Every year or so I watch all of the Star Wars movies with my kids. Empire Strikes Back is likely the best “Star Wars movie”, but Rogue One is the best movie within the Star Wars universe.

I’ve loved Rogue One since my first time seeing it.back in December and January the year it came out was during a slow period at my job where I had a good of flexibility. I would literally bounce from my office to go to the theater and see it a few times a week. I had to have seen Rogue One at least around 15 times in the theater. Yes I’m a huge SW fan, but after the mess that was Rise of Skywalker proved that Lucasfilm/Disney had zero plan for the sequel trilogy, some of the shine has worn off, even for me. But that wearing of the shine has also taken away from how good of a movie Rogue One is.

Let me also mention off top that the Vader scene at the end has also taken away from the movie itself. That scene was so great and so satisfying that I’ve seen all kinds of comments calling it the only good part of the movie, which is crazy. Other criticisms I’ve heard are about the planet jumping in the first act (needed to introduce the ensemble cast and get the audience to care about them) and the CGI for Tarkin and Leia (it’s already dated looking at it now, but that’s always been the case in Star Wars pushing the limits of special effects which then might be dated later, just watch some of the X-Wing effects in the OT.)

The fact that it’s so good is also incredible given the production history, with the third act being almost completely redone from the original plan, and Garett Edwards essentially being taken off the film and Tony Gilroy brought in to fix it. It’s crazy that it ends up being a cohesive story.

All that being said, this movie introduced completely new characters, accomplished a good amount of world-building, gave those characters individual story arcs, with each of the main cast getting their own unique death scene after accomplishing something needed for the rebels to get the Death Star plans, so when they died we actually cared. (The one exception is Saw Gerrera, they wasted Forrest Whittaker in this a bit.) It also incorporated comedy in a way that fit in universe and never took me out of the story. On top of that, by FAR the best space battle in Star Wars. You could argue for Battle of Ensor in ROTJ but that was a 3 way climax that had the Luke/Vader/Emperor fight and the Ewok battle in addition to the space battle, which was just about blowing up another Death Star.

I’ve also seen criticism of the score. I think this is just nostalgia and people wanting to hear all of the John Williams themes. But those are literally themes that represent characters not in this movie (until the end when some of those themes do show up) so it makes sense for Michael Giacchino to come up with new themes that fit the SW aesthetic. Makes a lot more sense than the music in the Obi-wan Kenobi show not using themes that had already showed up in the prequels. Giacchino came up with BEAUTIFUL new music - just listen to “Your Father Would Be Proud” or “Guardians of the Whills Suite” on Spotify or YouTube.

All of this, PLUS the Vader hallway scene leading directly into A New Hope.

it has a grittiness to it that is fantastic

the characters are real (which is the essence of Star Wars and got severely lost in almost all the movies since) and they avoid becoming over-melodramatic

simple, real stakes

Fraser's cinematography is gorgeous and transports you to their world (just like his work in Dune)

so yeah

>RE: I’m sorry, but Rogue One is the best movie in Star Wars canon.>

it is. Its easily my favorite of the movies. easily. Extremely re watchable. Best acted. Some the coolest battles. Probably the best Vader scene. Most powerful emotional connection/impact overall.

yep. no arguments from me. Im with ya.

my ONLY criticisms were *parts* of the CGI for Tarkin and Leia....i say *parts* because i think, instead of showing direct full frontal scenes of both of their faces, i've always WISHED that they would have JUST shown Tarkins REFLECTION in the window (like they did at the START of his scene)...THAT would have been JUST as impactful, cool, as showing his full computerized face....i'd argue it would have been even COOLER.

Similar for Leia...all we needed to see was Leia from the back, her "hair buns"....THAT would have been cooler and more intriguing/exciting than actually seeing the computerized face imo.

So yeah, seeing their actual full frontal computerized faces did briefly take me OUT of the 'magic' of the movies for those quick moments...

