General Film News

[Gibby]

*Holdo.


Shit film, though.

[Tichinde]

I'm ok with Force-facetime, Luke/Obi-wan rock it and Obi was dead. Force Projection is a thing. It's fine.
For Luke to do it on a mass scale to everyone on another planet just demonstrates his ability and the effort involved.

I do agree with Mantis, I would rather have seen risks taken. Lets not beat around the bush, both TFA and TLJ are new characters wrapped in the storys of ANH and TESB. For the love of fucking god Hollywood, bring back originality.
However, claiming that the Prequels are better than anything is pushing it

[Strudel]

Don't tempt me to bullet point them!

Go on in the interest of interest

So this took me a little longer to get to than I had anticipated but... you asked for it so complete with time codes so you can follow along:

Spoiler

01:15 - When Bendelson's shuttle flies in, they fly passed Little Jin but then the next shot is Jin getting into the home whilst the shuttle takes another minute to get nearby. This is a failure of structure/editing that happens again and again in this film; we constantly see two perspectives of the same time period that just don't match up at all.

01:30 - Why do they land like a mile from the house? There's nothing between them and the family but open ground.

11:00 - Discount Han Solo shoots an innocent man for no reason. I get that they're setting this up for the "we've done terrible things" bit later, but at this point all I know of him is that he's bullied a scared informer and then killed him rather than try and figure something out. So far he's been far more evil than Bendelson who tried to tell The Wife not to shoot and gave her a chance at least.

11:30 - We are on to our third planet already.

12:30 - Fourth planet.

13:40 - FIFTH PLANET. JESUS CHRIST JUST SIT DOWN FOR FIVE FUCKING MINUTES.

16:00 - Discount Che Guevara has "caused the Alliance a great many problems". And they want to mend it. They want to join up with someone even THEY think is a terrorist. Already I'm starting to think the Empire are the good guys.

17:00 - So their plan is to break a girl out of prison who once knew a guy who they have worked with recently so she can go meet the guy who can help her meet a guy who might know where her father is. Why is she even in this? Their plan is to kill the guy, so if they've worked with Che before, why would they first find Jin when her only link to the whole thing is her father, who at this point they plan to kill anyway, so she's entirely unnecessary to their plan? This is just an example of another recurring issue with the story; the plot is horrendously bloated with pointless and unnecessary complexity. Someone should have taken a scythe to it and I do think the film could have been good at 90 minutes. But no, they stuck with all the bullshit.

19:00 - "Trust goes both ways" And at the moment neither of you DO trust each other. This is one of those things that sounds good but is nonsense. If I were Discount Solo I'd be wondering why on earth we even need her here at all. Just shove her out an airlock.

21:00 - Che managed to grow A LOT of hair since the opening scene when he was clearly bald.

23:00 - Why does Bendelson need an armed escort around his own Star Destroyer? And he seems to be the only person who gets one.

27:00 - THE MIND SQUID. Just... what the fuck? Utterly pointless and a very simple edit to remove; I can not fathom why they kept this in when the whole purpose of it (breaking Pilot's mind) is completely ignored.

28:20 - Ah the Mos Eisley guys. They sure are lucky to get off this planet just before it explodes! Shame that just a couple of days later (on the other side of the galaxy) they start another fight and die. This is just a rubbish bit of fan-wanking and makes the Star Wars universe feel really small. This will be exacerbated later when the longest journey between star systems that anyone seems to need to make is under 20 minutes.

28:50 - Okay, so the six degrees of Kevin Bacon plot convolution continues to elongate. The Rebel Plan: Break Jin out of prison so she can meet a woman on Jeddah who can hopefully set up a meeting with Che Guevara because her husband works for him. Then Guevara can help them find the pilot who can tell them where her father is so they can track him down and kill him. TOO. MANY. LINKS. At least as it turns out that whole first bit of their plan gets completely ignored from this point forward.

29:30 - Ah the "Not a Jedi". A shitty attempt to get The Force into a film that's set at a time when there are no Jedi and the Force is seen by most as completely archaic nonsense (as demonstrated by the Imperial commander that Vader Force Chokes in ANH ("sad devotion to ancient religion" anyone?) and Solo saying he's been around and never seen anything to suggest The Force is real - "all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense"). Granted, those views seem a little perculiar given that the Jedi existed up until the massacre at the end of Ep3, which was only a couple of decades ago in universe-time. If every Buddhist was killed tomorrow, I'm pretty sure young kids of today would still know about it in 2038.

