Film Star Wars: Pogue One

What is this about TFA and CGI? Abrams, the media and so on went out of their way, multiple times, to let everyone know that they were returning back to the classic method of practical effects. The movie was replete with practical locations, aliens and effects.

The original's benefit from having no predecessors to have angry hipsters dissect on a nano-scale. We've had decades of lore since the originals, and it's made some Star Wars "fans" insufferable wenches.

If the original's were released now, and no one had seen them, they'd likely have been panned by CriticCafe too :lol:
 
TFA did everything that was asked of it.

Disney probably did not Abrams to take too many risks with it as this was the first movie since their buyout. They needed a fun, family movie with similar themes to the original Star Wars films to set up the rest of the movies, and to get the audience over the shittiness of the prequel films.
 
Giant Midget said:
TFA did everything that was asked of it.

Disney probably did not Abrams to take too many risks with it as this was the first movie since their buyout. They needed a fun, family movie with similar themes to the original Star Wars films to set up the rest of the movies, and to get the audience over the shittiness of the prequel films.
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People often refer to "the prequels" as one big reference point, but, Revenge of the Sith is quite good. Phantom sucks, Clone is better but that's not saying much.
 
Hoof The Ball said:
What is this about TFA and CGI? Abrams, the media and so on went out of their way, multiple times, to let everyone know that they were returning back to the classic method of practical effects. The movie was replete with practical locations, aliens and effects.

The original's benefit from having no predecessors to have angry hipsters dissect on a nano-scale. We've had decades of lore since the originals, and it's made some Star Wars "fans" insufferable wenches.

If the original's were released now, and no one had seen them, they'd likely have been panned by CriticCafe too :lol:
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You don't need to dissect it on a nano-scale though, if the following can describe two movies in the same saga then there is fair criticism: young orphan on sandy planet finds out they have magical powers and are drafted in to the resistance to stop a spherical death machine (shown to blow up planets). Older guardian gets killed by Big bad guy (who is also magical and wears a black helmet).

There was scope to tell a similar story and set up a new trilogy without having so many commonalities. Different setting, different look for Kilo Ren, different super weapon.

I enjoyed it first time but it doesn't stand up to repeated viewings for me.
 
In fairness, some on here do pan the originals as well.
 
Giant Midget said:
TFA did everything that was asked of it.

Disney probably did not Abrams to take too many risks with it as this was the first movie since their buyout. They needed a fun, family movie with similar themes to the original Star Wars films to set up the rest of the movies, and to get the audience over the shittiness of the prequel films.
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For a lot of people, it didn't. For a start, it wasn't supposed to be a reboot of the original movie (neither it was labeled as so), but it really was. And that was a big no for a lot of fans.

The prequels for all the stick they got (some fair, some not), at least told (a good IMO) story, although the acting and dialogues lacked. This on the other side, had decent acting, not cringe-worthy dialogue, but it didn't have a story.

I have rewatched it and 'Revenge of the Sith' recently, and Revenge is a better movie.
 
Revenge is not a good film. Not as shit as the other 2, but still not very good.
 
Bill.s.preston said:
Revenge is not a good film. Not as shit as the other 2, but still not very good.
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Agree. May actually be my least favourite because they manage to make James Earl Jones sound like a prat.
 
I'm seeing this tomorrow night. Had seen the trailers and thought it looked good, but reading those twitter reactions has got my balls tingling.
 
Okay, just seen it: buy the hype. It is defenitly the best film of the modern Star Wars era and it's better than both episode 4 and 6. It's freakin' fecking awesome. Never thought Disney were able to pull this off. It feels like Batman Begins to the Batman saga did. Or if episode 7 was Begins, this might even be the dark knight.
 
fcbforever said:
Okay, just seen it: buy the hype. It is defenitly the best film of the modern Star Wars era and it's better than both episode 4 and 6. It's freakin' fecking awesome. Never thought Disney were able to pull this off. It feels like Batman Begins to the Batman saga did. Or if episode 7 was Begins, this might even be the dark knight.
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Without giving anything away, how Vadery was Vader?
 
Got tickets for a showing in 6 hours but I'm just home from the work Christmas do that started at 3pm...I'm tempted to bin them and wait for sobriety.
 
As big a fan I am of Star Wars and Vader as this iconic villain, I'm equally looking forward to seeing Ben Mendelsohn - was fantastic in Bloodline and hoping for some bad guy scenery chewing.
 
