't really phase me that much. This is the same period as IG-88 after all. Different droids have different capabilities. Not really a stretch to me to see K2 do the things he did.
Overall a great addition to the Star Wars universe.
Also I really thought they were gonna do something with that crystal necklace Jyn had. Like it was a Kyber crystal and it would wind up being used somewhere for a lightsaber or something.
CGI on Tarkin and Leia was stunning. Just a little uncanny valley with the perennially-difficult mouth muscles.
Second best Star Wars behind ESB, IMO. Better than Ep. VII because it wasn't derivative/repetitive.
Love love loved it. Star Wars without Lucas is the best Star Wars.
And Red/Gold leader was such good CGI that I didn't even know I was seeing CGI until I read the trivia. First time organic CGI has ever passed by me unnoticed. Most impressive.
@MAGIC said:
Fly across galaxy at hyperspeed to retrieve data stored on tapes in a tower only accessible by activating a blinky light on the tape then retrieving it with clunky robot arms.
@Cliff_Forster @primesuspect the fact that they store data on giant hard drives in a pillar that requires a robot arm for access is awesome. It's so cool visually, I love that they didn't allow the rules of our world dictate how to tell the story. Suspend disbelief, it's not science fiction, it's a fantasy film.
Consider the obvious alternative: Star Wars Hacking Scene 2016™
I daresay I would've let Tarkin pass if I hadn't known Peter was dead. I just asked @Aaron and he didn't know or notice Tarkin was CGI. The only one he realized was CGI was Leia, because obviously it wasn't Carrie.
@Linc said:
I daresay I would've let Tarkin pass if I hadn't known Peter was dead. I just asked @Aaron and he didn't know or notice Tarkin was CGI. The only one he realized was CGI was Leia, because obviously it wasn't Carrie.
I also was unaware that Peter was dead and didn't notice he was CGI. Then again, I was just there to kick back and enjoy the film, not overanalyze every pixel.
As for the pillar of disks... as an IT person, it's more believable than you might think. Not every company has embraced (or wants to embrace) the cloud. Cold storage and tape drives are still a thing, and probably will be for a long time. They have their benefits (cost, density, lack of remote hackability). Thinking a galactic empire would store their backups in a facility like that is not that far fetched.
Just out of interest. I say the CGI looks good but weird if that makes sense to anyone. I'm not in love with it on a major human face for more than a couple seconds. Let's say you disagree, was totally convinced that what you were looking at was a real human performance, does that mean re casting roles in the future and using CGI for continuity is an expectation of the audience?
I still kinda dig people. Call me old fashioned. People make fine actors.
Re CGI: I thought Leia was well done, for the same reason that @Cliff_Forster cites (brief), vs Tarkin's extended screen time. I really like @AlexDeGruven 's suggestion of hologram, since it would have still worked for basically every scene and would have been even better for the eventual crushing of Krennic by political infighting/bureaucracy. I would have laughed so hard if Krennic's dreams were stolen from him via hologram/telepresence like breaking up via text.
Enjoyed the Vader scenes, wished there was more, but him being a menace in the background is probably good.
and the tape drive stuff is totally plausible for all the reasons/examples given by @ardichoke . Nothing to add
Fwiw, The Kid knows nothing of actors, their ages or life status. She had no idea Leah was CGI. She did say she thought something odd about Tarkin but wouldn't have guessed it was that he was animated.
@Thrax said:
CGI on Tarkin and Leia was stunning. Just a little uncanny valley with the perennially-difficult mouth muscles.
Second best Star Wars behind ESB, IMO. Better than Ep. VII because it wasn't derivative/repetitive.
Love love loved it. Star Wars without Lucas is the best Star Wars.
And Red/Gold leader was such good CGI that I didn't even know I was seeing CGI until I read the trivia. First time organic CGI has ever passed by me unnoticed. Most impressive.
Red/Gold leader was stuff shot in 1977 that didn't make ANH.
