Hello Internet - HI: Rogue One Star Wars Christmas Special

Episode Date: December 25, 2016

Grey and Brady discuss Rogue One. Merry Christmas, everyone. Brought to You By Our supporters on Patreon Show Notes Discuss this episode on the reddit Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

that was half lightsaber half wookiee coal yeah i don't know what that was that went terribly wrong i could tell it was going wrong when i was doing it but whatever the show must go on what do you think of the title i think it's pretty cool i think it's a very good title rogue one is a good title for a star wars movie i like it thumbs up two thumbs up for the title good start yeah it's it's funny for me because for various reasons, I have been more disconnected from the world than normal for the past many weeks. I only just found out literally like days ago that this Star Wars movie even existed and was in the theaters. So I went into this one knowing the words Rogue One and vaguely what I'd heard a year ago that they were going to make a movie about getting the Death Star plans.

Yeah. And that was the entire extent of my knowledge. I knew more about The Force Awakens by multiples of hundreds than this movie. So I went into it just knowing, cool title, very cool title. And that was basically it. You'd not seen trailers or anything? I hadn't seen trailers. I hadn't seen posters. Somehow this one totally blew past me. And the only thing I knew about it was last year hearing about their plan to do an in-between-isode kind

of a movie every year as opposed to their main one. So that was it. I knew nothing walking into the Star Wars movie. a movie every year as opposed to their main one. So that was it. I knew nothing walking into the Star Wars movie. Nice work. I managed to remain reasonably spoiler free, thank goodness. And as of now, I'm also very, very review and opinion free. I do not have reasonably positive reviews, reasonably positive, but I don't know what people have liked and not liked and what people have said. So things we say that we might think are profound may have been said a thousand times before, or we may find some new amazing thing that no one's ever said before. But knowing these sort of Star Wars-y podcast review things,

I think we're all going to be saying the same things that everyone else says. Yeah, if last year's Star Wars Christmas special was anything to go by, we guarded ourselves from listening to all sorts of reviews only to discover after recording our podcast and listening to everybody else's that there was a very strong consensus opinion yeah i feel i feel a little bit more more nervous going into this podcast having not looked out into the wider world and and seeing what people think of the movie because i feel like i have much stronger opinions in in particular ways for this one. Oh, really?

I'm a little, I'm actually feeling a little bit like I don't know how my reactions to it are going to match up with the wider world's reaction. So I'll be curious to see if it repeats. That shouldn't matter, Grey. That shouldn't matter. You should be fiercely independent. You, you strong, independent-minded CGP Grey,

never a sheep. Why are you nervous about how your opinion compares with others? I don't, I guess, I guess nervous isn't exactly the right word, but it's, it's just, I'm looking at like a big page of notes and I have a bunch of strong opinions. And it's, it's just interesting to see, like, am I going to get a ton of feedback from people saying that I'm totally wrong? is or is it going to be just like oh yes you have you have the same thoughts as everybody else like last year I don't know it's it's just kind of a funny thing to to be going into this with I think that that kind of like I have no idea what anybody else thought about it I literally just saw it uh it came out of the theater like a

couple hours ago from my notes viewing of the movie and so now we are we are walking into the recording i have 22 tiny little bullet points that i made on my phone during the film so they're roughly in order obviously because i made them as the film went on and i made them on a checklist app that i never i don't use for anything other than the podcast i have 22 things to say maybe but i imagine there's going to be a lot of duplication. And also, I imagine some of them are either going to be so badly typed or I'm not going to remember what they mean because I haven't read it back yet. So let's see how we go.

All right, let's see how we go. Where do we start? Well, I guess, I guess, don't we have to do the thing that you always want to do, which is Brady, you have to give your overall opinion and feeling of the movie. Yeah. I don't think that we need to do this, but I feel like, isn't that what we always have to do? This feels like the Brady rule for discussing movies.

It is kind of a tradition and I do think it's useful, but I was thinking of doing it your way for once and giving you a one-off exemption. But I think it does help. And maybe it is our tradition. Okay, so it's funny that you wanted to do it the reverse way because... You were finally prepared for it. No, it's not that I was prepared for it. It's not that I was prepared for it because I think most of the time my way is better. But... That's going to be the title of your autobiography.

