>i mean where do you draw it?
>this movie wouldn't have any meaning, even to casual fans,
>without a new hope.
>
>we don't really see how truly fucked up the empire is anywhere
>in this movie, or why the rebellion might be better, or any
>jedi at all.
>
>but that subtext from the rest of the franchise is still there
>and why it resonates.

The Empire is pretty much established as bad in the first scene of the movie when the family is scared of them arriving, the mom is killed and the kid hunted. And if that's not enough, they blow up an entire city (including their own soldiers) as a test drive of their new weapon. Vader nearly chokes a dude to death for asking for his job back. I don't think a newbie to the franchise would question whether the Empire is bad.

The Rebellion is definitely shown as a murkier group of good guys in this one but if you never saw any Star Wars film; I think the basic gist of the film would play. The Death Star is bad; we need to get the plans to destroy it.
The reason it would fall flat is the same reason it fell a little flat for people who knew the movies - the main characters were poorly developed.


>it's also why we don't get as much backstory for the rest of
>the gang. 1) just pointing out that someone's a veteran of the
>clone wars or faithless temple guardian or an imperial
>defector carries a lot of weight with much of the audience,
>because we've seen those stories through other media and

A) The problem with the gang isn't the lack of backstory so much as it is that it took them too many scenes to get the gang together. I agree we don't need much backstory but we got two fairly useless scenes of Riz Ahmed meeting Saw and the true telling monster. There's little reason why we couldn't have just met him in the jail cell.

B) The issue is when people say: "You know, they could have rewritten it and done without Saw Gerrerra's part" and fans go "Know you HAVE to have that."
You don't. At all. That's when you're shaping the film to fit fan service rather than telling the best story. And in that case, it's fan service that wasn't even in the movies so it's not even connecting those dots.

The main issue is the main characters. Galen, Jyn, Cassian, and even Krennic are pretty poorly drawn. There's not much to them or their stories.
This is where people thought time could have been better spent than lengthy Tarkin/Krennic talks* or having Saw sic the monster on Riz.
*or make these talks have more motivation for Krennic's approach to things.

Personally, I think you could even combine the Cassian and Jyn characters altogether.