33:08 - Discount Solo shoots a Stormtrooper as he rounds a corner and then five other Stormtroopers miss him at point blank range as he turns around and runs away up a fairly narrow, straight street. I know they're bad shots, but Jesus. Then Jin takes out all of them with a stick.

34:50 - The stupid blind monk again. Like, what's the deal Star Wars? You can't have it both ways; either you have Jedi or you don't. Don't have Jedi-in-everything-but-name just because you think they're cool.

36:30 - I'm glad K2 decided to leave the ship and come into town just to crack a couple of jokes before being sent back to the ship again. Deus Ex Tudyk.

40:00 - Great unpacking of a relationship between Jin and Che. Are we not still friends? No you abandoned me. I knew you'd be okay. Oh okay then I guess I'll just forgive and forget all the trauma I've been through from being abandoned after my parents were either killed or kidnapped. It's not like I hold a grudge against your cause because "all it's ever bought me is pain".

44:00 - Oh look the pilot. Turns out he didn't lose his mind after all. Glad we got to see that mind squid in action; it was truly a critical part of the plot.

48:30 - Discount Solo: "I know where your father is" - errr... how? How does he suddenly know this information? And if he's known it for more than ten minutes then why the whole Jeddah sub-plot that's taken up a quarter of the bloated film?

48:45 - Che decides that, after all the fear that this was a set up to kill him, that actually he doesn't want to live any more for REASONS. Go on, don't worry about me, I'm just going to stay here and die. There is ZERO fucking reason for him to just stay behind. Or really to have been in this film at all.

50:55 - That explosion is utterly ridiculous. It reaches out of the planet so far it's as high as the radius of the fucking planet.

52:00 - Oh the joy of Project Management dick-fencing. I supposed it's better than a trade federation dispute, but still, who let George Lucas take a pass on this script? Come on, own up.

55:45 - He can't risk sending a message to the Alliance that the Death Star plans are on Scarif... but he's just been chatting to them on the phone. What happened in the last 30 seconds that made it so much more dangerous all of a sudden?

58:00 - The Alliance set off to attack Edu. It's going to take them less time to travel to another star system than it takes me to get to work in the mornings. This is one teeny tiny galaxy.

61:00 - So even though they know the Death Star is operational and there's a good chance Dad is trying to help them, the Alliance plan is still to kill him? Why exactly?

62:00 - Yeah, great idea; let's have a team meeting on this landing strut in the pissing rain rather than, you know, inside. Where we are less likely to be killed by snipers.

64:00 - The first rule of Project Management is kill all your highly skilled team.

71:00 - "Those were Alliance bombs that killed him". "You might as well be a Stormtrooper". "You can't talk your way around this" .... just wait for it.

74:20 - That cat-walk strut is proof that Vader is gay. No one minces like that who isn't gay. And look how much his arms sway under his cape! And I've no idea what they did, but his helmet looks so wrong. Did they forget to CGI the base of it? Like, just what is going on there? Did the guy in the suit have a triple chin and there was just no way to avoid the helmet neck sticking out?

75:00 - So Bendelson traveled to Vader's Sekrit Layer to complain that someone stole his cookies? Did this really need a personal visit? And did he really think that Vader was the guy who would be sympathetic to this slight against his professional accomplishment?

77:00 - Oh good; bureaucracy. Because if there was one thing the Prequels got right it was showing political meetings and the infrastructure of democratic processes. Beyond that, this is some shocking inconsistency in Jin's character. Her last scene (which judging by the attack on the previous facility can't have been more than 20 minutes ago in-universe) was her railing against how terrible the Alliance is and no better than the Empire. Now she's the only one who seems to think they can do any good? Bullshit. And she's not the only character who's motivation flips on a dime; Discount Solo did exactly the same thing when he didn't kill Daddy Jin; he had no problem shooting an actual ally at the beginning, so why did he suddenly decide not to kill someone he actually thought was a traitor who had built a machine that destroys planets?

79:00 - Discount Han's speech is a great epiphany that the rebels are actually the bad guys. "We have all done terrible things.. because we thought they were worth it" It's almost like he's finally realised that the motivation doesn't justify the means, and maybe the terrible things they've done are because they are terrible people. But then he's like, nah, a bit more slaughter is actually just what we need to prove we're the good guys!

82:00 - "May the Force be with us" she says to a room of people who all (except the blind guy) have previously suggested they think that's nonsense... but they all cheer and clap now.

85:00 - How bad are the Imperial engineers that they thought it was a good idea to put a data centre in the middle of the ocean? Do they not know that salt water environments just eat through tech?