My Way is Better, the CTP Grey story. But this one time, I feel like I can't walk through the movie and talk about it without having the overall framework in place. I feel like that conversation would almost be a silly, pointless conversation. So I think I'm going to press very hard with, we should give our opinions at the beginning, because I don't know how to talk about this otherwise. I love it.

I love it. All right. And so, Brady, I want to know, what is your high-level takeaway from Rogue One? How do you feel about it? I thought I was going to love it. And I feel surprisingly indifferent about it. I thought, I just sort of think, meh. It was just like a good movie.

It was a good movie. It was well done. There were lots of things I liked about it. It was well executed. I'd be very proud of myself if i'd made it but it was just like for various reasons that we'll touch on it didn't like grab me it didn't it didn't it it roused very little emotion in me the way that even a force the force awakens did i mean that i got very emotional about that film. But this was just kind of, I just sort of felt like watching it was a little bit of a chore. And it was nice.

There were lots of good things. And, you know, I couldn't possibly give it a thumbs down because it's a good film. But I'm not going to give it like a big thumbs up. I mean, a good test was I saw it on my own. And my wife doesn't mind Star Wars movies. And she was a bit jealous that I was going to get to go and see it without her because she was at work. And I said to her, and this is what happened with Force Awakens too.

I watched that without her as well for the same reason. But after I saw it, I said to her, we've got to see it. And the next night we went and saw it together. When she came home from work with this one and she said, so what was Rogue One like? You know, am I going to go and see it with you? My answer was, I think you can probably wait. I wouldn't rush out to see it. So this is going to be like a,

you'll watch it on Netflix sometime kind of movie. Yeah, yeah. So it could have been far worse. You know, we all know what happens when a Star Wars movie goes wrong. Right, yeah. We all know how bad it can be. And that definitely didn't happen. Right.

But my overall feeling is some good stuff. Some very good stuff, actually. A few things I can't wait to talk about. Some things that I thought missed the mark. Some important things I think missed the mark. But solid. If they make one of these every second year, I'll and watch them and i'll think that and i'll think they're good i do think it sort of just dragging down star wars as a whole a little bit for my liking but that's just me being me and

being an old grump but uh if they have to if they have to make them and they keep making them at this level, I'm okay with that. Interesting. Interesting, Brady. So, that feels like an overall like a tepid enjoyment. Is that what I'm getting from you? That's not unfair. It's not a big vertical thumbs up. Right.

It's not a thumbs down. Right. It's kind of a thumb pointing at about 10 o'clock on the clock. Okay. So you're turning this binary scale into actually a rotational scale, right? That's what's occurring there. Yeah. I'm using your thumbs up and thumbs down in my way. And I'm just picturing all the Tims at home right now holding up their thumb and pointing at about 10 o'clock going, oh yeah, okay. I see what he means. If you're doing it, I can see you. There you go.

Did you do it? I didn't do it, Brady. Why would I be doing your thumbs up at 45 or at 10 o'clock? I don't understand why I would be doing that. Where does your thumb point on this, Greg? Give me your big picture. Okay. Where does your thumb point on this, Greg? Give me your big picture. Okay, so big picture. I have to say that what I really liked and what I kept feeling throughout the movie was

I enjoy this universe. I really enjoy this Star Wars universe. And unlike the really terrible movies, I felt like Rogue One is a movie that is so clearly in the Star Wars universe as it is in my head. All of the sets look great. All of the costume design looks great. All of the physical items and props and like everything that they're doing, it just looks Star Wars.

It feels Star Wars. It sounds like Star Wars. And I'm sitting there in the theater thinking, boy, I really just I love this universe. Like this universe is burned into my brain. But I have to say, I thought this movie was just like a disastrous mess. I'm not a fan. I have to say, I really, really it's not that I didn't like it. It's not like, oh, what a terrible movie. But it's just, this word is the word that keeps coming into my mind.

Like, it's a sloppy mess. There's just, as much as like, oh, I want to see a bunch of Star Wars stuff. And that is, that is like, great. It also felt like there's just Star Wars junk all over the place. We're, we Star Wars junk all over the place. We're zipping all over the universe. We're going to all of these different locations. I understand what's happening, but there's just too much going on. There isn't like a clear storyline heading through it. It just, it's a mess. I think that's my blurb on the movie poster.