@Thrax said:
CGI on Tarkin and Leia was stunning. Just a little uncanny valley with the perennially-difficult mouth muscles.
Second best Star Wars behind ESB, IMO. Better than Ep. VII because it wasn't derivative/repetitive.
Love love loved it. Star Wars without Lucas is the best Star Wars.
And Red/Gold leader was such good CGI that I didn't even know I was seeing CGI until I read the trivia. First time organic CGI has ever passed by me unnoticed. Most impressive.
Red/Gold leader was stuff shot in 1977 that didn't make ANH.
Only the scenes of the female pilots, afaik. The Leaders were CGI, according to IMDb.
1
DontCallMeKelsoKelso 'The Great Asshole'San Jose, CAIcrontian
I loved it, the film was a great dark war film, felt like watching a 60s WWII film....
My only gripes:
1. Vader's helmet looked fucking weird, I don't know what it was, it just looked off, really off.
2. R2 and 3PO's cameo doesn't make sense where it was placed, they're supposed to be aboard Leia's ship which techincally should already be docked to the Adrmiral/General's ship that was commanding the battle when Mon was told he was already there... so, it was just placed wrong and not needed...
I didn't mind the CGI, I thought it was cool, but I wish that had only shown him waist up since Peter Cushing didn't wear the boots while filming cause he got some big feet... Leia's CGI didn't seem like CGI eniterly, it felt like they found some footage from ANH and then rotoscoped it in.
On Vader's helmet: In all the original movies and even his brief appearance in the prequels you'll notice that the base/neck of the helmet falls under the cape, with the cape being joined with a chain. I don't know why but I think it was a costume oversight with the neck falling over the cape that they never caught. It looked off to me too but the overlapping neck part is the only thing I can recall.
@Thrax said:
CGI on Tarkin and Leia was stunning. Just a little uncanny valley with the perennially-difficult mouth muscles.
Second best Star Wars behind ESB, IMO. Better than Ep. VII because it wasn't derivative/repetitive.
Love love loved it. Star Wars without Lucas is the best Star Wars.
And Red/Gold leader was such good CGI that I didn't even know I was seeing CGI until I read the trivia. First time organic CGI has ever passed by me unnoticed. Most impressive.
Red/Gold leader was stuff shot in 1977 that didn't make ANH.
Only the scenes of the female pilots, afaik. The Leaders were CGI, according to IMDb.
We're both right, in that they used digital effects to use the old footage in the new movie.
On Vader's helmet: In all the original movies and even his brief appearance in the prequels you'll notice that the base/neck of the helmet falls under the cape, with the cape being joined with a chain. I don't know why but I think it was a costume oversight with the neck falling over the cape that they never caught. It looked off to me too but the overlapping neck part is the only thing I can recall.
I think the variance in Vader's armor / cloak are intentional. That scene in the bacta tank, it's so cool. It reminds you when the black gear comes off, there is something underneath. Vader gets dressed like the rest of us, like a combat vet, he puts his legs one at a time, like Saw Gererra does. Rogue one is about the cost of war. It's never been more relevant a statement.
Vader gets dressed, there is a man underneath there. I think the variance is intentional as a way to remind us of that.
Comments
Red Leader hit me in the feels for some reason.
He sounded and even moved differently. I met David Prowse and we talked for a good ten minutes or so at the tail end of a signing when the special edition of Empire hit a local theater in Baltimore. He was super nice. For an aging fellow even, he still had a stature about him, tall, broad, wide shoulders, that isn't a costume, it's him. He was a bodybuilder, athlete, actor was sort of a side thing. Casting actually saw him doing a weekend gig where he would freelance from time to time in a pro wresting match in England. They loved how he moved, how intentional everything looked. Every pose was like he thought about it a half second before he did it, it's a very unique way of moving. It's weird, but physically the guy even in person, just moved and looked a certain way. You know when they say someone has "presence" well we are all present, but you know the expression, like you just notice a guy. David Prowse is just one of those people, if he is in a room and he stands up and walks across it, he is unique and I don't think you can ever totally replace that. What we got was fine, it was well done, but it did look and sound different.