89:00 - So no one thinks it's a bit weird that two Stormtroopers, an officer, and... whoever was wearing the black suit go onto a shuttle, but only the latter two people come back and now they've got droid with them? When there are guards just watching the ship as well.

90:00 - This isn't a complaint; I'm just pointing out that I do actually like Canary Wharf station made up to look like an Imperial Base. They should have kept it like that.

93:00 - How the fuck did they manage to plant bombs on every spoke of that wheel-island? If Jin, DS, and K2 had to take a bloody train into the middle, there's no way that other team managed to just walk around the circumference in the same time. And some of the explosions are happening on completely disconnected islands. Did they swim? Steal a boat? Borrow a transporter from Star Trek?

97:00 - Where the fuck has that AT-AT come from? It's come from their side so it's what, just sitting down having a nap on the perimeter?

101:00 - Now the AT-ATs are just walking out of the ocean. Seriously, the scene set ups for this film are fucking nonsensical and contradictory. Also, I'm pretty sure I remember it taking more than one or two hits to destroy an AT-AT, but maybe they got better armouring after this battle.

101:30 - Why are they so surprised that the shield gate was closed? Wasn't that the super obvious course of action for the Imperials? So yeah, just go find the "Master Switch" because I'm sure Random Rebel #37 is going to know what that is and what to do with it.

104:00 - So about 200 TIE fighters just (finally) launched. It sure is lucky that the rebels have about two dozen X-wings and a few Y-wings to totally hold them all off.

107:00 - This has to be the worst data-store in the galaxy. Who designed this system of huge towers of HDDs? Really poor storage density drives at that. It was the grad trainee, wasn't it?

108:00 - On the numbers game again; how exactly are the 20-odd people who came with them on the shuttle holding off an entire fucking army by the way? We've seen easily over 100 troops now storm the beaches, including half a dozen AT-ATs. The Imperial military has to be the most ineffective in history since the Emu War of 1932. How the hell did they subjugate an entire galaxy with this lot?

111:00 - Another non-complaint; super awesome layering of Dies Irae into the score by MG; that man is a legend in our time.

111:00 - Mighty useful that she just happens to have a clip to attach the unexpected hard drive onto her belt.

112:00 - Blind man can "see" Jin is wearing a necklace on Jeddah, can fight teams of Stormtroopers multiple times, and can sense an approaching AT-AT. He can walk across a field of fire and avoid being hit.... but then he can't find the fucking switch?!

113:00 - And then his "did the force prevent the Stormtroopers hitting him" moment is completely ruined by his mate also running across the sand to pick him up; proving once more that Stormtroopers just are pre-programmed not to shoot important characters. At least not until they've served their plot point.

114:00 - Wait, you're telling me that the capital ships don't make a scratch in a Star Destroyer, but a couple of Y-wings can complete incapacitate one with three hits? Get the fuck out!

114:30 - Okay, someone needs to explain to the writers how communication systems work. If PilotMan can have a chat with Not-Akbar then the Rebels can definitely pick up a PDF of the plans if it's transmitted.

115:00 - And of course Pilot man now dies just after he's finished doing what he was needed for. It's very kind of the Imperials to let people complete their missions objectives before they kill them.

115:40 - Bye bye Blind-man side-kick whose name I can't remember even after trying to listen out for it through this whole ordeal.

116:00 - I see they copied the "Unnecessarily opening and closing hatch" idea from Galaxy Quest.

116:45 - I'm glad to see the half-dozen X-wings that got through the shield are still fighting strong against the dozens of Imperial forces.

117:30 - More in the "Really fucked up sequencing" category; how is it that Bendelson is just now getting in a lift to go to the top of the structure when he was head-to-head with Jin a minute ago? She had to climb up the HardDriveTotemPole and then jump through the HatchOfDeath and then climb through to the transmitter dish. Did he go to grab a quick coffee before heading after her?

118:10 - Again, it's a good thing Jin managed to align the transmitter just before the controls were destroyed.

119:30 - It's a good thing Discount Solo didn't stop for coffee as well. What with the broken leg and all, he did very well to climb up behind Bendelson and shoot him in the back on the sly. I mean, come on! If you're going to have him save the day after somehow climbing that massive fucking tower, don't then have him unable to move without Jin carrying him.

120:00 - Yeah, let's not worry about taking out the rebel fleet; just blow up our own data store. Great plan!