Star Wars Rogue One, it's a mess. Like that's, that's how it feels to me watching it. And so I feel like I saw the movie last night for the first time. And I always like to just watch a movie and sort of let it wash over me. And then I saw it this morning to take some notes on some particular things and to pay attention to some of the scenes that I was thinking about from last night. And I just feel totally reconfirmed in my takeaway. Like, it's just a mess. It feels like, I don't know, maybe the script was rushed or I don't know what it is,

but it just, it doesn't hold together for me as a movie. And on my first watching, I felt completely, totally uninvolved emotionally throughout 95% of the entire running of the film. That is its biggest downfall for me too, for the lack of emotional engagement and any level of care about the characters. I can't disagree with you about it being a mess, Gray. And there's no better way than to realize what a mess it is than to read the plot summary

on Wikipedia. And you just get... Like, I tried to read it three or four times and it's just like... The fact they give everyone such ridiculous names doesn't help. No. But, yeah, you've got things like Jyn Andor and his reprogrammed Imperial droid K2SO

travel to Jedha where the Empire is mining kyber crystals to power the superweapon. Gerera and his partisans are engaged in an armed insurgency against them. With the aid of a blind warrior, Chirrut Imwe and mercenary Baze Malbus, Jyn makes contact with- And I'm like, what? What? Yeah.

And they go to more places than they needed to. I have this feeling about movies that you can know what a movie is like very fast, right? Within the first two scenes of a movie. Lots of movies will have an establishing pre-something happening scene. And so in Star Wars Rogue One, it's the opening scene about the Empire's coming to find their scientist who's hiding out in Iceland being a farmer, which I think is a terrible place to be a farmer. There's like this little contained story. And that's good. Like, that's fine. It feels like this is the start of the movie. But immediately after that, and I was just curious, like I was making I had a little timer running, because I just wanted to see like, how did my initial

impressions match up with the reality of what the what the movie is. And it's like, okay, the first eight minutes are great, I think. It's like, this is a nice opening for a Star Wars movie. It's clear what's happening. The Empire is coming to take a guy who doesn't want to go to build a weapon. Got it, right? We're all fine. We're all on board. And then I timed it.

In the next five minutes, we go to five different planets and are introduced to something like eight characters. And that to me was watching the movie for the first time. I felt like, oh, no, we're in a little bit of trouble here. Like we're at the third planet that has a little overlay on the bottom of what the name of the place is and what it is. And it's like, I'm following you movie, but I'm having a hard time focusing on what is the thing that I'm supposed to care about? Like, like, this is the thing that I find fascinating about movies. Why in some movies do they emotionally grab you? And why do some other movies just completely fail to grab you? And I, I think that in this movie, the reason it fails to grab me is there's just too much going on right at the start. And it's hard to know where

to focus your mind on what part of the story, right? Or who matters. All right. Well, I kind of feel like I know where you stand. Should we go through the film a bit and find out why this is the case? Let's go through the film. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, Hello Internet listeners and patrons. This Star Wars Christmas episode is brought to you solely and exclusively by our wonderful supporters over at Patreon. We really appreciate you guys and hope that you enjoy this discussion of Star Wars Rogue One. If you'd like

to support the show, you too can go to patreon.com slash hellointernet. Thank you to our patrons. Thank you to our listeners and a Merry Christmas to you all. Now, when I was walking to the cinema, it kind of crept up on me having to see this film, so I didn't have time to know how I felt about it. But when I was walking down the hill to my little local cinema, I suddenly got a little excited moment when I thought, oh, I can't wait for that moment when I'm going to be sitting in the cinema and the fanfare is going to happen again and like i'm going to have that feeling right and then it bloody didn't

happen they don't do it they don't do it in these in-betweeny films that turns out we're not going to have the rousing star wars on the screen and the john williams music we still get a long time ago in a galaxy far far away but then it just kind of and then i was waiting oh here it comes here it comes here it comes no no i think in the long run that's probably a good decision yeah i think that for the alternate movies they don't want to get tied down into having to do that exact same fanfare every time yeah uh because there is there is much we might discuss later that i would hope they might do in the star Wars universe. And I think that that fanfare might not be appropriate for absolutely everything. But I agree with you. I found it really jarring.