Just back and I really enjoyed it. Won't elaborate much further since presumably few have seen it but yeah, was very good.
 
I didn't like it as much as TFA

And I found the CGI Tarkin really distracting. The CGI Leia was spot on (and barely on screen). But there was no need for so much Tarkin, especially when it's so weird to watch.
 
Untied said:
I didn't like it as much as TFA

And I found the CGI Tarkin really distracting. The CGI Leia was spot on (and barely on screen). But there was no need for so much Tarkin, especially when it's so weird to watch.
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I've seen a few comments about this but he really didn't grate on me at all...I barely noticed he was CGI'd so I'll need to watch it back to pay more attention. Leia seemed a lot more obvious.
 
Cheesy said:
I've seen a few comments about this but he really didn't grate on me at all...I barely noticed he was CGI'd so I'll need to watch it back to pay more attention. Leia seemed a lot more obvious.
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I have seen mixed opinions on it, but I just found it quite distracting

What did you think overall?

There's some great moments, (Vader) and the battle scenes are some of the best in any of the movies. But compare to the force awakens, there was basically no character development. No one makes any notable decisions, it just feels like everyone is along for the ride. And so even the important moments - e.g. the blind one walking to the master switch through fire - fall a little bit flat as you have no idea why he has decided to do that/join the rebellion etc
 
Cheesy said:
I've seen a few comments about this but he really didn't grate on me at all...I barely noticed he was CGI'd so I'll need to watch it back to pay more attention. Leia seemed a lot more obvious.
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I'm also wondering if the fact that Peter Cushing was such a strange looking man is actually the main thing throwing me off. He kind of looks like a cartoon character anyway and you aren't used to seeing him in high resolution
 
Untied said:
I have seen mixed opinions on it, but I just found it quite distracting

What did you think overall?

There's some great moments, (Vader) and the battle scenes are some of the best in any of the movies. But compare to the force awakens, there was basically no character development. No one makes any notable decisions, it just feels like everyone is along for the ride. And so even the important moments - e.g. the blind one walking to the master switch through fire - fall a little bit flat as you have no idea why he has decided to do that/join the rebellion etc
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I really enjoyed it. I thought it took a while to get going (all the jumping between planets was distracting), and the writing was....err, I suspect at times, but on the whole it was very entertaining and something that both really felt like a Star Wars film and which brought something new to the series through being quite grim in its ending. Obviously to enjoy it you've got to set aside the fact it's all a retcon on a bit of a plothole from IV, but it'll be nice enough to watch the original now and have more backstory on it.

I thought the characters were alright enough...I think Jyn had a lot more personality than Rey in a sense, and the captain had enough ambiguity about him to be interesting. They were perhaps generally limited in what they'd do with them on one movie which was always going to be plot driven but even though they were mostly fairly two-dimensional, I liked them all more than enough to be invested in the whole thing.
 
Just seen it, very enjoyable. Do a review later on but one quick comment, I loved the fact Galen Erso put a defect in to the Death Star. It's been a joke for years but makes it so much more easier to except it now.
 
Nothing here, just wanted to join in on all the spoiler-tagging.
 
Pretty fun little Star Wars movie, lots of Dark Forces elements in it which hit me right in the nostalgia straight from the 90's. Story is indeed simple but tight enough to make sense in correlation to events before A New Hope and in terms of showing some historical stuff from wider SW universe perspective it succeeds.

Mr. Earl Jones nails it once again so rebel scum beware.
 
Rooney1987 said:
Just seen it, very enjoyable. Do a review later on but one quick comment, I loved the fact Galen Erso put a defect in to the Death Star. It's been a joke for years but makes it so much more easier to except it now.
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Yeah, the whole flaw thing was obviously a massive retcon for this movie but I still liked the wee extra detail all the same.
 
Going to watch it tonight. The comments here are getting me excited.
 
Fun Movie. Disjointed start, but it gets real good in the last hour.

Vader scene at the end is great
 
Ticks all the boxes just as TFA had last year

The retcon of events in A New Hope are annoying, as were the odd continuity mistakes. However, a huge nod to Michael Giacchino for the musical score. The first time a Star Wars film hasn't been scored by John Williams, but it sounded as if it had, and lots of undercurrents of previous themes. Forget Tarkin being grating, Andor got to me, I couldn't help but wonder why Richard Hammond was in Star Wars
 
So a fuller impression

Did enjoy it a lot, as others have mentioned the action sequences were fantastic and they segued in the start of Star Wars really nicely. Felt deliberately different to the main saga from the off when it went straight from "once upon a time" to the space shot without the text scrawl, moving away from the 50s adventure serial vibe, something I thought both worked and didn't for the film as a whole.