BUT...the REST of the film pulled me ALL the way back in and was SO enjoyable & engaging that i can forgive the 'full frontal' digital face shots :)

Empire is the one OT film that really holds up strong. But I feel like it suffers just a bit from being the middle film in the trilogy. Also the CGI with the snow speeders at the beginning looks like it’s age (although still better than those same speeders in the Kenobi episode.)

Completely agree re: Tarkin and Leia. At the time it came out I didn’t have a problem with it, but it is clearly outdated now with the uncanny valley thing happening, and to your point not needed because they could have done less with the full face shots.

Also my one script criticism is the last line of the movie - that officer watched Vader slaughter his men to get that disk to Leia, he asks her “what is it” and she just turns, smiles awkwardly through CGI/deepfake and says “Hope”. My man deserved a more direct answer than that.

the Luke CG character looks so much better in the Mandalorian S2 finale, and looks REALLY good in the Grogu detour episode from Boba Fett

Luke looked much better in Book of Boba than he did in Mando - like one year later.

I don't even know how I stumbled on it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CXMb_MO3aw&ab_channel=Shamook

At the very LEAST its the best Star Wars movie since the original three. But its def my favorite by far.

The Last Jedi is still my favorite thing to come from the Star Wars resurgence from Disney.

But yeah, Rouge One is dope. Like Rebels a lot too.

the trilogy it's in, and specifically Rise of Skywalker. For Last Jedi to really work, they needed to finish the story in a somewhat satisfying way. I don't blame Rian Johnson for ANY of that. Yes I would have loved for them to have has the trilogy planned out in advance, but that wasn't needed - the OT wasn't planned out like that. the MCU through Endgame also wasn't planned out film for film like that. But they needed to take the time to get Rise of Skywalker right.

Beyond how the trilogy went, my other issue with Last Jedi is with how Finn was handled. Part of this was because of the redirect in Force Awakens with Rey being the force sensitive future Jedi and not Finn as in the marketing. But there was still potentially a great story to be told with his character as an ex-Stormtrooper. They should have had him as the leader of a Stormtrooper rebellion with The Last Jedi kicking it off and Episode 9 making that a huge element of how they were able to defeat the First/Final Order. It wouldn't have even taken much of a change in Last Jedi check out this deleted scene, this is an alternate take of Phasma's death, with Finn convincing stormtroopers to turn on her:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzeIb-TZo_I

This would have been Finn's best scene in TLJ, and would have set up an even bigger subplot for Episode 9.

Never seen this...so much better than the scene they went with!

>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzeIb-TZo_I
>
>This would have been Finn's best scene in TLJ, and would have
>set up an even bigger subplot for Episode 9.

To swap that out with her just falling to her death after their fight took away character development for Finn, Phasma, and the entire Resistance vs. First Order war. Imagine if they just left that in Last Jedi with stormtroopers inspired by Finn questioning their orders and programming. Then in Rise of Skywalker the group of former stormtroopers could have also been inspired by Finn and led by him. And when Lando arrives in the end with the random regular people it could have also been Finn arriving with several First Order star destroyers taken over by the stormtrooper rebellion he’d led, giving him an actual story arc through all three movies.

how did this shit get cut?

And Force Awakens gets a lot of (deserved) hate for being a retread...but Last Jedi also does it for 80% of the movie...just with the goal of subverting expectations.


Once the move stops trying to trick the audience it becomes fresh and interesting...and there's only like 45 minutes left tops.

I've seen that deleted scene before. All around missed opportunity.

With that said, TLJ is the only one that makes Finn a well-rounded character. He gets his own storyline with an arc where he starts off as a coward to a true believer in the Resistance ready to die for the cause.

And despite it being short, at least he wins the fight in TLJ, whereas Force Awakens,he loses against a stormtrooper (wet fart) and loses against Kylo. In Rise of Skywalker, homie is literally just there as a glorified sidekick.

Plus, TLJ works for me as its own movie.