And suddenly it seemed like everything was wrong in my head with that opening thing. Even looking at the font of the Rogue One, I'm like, I don't know, everything's all wrong. Like this is, I'm braced for a thing and it's no good. It started by disappointing me. I even, here's my note written before the film started. I'm excited about the fan feel. Will that feeling of excitement ever go away? Well, it went away pretty quick because it didn't happen.

Started all right. It was a pretty cool start, like you said, in that little Icelandic cave place. Although I have to say, even here, there was one little note that struck me as a little bit wrong and confusing. And there's a bunch of points in the movie that I think are like this, where the stormtroopers come in, right? They're looking for their scientist. They're searching for his daughter.

And they're searching around the house. And one of the stormtroopers bends down and picks up a little stormtrooper doll which is evidence of the fact that the girl was there and i remember thinking like why would a fugitive from running from the empire give his daughter a stormtrooper doll to play with it was a little thing that set off like a flag in my mind of like if this is this is this going to come back up later? Or is this just a weird, I don't know if I want to call it a mistake, but it's just a strange thing. You know, it's like, I cannot imagine someone who has been like persecuted by a government giving their child a toy to play with that represents that government. Like that just seems like a really weird, a really weird note to land on.

It was strange. It was strange. Whether or not that's the Star Wars universe equivalent of toy soldiers and stuff, I don't know, but it was, it either felt like something was going to come of it or it felt like, like the worst toy placement in the history of toy placements. I totally agree. Also in that early scene, they had the blue milk obviously,ements. I totally agree. Also, in that early scene, they had the blue milk, obviously, appeared.

And I had a little smile to myself and thought, I'm not going to mind a little bit of fan service. That's okay. Little did I know how much more fan service was about to be shoveled down my throat in the next half an hour to an hour. Yeah, to the point where I was gagging on it. Yeah, please, no more blue milk i

can't take it yeah i i agree and and it also when we were watching it's like i recognize you blue milk but i'm concerned how central you were in the shot yeah right like it's not like oh there was blue milk on the counter in the background there was blue milk literally obstructing the actress by showing what she was doing for a second it's like do you see the blue milk there was blue milk literally obstructing the actress by showing what she was doing for a second it's like do you see the blue milk there is blue milk in front of her we want to make sure that you don't miss it yeah and and yes i agree as well like it's uh it's an indication of of what is going to come and and we can discuss the fan service but that is at one minute and 37 seconds into the film so it begins with the blue milk.

All right. So, we had our starting sequence and then we had the different music for the title. It sounded almost like they couldn't get the rights to the Star Wars music. So, they had some amateur write something that sounds Star Wars-y. And it jarred. It jarred with me. It was like, I know they're trying to give these things their own distinctive brand and say this is different from the, you know,

the classic important trilogies. But it was almost overbearing in its differentness, which was a little bit of a worry. But anyway, we cracked on and so the film began. And the next thing I wrote was something you've already touched on. I wrote, gosh, there are a lot of different places here. And the text on the screen identifying the places, you know, the little text that came up and gave us the name of the planet

and even explained what the planet was, was something I had very mixed feelings about. Why mixed feelings? My initial feeling is this is wrong. This is not what happens in a Star Wars movie. And it's funny, I think I've got a bit of a double standard here, and I'm aware of it because I'm quite happy to have captions when people are speaking alien languages. And I'm also quite happy to have the roll at the start, the crawl at the start of a Star Wars film.

But those two things feel like, I don't know, they feel like a special exception. But one of the things I like about the Star Wars universe is it's like there's no English language, other than the fact everyone's speaking English. There's no English language in text. And this felt like it was breaking the rules of Star Wars by using English.