123:00 - Why did only the flagship save the plans? And how the fuck does Vader's ship know that they received a transmission from the surface? He's only just jumped into the system. This makes no sense at all. Oh yeah, don't blow it up or anything, just this one time let's get a boarding party together and go chill out with those guys.

123:40 - Let's not transmit the plans to anyone else or anything sensible. Let's just copy them down onto a memory stick, delete the copy on the computer, and then hope we can get the USB stick off the ship. Otherwise Timmy is going to have to swallow that stick and hope for the best, and poor Timmy doesn't want to do that now.

124:20 - As much as people might love Vengeful Vader, I want to know what happened between now and next week when he fights Obi-wan for him to suddenly become so arthritic. Was it like when you go to the gym for the first time in ages and you over-do it and you just ache for days afterwards? Must be that.

125:30 - Yeah, let's just undercut the epic sacrifice that has just happened by adding a line about hope at the end (because we haven't said HOPE HOPE HOPE enough throughout this film) and that will help tie it into the next film, which is about HOPE. Yeah, do that, and end on a high note after the slaughter of thousands that just happened.

[Can't think of one]

If you have any time off from work can you do the Last Jedi? ¬_¬

[Stormbringer]

You should go work for those CinemaSins guys!

[Strudel]

If you have any time off from work can you do the Last Jedi? ¬_¬

I'll consider it <_<

[Strudel]

You should go work for those CinemaSins guys!

I hear those guys are dicks, though I do find quite a few of their videos quite entertaining. Sometimes they just really get it wrong though. I can't remember which video I was watching the other day but despite there being a LOT wrong with the film they were reviewing, they seemed to pick some really ridiculous things to complain about which just made it seem like they hadn't been paying attention or didn't understand something quite basic. I still like their vids, but sometimes they do seem like complete bellends.

[Stormbringer]

I agree. Sometimes I am amazed at how they fail to understand perfectly obvious things, yet manage to call out things as "sins" which actually do make perfect sense in the film.

[Jez]

Don't tempt me to bullet point them!

Go on in the interest of interest

So this took me a little longer to get to than I had anticipated but... you asked for it so complete with time codes so you can follow along:

Spoiler

01:15 - When Bendelson's shuttle flies in, they fly passed Little Jin but then the next shot is Jin getting into the home whilst the shuttle takes another minute to get nearby. This is a failure of structure/editing that happens again and again in this film; we constantly see two perspectives of the same time period that just don't match up at all.

01:30 - Why do they land like a mile from the house? There's nothing between them and the family but open ground.

11:00 - Discount Han Solo shoots an innocent man for no reason. I get that they're setting this up for the "we've done terrible things" bit later, but at this point all I know of him is that he's bullied a scared informer and then killed him rather than try and figure something out. So far he's been far more evil than Bendelson who tried to tell The Wife not to shoot and gave her a chance at least.

11:30 - We are on to our third planet already.

12:30 - Fourth planet.

13:40 - FIFTH PLANET. JESUS CHRIST JUST SIT DOWN FOR FIVE FUCKING MINUTES.

16:00 - Discount Che Guevara has "caused the Alliance a great many problems". And they want to mend it. They want to join up with someone even THEY think is a terrorist. Already I'm starting to think the Empire are the good guys.

17:00 - So their plan is to break a girl out of prison who once knew a guy who they have worked with recently so she can go meet the guy who can help her meet a guy who might know where her father is. Why is she even in this? Their plan is to kill the guy, so if they've worked with Che before, why would they first find Jin when her only link to the whole thing is her father, who at this point they plan to kill anyway, so she's entirely unnecessary to their plan? This is just an example of another recurring issue with the story; the plot is horrendously bloated with pointless and unnecessary complexity. Someone should have taken a scythe to it and I do think the film could have been good at 90 minutes. But no, they stuck with all the bullshit.

19:00 - "Trust goes both ways" And at the moment neither of you DO trust each other. This is one of those things that sounds good but is nonsense. If I were Discount Solo I'd be wondering why on earth we even need her here at all. Just shove her out an airlock.

21:00 - Che managed to grow A LOT of hair since the opening scene when he was clearly bald.

23:00 - Why does Bendelson need an armed escort around his own Star Destroyer? And he seems to be the only person who gets one.

27:00 - THE MIND SQUID. Just... what the fuck? Utterly pointless and a very simple edit to remove; I can not fathom why they kept this in when the whole purpose of it (breaking Pilot's mind) is completely ignored.