Not much I can add to the discussion, other than: Tarkin's head looked too wide. Didn't even notice the mouth movement issues. CGI is definitely getting better.
Oh man, I have so many thoughts. Finally got to it last night.
Loves:
"Meh"s:
Granted, they went way up on the scale for dramatic effect, but this is actually not bad. If you've ever been around an enterprise-level tape library (we had one at the U for Radiology that literally took up 650 square feet of the datacenter floor and was 9ft tall with 3 sets of robot arms that would swing around and shuffle tapes between storage and drives), this was not that different. That the most critical archives for the Empire would be stored in a secure location this way makes perfect sense to me.
I will probably have more to say. I'm going to see it again next weekend, so it will be interesting to see it with now some pre-existing opinions.
Somewhat related:
"Why does Superman have a cape?" - "A cape is fun to draw honey"
"Why is Imperial engineering so weird?" - "It looks cool guys"
I love the fact that the Star Wars universe has technology so unbelievably advanced (sentient droids with emotions, creativity, and personality) yet lacks basic technology (Robots need to talk into microphones. No sir, no built-in transmitters). I always hated that the droids had to talk into finger-activated transmitters.
Fly across galaxy at hyperspeed to retrieve data stored on tapes in a tower only accessible by activating a blinky light on the tape then retrieving it with clunky robot arms.
Think of it as a security feature. Droids are re programmable, thus easy to hack, if you put a microphone on them how easy would it be to go all NSA on the Galaxy! Comm Links offer far better intergalactic communications security.
That actually makes a lot of sense, considering that K2-SO was exactly that, an imperial droid that was reprogrammed by the alliance.
A built in comm-link would come with the side effect that a droid would be effectively hardwired into the Imperial communications network. Reprogramming one of them would be the cryptographic equivalent of stealing a German Codebook in WW2.
Even if it's comparatively low-tech it's a necessary security feature.
I had the same reaction, until one of my buddies pointed out to me that the Bothans line was from Jedi, not A New Hope. No Bothan retcon. STRIKE THIS FROM YOUR LIST, NERD.
Watched it with my mom this morning. 2 seconds after credits roll, guy 2 rows behind us gets up and says, "that was a giant pile of shit" and walks out lol.
I liked it quite a bit. Not having a jedi being central to the story was nice. This is a galaxy with many more stories and heroes besides the jedi.
There were the usual "stormtroopers/empire is incompetent" tropes. I immediately noticed that Cassian was hella noticable with his scruff when every imperial officer is clean shave. The Director wasn't that impressive of a villain but they nailed Vader's role for the film.
The CGI wasn't a letdown for the movie, nowhere near as detrimental as it was for the prequels. This movie definitely sets up episode IV super well. The frenetic pace at the conclusion was awesome. Did Admiral Radis (sp?) end up not escaping? Couldn't tell if his ship made the jump before Vader got there.
K2's abilities didn't really phase me that much. This is the same period as IG-88 after all. Different droids have different capabilities. Not really a stretch to me to see K2 do the things he did.
Overall a great addition to the Star Wars universe.
Also I really thought they were gonna do something with that crystal necklace Jyn had. Like it was a Kyber crystal and it would wind up being used somewhere for a lightsaber or something.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/12/20/cybersecurity_experts_weigh_in_on_rogue_one.html
A part of my inner nerd absolutely loves this. The part of me that likes being entertained says... Just enjoy the damn movie!!
Did you know, if Superman really reversed the way the earth spins time would not actually reverse? Just so you all know.
CGI on Tarkin and Leia was stunning. Just a little uncanny valley with the perennially-difficult mouth muscles.
Second best Star Wars behind ESB, IMO. Better than Ep. VII because it wasn't derivative/repetitive.
Love love loved it. Star Wars without Lucas is the best Star Wars.
And Red/Gold leader was such good CGI that I didn't even know I was seeing CGI until I read the trivia. First time organic CGI has ever passed by me unnoticed. Most impressive.