And I know it was still a caption on the screen and it wasn't like a big street sign that said, Welcome to Hoth. But it still felt slightly like it was breaking the rules. But I have mixed feelings about it because I also thought it did serve a purpose. And one of the real criticisms of The Force Awakens, for me as well, was sometimes I didn't know where I was

and what was going on and why this place was important. And the text did take away that problem straight away. I straight away knew the context. Okay, this is an imperial planet. This is what's going on here. This is why they're here. So, like, it did serve a purpose and it saved them a lot of potentially clumsy exposition. But it kind of felt like cheating and it kind of felt like this isn't what you do in a Star Wars film.

Overall, I don't know. When I came out of the film, I thought it was wrong and they shouldn't have done it. I've mellowed a bit now and I'm on the fence about whether it was a good or a bad thing. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. See, that text struck me as immediately wrong for the same reason. I thought like, this feels so un-Star Wars to me. It feels really out of place. It's interesting. I couldn't have pinned it down

the same way you just did about the lack of the English language in the films. And maybe that's why it feels like it's a bit off somehow. i i don't like it because i think almost always when this happens it's a it's a weakness of the writing of the movie and if you have to lean on the on screen here's where we are here's what this thing is i feel like almost always there's a better way to do that yeah you know it means it means like your locations aren't distinct enough or your character motivations aren't clear enough. And I think this movie

is a perfect example of that. Again, we go to five different planets in five minutes with a whole bunch of characters. You couldn't, like, they have to show you on screen. Here's the name of a place and here's what it is.

Okay, next. Here's another place we're going to go and here's what it is. Okay, next. And I another place we're going to go and here's what it is. Okay, next. And I just think it's like, yes, you have to do that because you're introducing so much, but maybe you don't have to. Like maybe if you write this in a better way, we don't have to visit all of the places in the universe right at the start.

Yeah. I don't know. It feels like one of those movies where they're like, it's a political thriller, right? And they're showing you like a skyline shot of Moscowoscow right and it says like moscow on the bottom yeah now you know you're almost waiting for like the little sound effect that they always use when the letters roll out yeah it just felt really it just felt really wrong i didn't like it and i think particularly in this movie it's like it was there was so much of it because that is what this entire movie is like a million pieces 80 of which they could probably do without but for some reason they're

going to include absolutely all of them but if they didn't use it without changing the script or you know doing major surgery on the actual story i think we'd be complaining even more about how confused we were about what the hell was going on and where everything was. So if they were going to stick with their script, then I think the text was unfortunately the correct decision. I completely agree, right? If I was like the visual effects editor on here and they just hand me the movie, it's like, I am putting words on these screens. Like we have to do this because otherwise it's way worse. Otherwise it's more confusing. But I feel like those words are a symptom of a more fundamental problem.

That's what they're showing you there. Yeah, but of course, let's not forget Star Wars movies are famous for using a huge load of text at the start to save themselves a whole lot of storytelling before we get too carried away about the old Star Wars films, about how clever they were by not using text.

Basically, they wrote a book before the film started to bring you up to speed. Yes, that is the case. But I also feel like, I think with almost all of the original three movies, you can blow past that script and it doesn't really matter. True. Like the first Star Wars is like, blah, blah, blah, some words, words, words. Like, I don't even have any idea what the crawls say. Yeah.

But who cares? Because we open with a big, mean looking ship chasing a small ship and a guy in a black, evil looking suit hunting down a princess. It's like, got it. Right. Like, I understand what's going on. It doesn't matter what those words said. Yeah.

So what have you got next? I've got lots of little bitty things here i don't want to get too bitty but we don't want to get too bitty and have to go through all of all of the plot points yeah but i think again like the reason why i wanted to lay out my my initial thoughts of this is i as i feel like in the first 20 minutes of the film you just have all of these problems resurfacing in various ways. So after our opening scene, we now have a scene with the main character guy who we're going to be following most of the time talking to a rando who's about to die. In this one little interaction between the two of them, they're talking about Jedha, they're talking about kyber crystals,

they're talking about looking for Saul. They mentioned somebody else's name which i couldn't even write down fast enough in the theater when i was waiting for the scene to make a note of it they talk about like ursula or like some other person and there's one more thing and it's like okay there's two characters we don't know you've dropped five totally new names yeah in in this little minute interaction between the two of them and it's again it's like i can follow this but it's too much and and i don't know what to pay attention to and then one of these two characters dies immediately and and our main our main guy kind of runs off and then boom next scene right we're on to the next place well you brush past something that was quite significant in the film for me because this main and our main guy kind of runs off and then boom, next scene, right? We're on to the next place.