28:20 - Ah the Mos Eisley guys. They sure are lucky to get off this planet just before it explodes! Shame that just a couple of days later (on the other side of the galaxy) they start another fight and die. This is just a rubbish bit of fan-wanking and makes the Star Wars universe feel really small. This will be exacerbated later when the longest journey between star systems that anyone seems to need to make is under 20 minutes.

28:50 - Okay, so the six degrees of Kevin Bacon plot convolution continues to elongate. The Rebel Plan: Break Jin out of prison so she can meet a woman on Jeddah who can hopefully set up a meeting with Che Guevara because her husband works for him. Then Guevara can help them find the pilot who can tell them where her father is so they can track him down and kill him. TOO. MANY. LINKS. At least as it turns out that whole first bit of their plan gets completely ignored from this point forward.

29:30 - Ah the "Not a Jedi". A shitty attempt to get The Force into a film that's set at a time when there are no Jedi and the Force is seen by most as completely archaic nonsense (as demonstrated by the Imperial commander that Vader Force Chokes in ANH ("sad devotion to ancient religion" anyone?) and Solo saying he's been around and never seen anything to suggest The Force is real - "all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense"). Granted, those views seem a little perculiar given that the Jedi existed up until the massacre at the end of Ep3, which was only a couple of decades ago in universe-time. If every Buddhist was killed tomorrow, I'm pretty sure young kids of today would still know about it in 2038.

33:08 - Discount Solo shoots a Stormtrooper as he rounds a corner and then five other Stormtroopers miss him at point blank range as he turns around and runs away up a fairly narrow, straight street. I know they're bad shots, but Jesus. Then Jin takes out all of them with a stick.

34:50 - The stupid blind monk again. Like, what's the deal Star Wars? You can't have it both ways; either you have Jedi or you don't. Don't have Jedi-in-everything-but-name just because you think they're cool.

36:30 - I'm glad K2 decided to leave the ship and come into town just to crack a couple of jokes before being sent back to the ship again. Deus Ex Tudyk.

40:00 - Great unpacking of a relationship between Jin and Che. Are we not still friends? No you abandoned me. I knew you'd be okay. Oh okay then I guess I'll just forgive and forget all the trauma I've been through from being abandoned after my parents were either killed or kidnapped. It's not like I hold a grudge against your cause because "all it's ever bought me is pain".

44:00 - Oh look the pilot. Turns out he didn't lose his mind after all. Glad we got to see that mind squid in action; it was truly a critical part of the plot.

48:30 - Discount Solo: "I know where your father is" - errr... how? How does he suddenly know this information? And if he's known it for more than ten minutes then why the whole Jeddah sub-plot that's taken up a quarter of the bloated film?

48:45 - Che decides that, after all the fear that this was a set up to kill him, that actually he doesn't want to live any more for REASONS. Go on, don't worry about me, I'm just going to stay here and die. There is ZERO fucking reason for him to just stay behind. Or really to have been in this film at all.

50:55 - That explosion is utterly ridiculous. It reaches out of the planet so far it's as high as the radius of the fucking planet.

52:00 - Oh the joy of Project Management dick-fencing. I supposed it's better than a trade federation dispute, but still, who let George Lucas take a pass on this script? Come on, own up.

55:45 - He can't risk sending a message to the Alliance that the Death Star plans are on Scarif... but he's just been chatting to them on the phone. What happened in the last 30 seconds that made it so much more dangerous all of a sudden?

58:00 - The Alliance set off to attack Edu. It's going to take them less time to travel to another star system than it takes me to get to work in the mornings. This is one teeny tiny galaxy.

61:00 - So even though they know the Death Star is operational and there's a good chance Dad is trying to help them, the Alliance plan is still to kill him? Why exactly?

62:00 - Yeah, great idea; let's have a team meeting on this landing strut in the pissing rain rather than, you know, inside. Where we are less likely to be killed by snipers.

64:00 - The first rule of Project Management is kill all your highly skilled team.

71:00 - "Those were Alliance bombs that killed him". "You might as well be a Stormtrooper". "You can't talk your way around this" .... just wait for it.

74:20 - That cat-walk strut is proof that Vader is gay. No one minces like that who isn't gay. And look how much his arms sway under his cape! And I've no idea what they did, but his helmet looks so wrong. Did they forget to CGI the base of it? Like, just what is going on there? Did the guy in the suit have a triple chin and there was just no way to avoid the helmet neck sticking out?

75:00 - So Bendelson traveled to Vader's Sekrit Layer to complain that someone stole his cookies? Did this really need a personal visit? And did he really think that Vader was the guy who would be sympathetic to this slight against his professional accomplishment?