Though the entire sequel trilogy was ruined once they hired Abrams. Watching all the movies in order makes you realize he really just remade A New Hope, literally. His excuse of "reminding a new generation why we loved Star Wars" was insulting. They should have hired one director for the entire trilogy. Not named JJ Abrams

JJ's best movie is the 2009 Star Trek

Rogue One and Mando are the best things Disney has done with Star Wars , like by the longest of country miles

Almost all of the rest of it is exceptionally bad/corny/forced

Rogue One has no John Williams, no Jedi, no Skywalkers (besides Vader), and no involvement from George Lucas. If you ask 10 SW fans what the best SW movie is, likely that 9 of them say Empire Strikes Back. Depending on their age, 1 or 2 might say Revenge of the Sith also.

That’s just your opinion. Rogue One is a great movie, and the acting
is splendid, but it isn’t s necessary movie in the Star Wars canon. The
rebellion having the Death Star plans is in New Hope. How they got them
is irrelevant. So we already know that backstory. They stole them from
the Empire.

Luke Skywalker is the central and most important figure of Star Wars and
it doesn’t work without him. That’s why they assassinated his character
in the sequels, to force the audience to focus on new characters. But that
that failed. Vader is the second most important character.

I’m a lover of the prequels, because those stories are necessary, and
the stories are well told, and the new characters and light saber
battles are spectacular...It’s some of the acting that is terrible.

Rogue One is the best movie in Star Wars. Because the stuff you're mentioning about it not being needed, or Luke not in it, etc speaks to it not being the best "Star Wars movie". But if you watch all of them, and evaluate each on it's OWN merits, not about how it fits in the saga, or whether it is a quintessential Star Wars film, Rogue One stands out over and above with ESB being very close.

if we're being honest honest

God-Tier:
Empire (to me, the best by a considerable margin)
Rogue One
Mandalorian

Mediocre:
New Hope
Jedi
Revenge of the Sith
Last Jedi

Dogshit:
Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones (tied with Last Skywalker for the smelliest pile of dogshit)
Force Awakens
Solo
Last Skywalker (tied with Clones)
Boba Fett

haven't seen Obi-Wan show


In my opinion, Empire is great because it picks up the first installment and leads to the third installment and still succeeds as a standalone movie. You could go into Empire knowing nothing about Luke, Leia, or Vader and still be totally immersed in the story. I don't even know if I need to bother showing New Hope to my kids, they'll be bored for the first hour and half of it isn't even essential (Luke in particular, our hero, SUCKS in New Hope. Total chump.) But every single minute of Empire serves a purpose. It's expertly paced, acted, and shot. I think of that movie like American film canon, like Godfather, Jaws, Back to the Future, Goodfellas, etc.

So, yea I think it's a pretty hot take to think Rogue One is better than Empire.

Mando
Obi Wan - shit was terrible
Sequels
All the Light saber battles - trash ( prequels blew that shit out the water)

It’s like Sony with the X-men.

>Every year or so I watch all of the Star Wars movies with my
>kids.

I was wondering because I remember there being a debate about the ideal viewing order but that was before the sequel trilogy came out. Do you generally watch them in release order or do you not have a strong preference?

A couple years ago we tried watching in release order but that was confusing for the kids. And we just kinda watch them over a couple weeks time, usually during the Summer. I feel like release order only makes sense for someone's theoretical first viewing in terms of having the plot reveals have an impact. Once you already know who Luke's father is, etc. it doesn't matter to me.

>I was wondering because I remember there being a debate about
>the ideal viewing order but that was before the sequel trilogy
>came out. Do you generally watch them in release order or do
>you not have a strong preference?

https://youtu.be/T8XwL0syIZ8

Rogue One is so good it actually makes watching A New Hope a better and more impactful experience. Unlike other spin offs/prequels, this one actually accomplished what it was supposed to: make the following movie feel even more important.

that fresh ideas, original characters, different scenery, etc was possible. Not a single character or location in the sequels is touching Rogue One.