Well, you brush past something that was quite significant in the film for me because this main character, I think this is Andor, is that the guy? I don't know, everyone's name's kind of lost me. I think he's called Andor, the main guy, the main... This is actually, though, I think a quite vital point, which is my wife and I, after we were discussing the movie, seeing it last night, we were both aware, and to be clear, my wife liked the movie a lot more than I did. But neither of us could remember a single character's name.

Yeah, that's true. That we didn't already know from somewhere else. And so we kept having these conversations about like, oh, the guy, which guy? The ninja guy? No, not the ninja guy. The friend of the ninja guy. Oh, him? The muscle?

And it's like, it's just amazing to see and i think it's a side effect again of like i have watched a movie for two hours and between two people we can't pull a single name out of our memory i think that's again an indication of of what's going on well this main guy and or who becomes like the main you know hero of the film you talk about him and this other guy having a chat and then everything kicks off. But significantly, he shoots the other guy, if you remember. Like they're about to get caught by the stormtroopers and this guy is going to be baggage because he's injured

and can't run away. And Andor realises this situation. So he just puts the gun to his back basically and shoots him. He kills him there on the spot. I think we're supposed to be shocked by this and realize that he's this ruthless killer that will do anything and then he has this redemption story through the film and becomes a guy we like but i never forgave him for that like like even though he becomes a good guy and says i've done some bad stuff in my time but now i but now i'm you know now i'm a good guy. I never forgot that he shot that guy in the back and what he did to him. And even later on when he does a few nice things and realizes the error of his ways, it never left my head that he'd done that.

I think maybe they shouldn't have shown him being quite so bad. Because it's not like I was shocked or I'm i'm i'm like a sensitive person who like can't bear to see killing yeah clutching your pearls at this at this death on screen but it made me it made me incapable of ever sympathizing with him after seeing him do that at the start to someone shoot someone in the back like that i kind of for some reason well it's not it's not a big deal i don't know it's coming out like it's a big deal to me. It wasn't. But it was significant to me. And like his redemption, he was never redeemed for me enough. I can totally agree with this.

And the thing is, I don't necessarily think that little scene is a big deal. And also the movie blows past it so fast. I think it's easy to miss because the first time I watched it, it was unclear to me how the shooting happened. And then the second time it was more clear. It's like I just blinked at the wrong moment. Right. And you and you and you miss it just a little bit. But I think it does matter because this is all rolled up into. I think it's emblematic of another problem with the film, which I think the movie is doing on purpose, but they just do poorly, which I file under the category, the rebels are dicks, right?

There's like, there's like a bunch of stuff where the rebels are being kind of dicks or things that just don't really work. And that I think make the rebels unsympathetic in a whole bunch of ways that causes structural problems with the film. And that, that. And that shooting in the beginning, I think would be fine on its own, but it's connected to a bunch of other stuff that then just doesn't work for me later in the movie. This whole part of the film set on Jeddah or the town or the city of Jeddah, I have to say was one of the weaker parts of the film for me. It felt

terribly unnecessary, actually, other than it helped to scoop was one of the weaker parts of the film for me. It felt terribly unnecessary, actually, other than it helped to scoop up some of the characters who were going to follow us for the rest of the film, like Ninja Guy and Muscle Guy and stuff. But the whole thing with Forrest Whitaker's character, sort of the head of the rebels, seemed very unnecessary to the film. It added nothing. It seemed like an unnecessary character and an unnecessary diversion.

But also this whole part of the film is the part where the fan service felt laid on too thick. And I almost felt like I was being patronized a bit. Like when the bad guys from the Mos Eisley Cantina make a sudden cameo. Oh my God. Like that was really, that was unnecessary. Yeah, that was so terrible. And I hate this kind of stuff because it's like, it makes the universe feel small.

Yeah. It makes the universe feel so small and so tiny. And it also, it's strange credulity that she's going to bump into the two guys who show up in A New Hope. But also because of the way the movie carries on, it means not only did she bump into these guys on this planet, but they also left the planet very shortly, like within 30 minutes, right? So they get out of there just in time. And where did they go within the span of a couple of days?