77:00 - Oh good; bureaucracy. Because if there was one thing the Prequels got right it was showing political meetings and the infrastructure of democratic processes. Beyond that, this is some shocking inconsistency in Jin's character. Her last scene (which judging by the attack on the previous facility can't have been more than 20 minutes ago in-universe) was her railing against how terrible the Alliance is and no better than the Empire. Now she's the only one who seems to think they can do any good? Bullshit. And she's not the only character who's motivation flips on a dime; Discount Solo did exactly the same thing when he didn't kill Daddy Jin; he had no problem shooting an actual ally at the beginning, so why did he suddenly decide not to kill someone he actually thought was a traitor who had built a machine that destroys planets?

79:00 - Discount Han's speech is a great epiphany that the rebels are actually the bad guys. "We have all done terrible things.. because we thought they were worth it" It's almost like he's finally realised that the motivation doesn't justify the means, and maybe the terrible things they've done are because they are terrible people. But then he's like, nah, a bit more slaughter is actually just what we need to prove we're the good guys!

82:00 - "May the Force be with us" she says to a room of people who all (except the blind guy) have previously suggested they think that's nonsense... but they all cheer and clap now.

85:00 - How bad are the Imperial engineers that they thought it was a good idea to put a data centre in the middle of the ocean? Do they not know that salt water environments just eat through tech?

89:00 - So no one thinks it's a bit weird that two Stormtroopers, an officer, and... whoever was wearing the black suit go onto a shuttle, but only the latter two people come back and now they've got droid with them? When there are guards just watching the ship as well.

90:00 - This isn't a complaint; I'm just pointing out that I do actually like Canary Wharf station made up to look like an Imperial Base. They should have kept it like that.

93:00 - How the fuck did they manage to plant bombs on every spoke of that wheel-island? If Jin, DS, and K2 had to take a bloody train into the middle, there's no way that other team managed to just walk around the circumference in the same time. And some of the explosions are happening on completely disconnected islands. Did they swim? Steal a boat? Borrow a transporter from Star Trek?

97:00 - Where the fuck has that AT-AT come from? It's come from their side so it's what, just sitting down having a nap on the perimeter?

101:00 - Now the AT-ATs are just walking out of the ocean. Seriously, the scene set ups for this film are fucking nonsensical and contradictory. Also, I'm pretty sure I remember it taking more than one or two hits to destroy an AT-AT, but maybe they got better armouring after this battle.

101:30 - Why are they so surprised that the shield gate was closed? Wasn't that the super obvious course of action for the Imperials? So yeah, just go find the "Master Switch" because I'm sure Random Rebel #37 is going to know what that is and what to do with it.

104:00 - So about 200 TIE fighters just (finally) launched. It sure is lucky that the rebels have about two dozen X-wings and a few Y-wings to totally hold them all off.

107:00 - This has to be the worst data-store in the galaxy. Who designed this system of huge towers of HDDs? Really poor storage density drives at that. It was the grad trainee, wasn't it?

108:00 - On the numbers game again; how exactly are the 20-odd people who came with them on the shuttle holding off an entire fucking army by the way? We've seen easily over 100 troops now storm the beaches, including half a dozen AT-ATs. The Imperial military has to be the most ineffective in history since the Emu War of 1932. How the hell did they subjugate an entire galaxy with this lot?

111:00 - Another non-complaint; super awesome layering of Dies Irae into the score by MG; that man is a legend in our time.

111:00 - Mighty useful that she just happens to have a clip to attach the unexpected hard drive onto her belt.

112:00 - Blind man can "see" Jin is wearing a necklace on Jeddah, can fight teams of Stormtroopers multiple times, and can sense an approaching AT-AT. He can walk across a field of fire and avoid being hit.... but then he can't find the fucking switch?!

113:00 - And then his "did the force prevent the Stormtroopers hitting him" moment is completely ruined by his mate also running across the sand to pick him up; proving once more that Stormtroopers just are pre-programmed not to shoot important characters. At least not until they've served their plot point.

114:00 - Wait, you're telling me that the capital ships don't make a scratch in a Star Destroyer, but a couple of Y-wings can complete incapacitate one with three hits? Get the fuck out!

114:30 - Okay, someone needs to explain to the writers how communication systems work. If PilotMan can have a chat with Not-Akbar then the Rebels can definitely pick up a PDF of the plans if it's transmitted.

