Yes 54 58.70%

No 38 41.30%

Yeah, you missed out. See that ending scene with Vader in the theater was nearly as awesome as seeing the beginning of the original in the theater back in '77. The silence, the terror in the eyes of the doomed soldiers, the breathing, the lightsaber igniting in the darkness, fuck. It was perfect.
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I don't disagree. I don't even necessarily have an issue with them dying at the end, especially Cassyian and Jen. I agree that it needed to happen and there was no sort of prolonged torture scene or anything.

But man, the movie STARTS with Cassian knifing his partner and it goes downhill from there.

It is absolutely an outstanding movie but at some point the joy of the franchise was pretty much completely sucked out of it. And I guess that was necessary to tell that story, but that still gives it a tone unlike anything else in the Star Wars universe (at least the movies).
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While I understand your point of view, I thought it was completely amazing to see just how far the Rebels went in getting the Death Star plans, in the hope of destroying the station before it was unleashed on the galaxy.

I'd imagine the Prequel Series will show even more of those types of confrontations. Spy missions across the Star Wars Galaxy, with the Empire's full might on display, sets the series up to be extremely compelling, if done correctly (and I have total faith in Gilroy to make it happen).
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Yeah, R1 gave Star Wars a brutal, realistic, and real world insight into what real rebels have to go to when rebelling against the empire. In college (being a history nerd) that was my one qualm with rewatching the OT - and that was that all rebels were magically united in their world view and vision in dismantling the empire. This is never how it goes in real rebellions and with the inevitable power vacuums that follow. To see that discord and brutality in R1 really added something special to the universe, though I understand the critiques about how brutal some of that was to watch, (even Vader’s scene - which made me shriek like a straight up fan girl).

That was actually my hope going into the new trilogy. Dismantling empires is a very messy process - just look at the Soviet Union and what’s happened since. However, it got off to a bad start when the best JJ could muster was to make “A New Hope Awakens”. TLJ, at the very least, tried its best to rectify that - and weirdly, I love Rian’s OG script. In that script, Poe (not Rose) went with Finn to the Casino planet, there was no Holdo, and many more scenes with Luke and Rey. The core of that script was that the Jedi has stagnated and that their unrelenting hold on the galaxy is what paved the way for the Empire - a message that I frankly love. It got muddled somewhere from the higher ups... and it makes you wonder how/why that happened.
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Oh there's no question that there was a way to make the skeleton ideas contained in TLJ not suck. My god, the trailer had me more excited for a movie than I'd ever been.

And then, as I've said in a few other threads around here, about 30 minutes in I had the creeping dread that this movie sucked. And then Luke started milking an alien cow and it was just all downhill from there.

But what the trailer did was distill the ideas that COULD'VE made for a great movie into a 2 second clip. And based on that, the movie looked amazing.

Until it actually started...
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There’s a good and compelling movie in there but it got lost in the edit bay.

All of the deleted scenes should have been included as well.
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It was friggin awesome for sure.
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Here's my only problem with that scene (and I agree it was awesome) is that if you watch RO & then go right into Episode IV there's quite a difference between Vader tearing through that ship & the way he enters Leia's ship supposedly just moments later. It's a minor thing, but just something that comes off as odd when you watch them back to back.
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I actually re-watched TLJ last night (only the 3rd time I've watched it which says a lot) and honestly it wasn't as bad as I had built it up in my head. Honestly just get rid of the casino part & replace the Luke force ghost in the end with Luke actually fighting Kylo, besting him & then refusing to kill him only to have Kylo betray him in some way & kill Luke.

Maybe spend some time on explaining Snoke before you kill him, and get rid of the scene where Kylo tells Rey about her parents to keep that thread going as a pull into the next movie. Which was one of the big problems with TLJ, IMO, that it killed all the mysteries set up by TFA, effectively killing momentum into the next film.
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I re-watched Rogue One last night.

One thing I didn't care for that I perhaps didn't notice the first time was (unexpectedly) the score. And maybe it was just a cognitive dissonance thing. They just did the "HERE'S A STAR WARS CHORD!!!!....and a bunch of new stuff" thing too often.

I kinda got to a fish or cut bait moment. Either maintain the 'OT Score' or scrap it.

I think a lot of people thought is was great, but for me I found it taking me out of the movie more often than I expected.

And how cool was pile-driving the star destroyer through the shield gate?

And you mentioned Mendelsohn - I still love that they didn't give him the 'high class' british accent. Lucas always kinda established that the Empire baddies had their polished 'proper' accents and it made them seem aloof; they were clearly raised in this and carried themselves as such. Whereas Mendelsohn, by not having that refined accent, establishes himself as an almost working class underdog. For the history nerds, he gave off a real 'Provincial Commission vs. Regular Commission' from the British army in the Pre-Revolutionary era vibe. A provincial Colonial still had to defer to a regular Captain and that rankled the hell out of a lot of guys (including Washington and Gates - had the British not been so high handed with their provincial officers, we likely don't have our highest ranking officers).

Krennic just seems so obviously frustrated by the 'aristocracy' of the Empire and his frustrations in gaining status that he overreaches. Mendelsohn's more blue collar accent and mannerisms do a fantastic job of getting that conveyed to the audience. My memory is that I read it was an active choice on his part to rough up the accent a bit to add to the character and if that was his contribution, it really was a great little wrinkle.
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I agree about the music overall - but they absolutely nailed the score for Vader's scene. That score nailed the horror of that build-up and that absolute slaughter that followed.
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Imagine that dude playing a more interesting bad guy than the entirety of the sequel trilogy

they really fucked up giving JJ the keys to the big show
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One thing about the score from Rogue One is that THIS is amazing:


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So Episode IX is getting 58% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ouch. I was thinking, man, if the critics dislike this one so much, how bad did they pan The Last Jedi? They gave it... 91%. Uh.

How much of the bad reviews for The Rise of Skywalker are critics hearing the fan base complain about The Last Jedi for two years and allowing that to affect their opinion?
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None.

The Last Jedi is a better film. Better script, better acting, better plot.

Fans are divided because they didn't get deus ex machina badass Luke and there was some uncomfortable business with Canto Bight.

Whatever - it pales in comparison to hamfisted rehashed Jar Jar Abrams garbage.

I will always remember The Last Jedi as the slightly flawed, but very enjoyable beginning of what could have been wrapped into a very interesting and satisfying end at the hands of someone who wanted to put some effort into filmmaking.

Instead, we got sheer laziness borne out of panic.

"Um, they didn't like it when we tried something new so um....OLD SHIT IN A NEW WRAPPER! YEAH!"

Well, way to annoy the people who actually know what good filmmaking looks like and hardcore fans who know better.
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