How Rogue One's Imperial stormtroopers SAVED Star Wars and restored order

Finally

After 33 years, we finally get a Star Wars movie that's true to the original vision of the force we got in Star Wars (no, not A New Hope, I mean the one where Han shot first) and The Empire Strikes Back. The Force is something everyone can share in not just prospective Jedi knights with a rare blood condition. Consider me corny and old-fashioned, but that, and the willingness to [spoiler deleted] every last character you care about, to demonstrate they were serious about their business, make this the best one yet. "I am one with the Force. The Force is with me."

Times change

Stormtroopers in ANH were an elite troop type but have devolved into blaster practice.

IMHO it was better than The Force Awakens, but thats not exactly a high bar to reach. I though there wasn't enough back story and the battle scene was way too long/predictable/boring.

I just wish they would flesh out the everyday lives of people in the universe far more, and we could have a star wars movie that finally goes beyond the formula of a 30 minute batltle scene inevitably culminating in the hero alone blowing up a deathstar/deathstar 2/planet turned into a deathstar/base with plans to the deathstar

"How many Stormtroopers does it take to...

...make the Empire great again?"

Have you hugged a stormtrooper today?

Why not? Have a heart, it's Christmas FGS!

a battle between humanity and the very, very bad guys.

Isn't the empire supposed to humanity against all the aliens and those wussy humans who like aliens? A sort of "master race" plan?

Vader

It had proper bad guys. Who are scheming against each other, which adds to their depth.

Had decent action sequences, and (IMHO) a proper character arc for the protagonists. If you attempt a suicidal mission against all odds than success still involves you all dying in the process. Which the protagonists accept, don't spend their time whining about, so their deaths have some gravitas. Rather than some redshirt or Sean Bean dying at the end of act 1 and everyone else lives happily ever after. Duty heavy as iron and all that.

Still has the usual issues with the fairy tale of the US. Plucky (American) rebels against evil (British) empire, evil empire is super evil for no point other than to justify chaos caused by rebels. Wheras for most non-USians the empire is pretty clearly the US, with it's super CV being taken out by the equivalent of a zodiac with a limpet mine, and plenty of oppressing brown people in sandy countries.

Two things bothered me

Watched it last night at the local IMAX, thoroughly enjoyed it, but two things bothered me, firstly, was the the lack of theme tune at the start, I saw the "A long time ago" and closed my eyes in preparation for the spine-tingling crescendo , but was denied, bummed me out for a minute or two that!

Secondly was at the other end of the film, and the poor CGI of Leia, it was completely unnecessary and bad to be honest, they did well with Tarkin though, even if the voice was off.

I preferred last years film. It was a blatant homage to the first movie but it worked and I smiled.

Rouge 1 just feels like just another CGI action/comic book movie. It raised more questions than it answered. The multi-cultural cast was good (if not calculated for global profit) but not the story.

But then none of the Star Wars stories are truly good. We are all chasing the nostalgic dreams of our adolescent selves.

The stormtroopers aim explained...

On the subject of stormtrooper accuracy, I am of the opnion that they were shooting pretty well in R1... I noticed them hitting and killing stuff all through the film.

at one point though... you see the monk chanting his force prayer while advancing... and all shots miraculously miss him... this same phenomenon was repeated by the mercenary... using the same chant/mantra.

This makes me think the Force is passively protecting its users by bending the laserbeams to miss... and why in the other movies, where even more force wielding characters are active, the stormtroopers are even worse shots...

im sure the troopers themselves are just as confused about why their shots miss...

the force is all around us.

I have to say I was terribly disappointed watching the film.

For some reason I thought it was going to be great, I went to the theater expecting to love it.

This is the first time a Star Wars movie has bored me, the ewoks, Jar Jar, the wretched Lucas dialogue may have been eye rolling, but not boring.

Yes, there were times where X-Wings made me smile and the like but really by the time the final battle started I was hoping for all the characters to die so they wouldn't be in another movie.

Like in the first scene, the parents talk about the plan they had, I don't even want to think about what they would have done if they had had to improvise.

And really, what was the Asian character about? It looked to me they piled all the Asian character cliches they could find into him, he felt like a parody of a parody. He and his sidekick were worse than the ewoks and I can hardly believe I am writing that.

And usually I root for comic relief characters but, except for the droid, I found most of the jokes eye rolling.

Well, lets hope we have Carrie Fisher around for the next movie. :(

2017 - the EU strikes back

Ho hum,

All later Star Wars films are average.

Why? Because they do not introduce new elements; they try to live off an already established formula. Where are the the major twists? Where are the new concepts such as the “force”? Where are the amazing visual effects that are cutting edge? None of these things happen in Star Wars anymore. It’s more of the same – the new films need to push the boundaries in the same way as the originals. They are simply made now to make money.

The Force Awakens vs Rogue One

For me, TFA was a better film than Rogue One. I get the drive for "dark" but I've never thought that added value to Star Wars. If you want gritty, depressing realism watch the news. If you want escapist space opera, watch Star Wars.

On a side note, the Jeddah City ambush on the Storm Troopers pretty squarely cements the relationship between the Rebellion and certain middle eastern terrorist groups.....

Here in the USA... we Americans have to be the resistance, the rebels against the incoming fascists leader who has the fascists house and Senate to back him up. Yeah, a lot of us are worried that this insane person is going to start nuclear exchanges. If not in the USA, perhaps somewhere.

The empire is the bad guy. The russian puppet is the bad guy. Taking away the rights of Americans makes them THE BAD GUYS. And its not just the USA under attack, our allies in Europe are under attack too. Learn from our stupidity! Briexit should have been a wake up call. If the EU and NATO collapses - things will go to shit very quickly on a global scale.

Rogue One did not have the force in it...it was a boring and pointless endeavor just to earn Disney back the money it spent in buying Lucasfilms...only good part of the movie was Darth Vader...showing up in his dark no nonsense form. I am going to skip any side stories of Star Wars from now on...

Rogue 1 Wins

Agree: Rogue 1 (ep 3.5) beats Force Awakens (ep 7) Kylo Ren is just not intimidating as the bad guy, the other characters were pretty forgettable too. the storyline was just too busy and the StarKiller base overblown - why does anyone need the ability to destroy 5 planets simultaneously? Does 5 simultaneous planetary destructions really make a bigger statement than the ability to destroy one at a time?

I enjoyed ep7 but I loved ep 3.5

Things I missed in ep 3.5 - the opening sequence was disappointing - there is only one way to begin a Star Wars movie - rolling text to introduce the story and a big ship flying over head with a massive one following soon after.

The score didnt match up to the originals (or even the god awful prequels)