115:00 - And of course Pilot man now dies just after he's finished doing what he was needed for. It's very kind of the Imperials to let people complete their missions objectives before they kill them.

115:40 - Bye bye Blind-man side-kick whose name I can't remember even after trying to listen out for it through this whole ordeal.

116:00 - I see they copied the "Unnecessarily opening and closing hatch" idea from Galaxy Quest.

116:45 - I'm glad to see the half-dozen X-wings that got through the shield are still fighting strong against the dozens of Imperial forces.

117:30 - More in the "Really fucked up sequencing" category; how is it that Bendelson is just now getting in a lift to go to the top of the structure when he was head-to-head with Jin a minute ago? She had to climb up the HardDriveTotemPole and then jump through the HatchOfDeath and then climb through to the transmitter dish. Did he go to grab a quick coffee before heading after her?

118:10 - Again, it's a good thing Jin managed to align the transmitter just before the controls were destroyed.

119:30 - It's a good thing Discount Solo didn't stop for coffee as well. What with the broken leg and all, he did very well to climb up behind Bendelson and shoot him in the back on the sly. I mean, come on! If you're going to have him save the day after somehow climbing that massive fucking tower, don't then have him unable to move without Jin carrying him.

120:00 - Yeah, let's not worry about taking out the rebel fleet; just blow up our own data store. Great plan!

123:00 - Why did only the flagship save the plans? And how the fuck does Vader's ship know that they received a transmission from the surface? He's only just jumped into the system. This makes no sense at all. Oh yeah, don't blow it up or anything, just this one time let's get a boarding party together and go chill out with those guys.

123:40 - Let's not transmit the plans to anyone else or anything sensible. Let's just copy them down onto a memory stick, delete the copy on the computer, and then hope we can get the USB stick off the ship. Otherwise Timmy is going to have to swallow that stick and hope for the best, and poor Timmy doesn't want to do that now.

124:20 - As much as people might love Vengeful Vader, I want to know what happened between now and next week when he fights Obi-wan for him to suddenly become so arthritic. Was it like when you go to the gym for the first time in ages and you over-do it and you just ache for days afterwards? Must be that.

125:30 - Yeah, let's just undercut the epic sacrifice that has just happened by adding a line about hope at the end (because we haven't said HOPE HOPE HOPE enough throughout this film) and that will help tie it into the next film, which is about HOPE. Yeah, do that, and end on a high note after the slaughter of thousands that just happened.

Nope, I honestly can't find a real issue with 99% of that. Most of that list is editing issues which people either see as an issue or well....just don't. Every film ever made could be picked apart for editing/situational issues in fairness. The whole franchise is full of them, every film ever made is full of them if you have the motivation to find them

I'm not convinced with the list I'm afraid I still think it's one of the top films in the franchise

[Strudel]

The editing issues I could actually let slide; I hadn't really noticed them as much before this watch-through when some of it just became really obvious and so I decided to pull them out a bit more. The character issues and rubbish plot are just unforgivable though. I know it went through some heavy edits and reshoots because the first cut was a complete mess, but they still needed to fix so many issues. The three that really just kill it for me are:

Discount Solo (I still can't remember his name; was it Ando, Andor, Andar? Something that sounded like a region of Middle-Earth) has no problem in his first scene killing someone who is helping him and clearly afraid. He treats that guy like shit, and at that point I definitely expected him to turn out to be a bad guy. Yet when they're off trying to kill the guy who designed and built The Ultimate Weapon, he doesn't. Why? At this point he's never met the guy, knows he's done horrific things, and doesn't know about his attempts to sabotage it. Having a character go so against everything you've set up about them for no reason, and then never explain it at all is just really really bad story telling.

The Unnecessariness of Jin: This is again, just rubbish writing. She's completely unnecessary to the Rebel plan. They only want her so they can get to SawChe. But they KNOW the guy. She hasn't seen him since she was a child. It's like me having a disagreement with a co-worker and then to patch things up I track down someone they went to school with so that they can convince the co-worker to in the all-staff emails again. So much nonsense!

And the biggest one: Jin completely changing her mind for no reason, because otherwise the plot can't move forward. She literally has an argument with DS about how terrible the Rebels are and he's not going to change her mind just by making excuses like, "Well I didn't kill your dad after all, so I MUST be the good guy" even though she points out it was still the rebels who killed him. The very next scene with the rebels is her trying to convince them all that they need to go after the Empire. I don't know if a huge chunk of story was supposed to happen between the two and it just got cut; or even a good little heart to heart between them where he somehow convinces her that killing her father was a good idea, but as it stands, the story makes no sense at all.