Agree with Untied's point about the characters, many of them had really interesting beginnings but due to the constraints of a prequel plot had to die long before realising anything. Cassian I found quite annoying generally but had that one moment where you saw some background in him, unfortunately unable to be realised. Donnie Yen and his mate whose name I can't remember at all I liked but again you only saw bare flashes before they had their turn to die heroically. Riz Ahmed the same. K I liked and was one character I thought worked as a whole. Forest Whitaker had a weird voice. Jyn I had mixed feeling about, I didn't believe at all she was a crafty rebel that endured labour camps, did believe her relationship with her father would power her through the final act.

Overall it was kinda like if Star Wars ended with Luke and everyone dying in the Death Star attack. And to rub it all in, they'll never get mentioned again for the rest of the series despite heroically sacrificing themselves against orders!

Vader though...
 
Best film I have seen since I don't know when. Maybe most I've ever enjoyed a film. Admittedly I am a Star Wars fan. But hairs were on end, I was bouncing up and down, gnawing on fingers, laughing and wanting to cheer. Never been so involved in a film. Everythng just worked. I will have to go watch it again in 2d this time, 3d is a bit blurry for me.

Unbelievably stupendous.

How the feck did they do Leia and Tarkin?

How awesome was Vader!
 
My biggest complaint is that Vader wasn't introduced well enough. I feel like there should have been more of a build up, perhaps a bit more ambiguity about who was being grovelled to (could have been the Emperor etc.) then you hear the breathing or something. It felt a bit like "oh hey Vader's here now". Not bad if that's my biggest complaint.
 
So just to expand on my main criticism...

It definitely does a very good job of introducing its characters and making them likeable. You leave feeling disappointed you'll never get to see more of those characters together and so it must have been doing plenty right. But my big problem with the script is that no one makes any choices or changes, which is really the heart of any good story. I know you might say Jyn's story is that of an outcast that decides to die in service of the rebellion, but what she was doing before the events of the film is never made clear. We don't get to see her change. She's just dragged along by discovering and fulfilling her father's sabotage. This isn't a decision or a change of character. It's just finding out new information and acting upon it. Riz Ahmed's character is a defector, but here his change of heart occurs off screen. Chirrut and Baze are similarly thin and simply along for the ride. And finally Cassian. There's some interesting stuff with him, particularly his regret at the things he has had to do for the rebellion, but it's not well explored. He just ends up following Jyn, and her lack of any character growth is again the problem.

Compare 'The Force Awakens', which is by no means a perfect film: It opens with a character we don't even know deciding to right old wrongs by giving a map to Poe. The ensuing village massacre sets up Finn's key decision to defect. Then Rey decides to let BB8 come home with her. Finn decides to leave the First Order by rescuing Poe. Rey and Finn decide to return BB8 to the resistance, both for different motivations, etc, etc. Obviously if you are reading this, you'll know the plot of TFA, but the point is it is driven by character decisions, change and growth in a way that Rogue One is not. The key moments of TFA are character driven. Ren decides to kill his father. Rey decides to embrace her force sensitivity by grabbing the lightsaber. There's nothing like that in Rogue One, and the film suffers for it
 
Really disappointed. There was some good points but at times the acting fell apart. The film didn't need any cheesy speeches but we got a few and I felt it should have played more like a Guns of navvarone, dirty dozen type of film rather than them pretending it was and really when you get down to it, it was just another rehash of the New Hope, Force Awakens story template again.
Young woman leaves her old live behind while on a journey to unravel the mystery of her families past and ends up involved in a mission to help save the galaxy from the super weapon of the empire while a huge ship battle happens in the skies above and all done with the help of enigmatic strangers that become close relationships with an entertaining Robot who joins her on her journey.

and the CGI characters were fecking horrendous. I got the exact same feeling when The Scorpion King was finally awakened.
Leia's CGI looked like she was so happy with everything she was about to jump up in the air fist raised or break out into song "Let it go! Let it go!
which was strange for the budget of the film there was techniques they could have use which would have been perfect and are established already. Only reason I personally believe they went down that route was to finally use that software they showed a few years ago.
 
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