It is definitely the best thing Disney has done by far, though I'd still put Empire above it.


Rogue One, the last 30-45 minutes of Last Jedi, and much of Mandalorian (not all- some of those episodes are hot garbage) are really the only good thing to come out of Disney.

Actually, I'd add Obi-wan. Maybe I had my expectations lower than everyone else but I enjoyed it...especially last two episodes.


Curious how old these kids are...I'm struggling with the appropriate age for some of this.

But they’ve been into Star Wars their entire lives. We watch the movies together the same way my dad and I watched the OT together in the 80’s, on VHS tapes that he recorded from TV broadcasts.

>Curious how old these kids are...I'm struggling with the
>appropriate age for some of this.
>

I dunno if it was being born in the very late 80s then growing up in the 90s and having a very brief window with the OG edits before the Special Editions dropped and I watched the hell out of them and ate them up because it was the age of Super Mario 64 and everything CG was insane to me, followed by MY trilogy being the prequels...


But yea, I loved and love that this movie did the best it could to showcase how gritty and scummy the franchise has always hinted at being. I think I can agree with the takes out there that think it all feels a little showy and even arduously outside the usual Star Wars boxes...in ways that maybe feel egregious just because the characters are all boxed in by the narrative...let alone, as you said, that insane Darth Vader reveal...


But they've leaned into what that Vader scene felt like across pretty much all media at this point, right? And a lot of the TV shows are just explaining things, or offering theories for things, that the original trilogy didn't ask for, the prequels didn't care for and the sequels only demand because if you don't see a crew of mercenaries stumbling into the biological experiment that (we reasonably assume until told otherwise) justifies many of Rise of Skywalker's dumbest decisions (or flattens some of Last Jedi's more challenging subversions) they're just totally stupid instead of simply absurd...


It would've been so cool if Edwards could've squeezed his vision of a Great Escape/Longest Day/River Kwai mashup via the Star Wars mythos into the early days of Disney's Star Wars revival without all the producers, writers and marketers wondering how the hell they were supposed to sell that story to the Funco Pop and Lego people because whether or not Rogue One fully sells either it's entertainment value or it's purpose within the CINEMATIC UNIVERSE, at least they were trying to get back to a moment I never got to live when it felt like Star Wars wasn't just trying to answer questions nobody was asking, or waging war with contemporary films' action sequences just because it felt like scared money couldn't make money OFF OF STAR WARS...


It's the only Star Wars movie other outside the final hour of Empire Strikes Back and the first 15 minutes of Force Awakens where I felt curious, and unlike the first 90% of Mandalorian refused to hedge on whether that curiosity deserved, as modern fandom seems to have defined this word, satisfaction. To me that word is the worst thing about modern Star Wars, and it's been so surprising in part because no matter how low the stakes in Marvel's Phase 3 ultimately were Disney seemed willing to confront how high they could possibly be. Rogue One recognized that Star Wars isn't just amazing sound effects, exceptional art direction, the only franchise with laser swords and a story about people struggling over whether good and evil is a binary or staggering dichotomy. It let us in to all the stuff that's implied in the quieter moments but the Skywalker narrative has no space for. No matter how or why it might feel Rogue One hedged some of that, it did get to attempt to do it. That was so fucking cool.


Or, most simply, despite being a basely grim film with some embarrassingly shoehorned moments of levity, Rogue One wasn't afraid to admit the core of Star Wars, whether it's fascism versus representative republics, space ninjas with wizard powers vs. generic military bros or even just the goddamn the universe really is big enough to believably host anything and be about anybody aspect...I'm just so tired of everything tying back to the Skywalkers, honestly. If Leia's cameo in this movie felt both appropriate and slightly misshapen in this movie, Luke appearing at the end of Mando Season 2 felt like an admission that the money behind this franchise is terrified of having a good time.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

https://www.space.com/rogue-one-star-wars-andor-imax

Article implies one night only but its actually playing for five days where i live. They must have changed the release after the article was written.