So none of the characters are well crafted (with the exception of K2 who was the only one I had any form of interest in), the story makes no sense, and half the people in it don't need to be.

If a student handed this in to me as an essay, well first I'd say this wasn't what I set for the assignment because I'm not running a creative writing class, but secondly I'd say if he wanted to be a writer just ditch this whole story and start again, because it's not worth trying to salvage anything from this car crash.

[Stormbringer]

The biggest problem with Rogue One, and what writes it off completely for me, is that Kyle Katarn (you know, the guy who ACTUALLY recovered the Death Star plans in Dark Forces) isn't in in it. Rogue One is the worst cover up story ever for the actual truth that Disney are trying so hard to surpress.

[Jez]

Ok there won't be any agreement on this one I think. It's pretty marmite some love it some hate it.

[Wrathbone]

Discount Solo (I still can't remember his name; was it Ando, Andor, Andar? Something that sounded like a region of Middle-Earth) has no problem in his first scene killing someone who is helping him and clearly afraid. He treats that guy like shit, and at that point I definitely expected him to turn out to be a bad guy. Yet when they're off trying to kill the guy who designed and built The Ultimate Weapon, he doesn't. Why? At this point he's never met the guy, knows he's done horrific things, and doesn't know about his attempts to sabotage it. Having a character go so against everything you've set up about them for no reason, and then never explain it at all is just really really bad story telling.

Character development? At the start he shoots the informant precisely because he's terrified and is therefore a liability for such a vital piece of intel. Yes, it's a brutal act, but that's the point - it's demonstrating a side of the rebels that isn't comprised of plucky adventurers, but rather cold-blooded pragmatists. He hesitates with the assassination later because Jyn's influence has softened his hard edge somewhat. That's not bad storytelling at all.

If a student handed this in to me as an essay, well first I'd say this wasn't what I set for the assignment because I'm not running a creative writing class, but secondly I'd say if he wanted to be a writer just ditch this whole story and start again, because it's not worth trying to salvage anything from this car crash.

I've got to say, as someone who did a masters in creative writing, I wouldn't have found that very helpful.

[Strudel]

But there's nothing between him killing the informant and not killing dad that in any way suggests an evolution in his thinking. I totally get that his first scene is supposed to show that the rebels aren't all lovely perfect people, but up until he doesn't kill the dad his relation with Jin has been nothing but confrontational and distrustful. There's nothing in the film to suggest why he wouldn't kill the designer of the Death Star unless, as CinemaSins would put it, The Power of Boners is strong with this one. Up until the next scene there is zero chemistry or affection between Jin and Ando. They've been dismissive and distrustful throughout, so I just don't buy that she would actually have changed his mind. After the Council of Rebelrond, when she's suddenly changed her turn, he's all for following her, but it's a very stark change from complete hatred and distance to suddenly them both wanting to bang each other after the council.

I'm not saying they couldn't have made this work, just that it really didn't in the film that was finally produced.

As to the second point I was being less than 10% serious.

[Wrathbone]

But there's nothing between him killing the informant and not killing dad that in any way suggests an evolution in his thinking. I totally get that his first scene is supposed to show that the rebels aren't all lovely perfect people, but up until he doesn't kill the dad his relation with Jin has been nothing but confrontational and distrustful. There's nothing in the film to suggest why he wouldn't kill the designer of the Death Star unless, as CinemaSins would put it, The Power of Boners is strong with this one. Up until the next scene there is zero chemistry or affection between Jin and Ando. They've been dismissive and distrustful throughout, so I just don't buy that she would actually have changed his mind. After the Council of Rebelrond, when she's suddenly changed her turn, he's all for following her, but it's a very stark change from complete hatred and distance to suddenly them both wanting to bang each other after the council.

I think as Jez says, it's a simple case of disagreement because I completely buy it. It's been a while since I've watched it, but I don't believe Jyn is making any specific argument to sway Andor - it's more that she's reminded him of his own humanity. Bear in mind that his best friend until the start of the film was an actual robot. No wonder he'd become a cold-hearted bastard who has no problem with murdering people to protect the interests of the Alliance. I also don't think there's any boner-interest involved in the relationship, or at least I can't recall any textual evidence for that. They bicker and argue and clearly don't get along until he comes to the point of taking the shot and he realises he's about to murder an innocent girl's father. I honestly don't believe he'd have hesitated had he not met Jyn, and that in itself is enough to sell the moment of character development to me.