I've been saying it repeatedly since Sunday... I am SO GLAD that Lucas sold off Star Wars.
Consider the obvious alternative: Star Wars Hacking Scene 2016™
Suffice to say: I'm cool with the data silo.
I daresay I would've let Tarkin pass if I hadn't known Peter was dead. I just asked @Aaron and he didn't know or notice Tarkin was CGI. The only one he realized was CGI was Leia, because obviously it wasn't Carrie.
I also was unaware that Peter was dead and didn't notice he was CGI. Then again, I was just there to kick back and enjoy the film, not overanalyze every pixel.
As for the pillar of disks... as an IT person, it's more believable than you might think. Not every company has embraced (or wants to embrace) the cloud. Cold storage and tape drives are still a thing, and probably will be for a long time. They have their benefits (cost, density, lack of remote hackability). Thinking a galactic empire would store their backups in a facility like that is not that far fetched.
Just out of interest. I say the CGI looks good but weird if that makes sense to anyone. I'm not in love with it on a major human face for more than a couple seconds. Let's say you disagree, was totally convinced that what you were looking at was a real human performance, does that mean re casting roles in the future and using CGI for continuity is an expectation of the audience?
I still kinda dig people. Call me old fashioned. People make fine actors.
Re CGI: I thought Leia was well done, for the same reason that @Cliff_Forster cites (brief), vs Tarkin's extended screen time. I really like @AlexDeGruven 's suggestion of hologram, since it would have still worked for basically every scene and would have been even better for the eventual crushing of Krennic by political infighting/bureaucracy. I would have laughed so hard if Krennic's dreams were stolen from him via hologram/telepresence like breaking up via text.
Enjoyed the Vader scenes, wished there was more, but him being a menace in the background is probably good.
and the tape drive stuff is totally plausible for all the reasons/examples given by @ardichoke . Nothing to add
Fwiw, The Kid knows nothing of actors, their ages or life status. She had no idea Leah was CGI. She did say she thought something odd about Tarkin but wouldn't have guessed it was that he was animated.
Red/Gold leader was stuff shot in 1977 that didn't make ANH.
Only the scenes of the female pilots, afaik. The Leaders were CGI, according to IMDb.
I loved it, the film was a great dark war film, felt like watching a 60s WWII film....
My only gripes:
1. Vader's helmet looked fucking weird, I don't know what it was, it just looked off, really off.
2. R2 and 3PO's cameo doesn't make sense where it was placed, they're supposed to be aboard Leia's ship which techincally should already be docked to the Adrmiral/General's ship that was commanding the battle when Mon was told he was already there... so, it was just placed wrong and not needed...
I didn't mind the CGI, I thought it was cool, but I wish that had only shown him waist up since Peter Cushing didn't wear the boots while filming cause he got some big feet... Leia's CGI didn't seem like CGI eniterly, it felt like they found some footage from ANH and then rotoscoped it in.
@DontCallMeKelso
On Vader's helmet: In all the original movies and even his brief appearance in the prequels you'll notice that the base/neck of the helmet falls under the cape, with the cape being joined with a chain. I don't know why but I think it was a costume oversight with the neck falling over the cape that they never caught. It looked off to me too but the overlapping neck part is the only thing I can recall.
We're both right, in that they used digital effects to use the old footage in the new movie.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-how-rogue-one-got-its-hands-on-unseen-star-wars-f-1790250545
And stop picking on George Lucas or there is gonna be a bra> @Ilriyas said:
I think the variance in Vader's armor / cloak are intentional. That scene in the bacta tank, it's so cool. It reminds you when the black gear comes off, there is something underneath. Vader gets dressed like the rest of us, like a combat vet, he puts his legs one at a time, like Saw Gererra does. Rogue one is about the cost of war. It's never been more relevant a statement.
Vader gets dressed, there is a man underneath there. I think the variance is intentional as a way to remind us of that.
The red lenses in vader's helmet was mostly what I noticed as different.