Review thread: https://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=718024&mesg_id=718024&listing_type=search

"All of this, PLUS the Vader hallway scene leading directly into A New Hope."

Yes, Vader's an unstoppable killing machine one second, then someone who can barely navigate walking through a door the next second. Super cool beans!

>Yes, Vader's an unstoppable killing machine one second, then
>someone who can barely navigate walking through a door the
>next second. Super cool beans!

At the beginning of New Hope he's not attacking anyone. He boards the ship after the Stormtroopers have taken out the Rebel fighters. And his appearance in ANH was one of the GOAT villain introductions in film - he just walks on board looking at the work his troops did and then proceeds to life a dude up by the neck and choke him out.

And yes he was a killing machine at the end of Rogue One, but his movements weren't inconsistent - he was walking slowly and methodically down that hallway, killing the troops mostly by deflecting their own shots...it's now like he was jumping around doing flips like Anakin from Revenge of the Sith...

He can be hurt by things. I never understood the complaint about him working his way down the hallway slowly and methodically. Darth V isnt invincible.

But it ain't better than the OGS and 2/3rds of the prequels (phantom menace is just...odd).

But it is one the few films in the series that makes you feel the WAR part of Star Wars.
Really surprised that Disney Wars hasnt gone back to that well more often
There infinite stories to be told from that angle

I’d still say Empire is better, but man, this is a great movie. To take a throwaway line and expand it into a fully fleshed out story is really impressive. They could have phoned this one in, but instead, it feels like they had better focus on the production of this movie than they did on the new Skywalker saga movies.

Every member of the crew is compelling and has a great story arc. Part of me is disappointed we can’t get a trilogy with this crew, but the suicide mission aspect of the story certainly helps the emotional stakes. I’d also say it’s the best looking film in the whole franchise.

The Andor preview looked great too. Looking forward to that series.

It's a lot of great characters and fantastic ideas, but in terms of the movies, it's largely been a boring mess. The Last Jedi, Rogue One, and Return Of The Sith are the only two I can re-watch and actually enjoy.

The rest range from "fine" to unwatchable. I re-watched the OG trilogy awhile back and couldn't wait for it to be over. Han Solo is just about the most overrated character relative to what he actually is and does that I can think of, and Leia isn't far behind.

At least PM and Attack Of The Clones have great visuals to work with, but still largely boring.

The basic mythology is great, as are a handful of characters. Luke has the GOAT moment of the whole thing with his ruse against Kylo Ren (who rules, despite the overall trainwreck we got in ROS) and Ewan and Yoda are the saving grace of Eps 1-3.

But for a franchise with such a rabid fanbase, there's so much hokey, b-movie trash in these movies It's a minor miracle they're as heralded as they are.

Rogue One being so good really is kind of a feat.

.

Of course I'm a HUGE Star Wars fan so I'm not gonna agree with your overall take on the franchise. But I'm also realistic as a fan, and when you compare Empire (almost universally seen as the best SW movie) to non-Star Wars "great" films it's not gonna hold up.

The dialogue is corny, especially the Han/Leia romance, many of the effects don't hold up (so there's no advantage there over Rogue One's deepfake issues, just look at the snow speeder effects), and it doesn't really stand alone. Like many middle films in trilogies it suffers from being a sequel that sets up a third movie.

Again, all that said I love it. But I think that when I take off my Star Wars rose colored glasses, Rogue One is the better overall movie.

Unfortunately, this movie is two hours and fifteen minutes.

theater I felt like the beginning was tedious in terms of all the characters, all the planet jumping, etc. But immediately on my second watch, and every watch thereafter (I've watched it at least 20 times) the first half is great - all of that buildup is needed to properly introduce the team members, which gives so much more impact for the end in terms of the individual story arcs and their unfortunate ends.