Is they go to some backwater planet where Luke is? It's like, it's too much, right? The time frame is just too much. It's ridiculous that she bumps into these guys there. It's pointless, it's too much, right? The timeframe is just too much. It's ridiculous that she bumps into these guys there. It's pointless, pointless fan service. Yeah. And that whole scene with the bustling crowds and that, they crammed too much of that in. And I was thinking, come on, guys.

It's okay. I'm on board. I understand. Star Wars. And the odd little thing's nice, but you don't need to go that hard. Which is funny because the fan service that comes later, the biggest fan service, that's works because that's what this film's about. So some of the huge stuff I loved and I felt really excited about.

Some of the links to New Hope felt wonderful and really good. I was really pleased. Towards the end of the film, there's some great stuff, but this early stuff, they went too hard. They went too hard too early. They had their fan service coming. They didn't need to go this hard this early.

They could have shown more restraint. Yeah, so this whole sequence where they're on this desert planet, Jedha or whatever, this was one of these things that I wanted to see again. How was my memory of it versus the actual thing? I felt so strongly that this whole sequence was unnecessary. It seemed just like a pointless diversion that we're going to go to this planet

to find a guy who's going to help us find the guy that we're actually looking for. And I was mentally thinking like, you could probably cut that and just have the movie go on but what i didn't realize is that sequence is really long right right like i was thinking this this is like 20 minutes but that whole sequence takes us to more than halfway through the movie right like it is it is so long that it it's not like when we discussed uh the force awakens and we both agreed that the the weakest part is when they leave the planet and they're with han solo and they're going to fight some giant rollerball squid monsters on the ship right it's like why is this happening and you can you can easily imagine a version of the force awakens where a fan does a super cut and they you're able to get rid of most of most of that and you don't even notice in the movie.

I'm realizing if they cut out what I thought was a pointless diversion, you lose like 45 minutes of this movie where they're down there on Jedha doing this thing that I think is totally pointless. sequence. And it's also like, it's so convoluted because You Blew Past, what to me is sets up like a fundamental problem in the whole movie, which is before we even get down to Jedha, the rebels are dicks thing is we show the rebels capturing the main girl who's Jin, I think, or Jen, like even I was aware characters are pronouncing her name differently. The rebels kidnap her from some sort of labor camp. It's like it's like a rescue, but it feels a lot like a kidnap because the rebels are then taking her back to the rebel base and forcing her to do a thing that she doesn't want to.

Right. They just straight up say like, oh, we'll hand you back to the empire unless you do what we want. So it's like, okay, you don't seem like great people right now. You know, she's just passed from one prison to essentially another prison. Yeah. And it's like, okay, great rebels.

I would like you a lot more if you have a sequence where you are rescuing her from a horrible situation and she wants to help you because of what you've done but it's very different if you're just straight up kidnapping her so here is the actual sequence because i had to write it down this is the plan as explained by the rebels they want to take her to jeddah to find sol guerrera yeah Yeah, that's Forrest Whitaker. Yeah. Who has the pilot and the pilot will take them to her father and they're going to take her father to the Senate for testimony.

I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Like, we don't need. And this is like everything in the movie is like this. Like, guys, do a second pass on this script. Just have the daughter know where the father is, right? Just have that. You can just have her know and the rebels rescue her and she wants to help. We don't need this. And it's like so many unnecessary characters.

But it's like, OK, we're not even trying to find a guy who knows where the guy we're looking for is. We're trying to find a guy who has a guy who knows where the guy we're looking for is. We're trying to find a guy who has a guy who knows where the guy we're looking for is. And on top of that, I almost lost my goddamn mind because when they get down to the planet, they blow past it so quickly. But Cassius Andor, he has a little line to her. He's like, oh, I know. And he mentioned some other name like this bounty hunter dude who's working for sol guerrera it's like oh i'm going to find this person who's going to bring us to sol guerrera who has the pilot right it's like i can't why like why do you need all of these steps it's just it's like i can follow it it's just it's just a straight line but it's it's crazy

making that that you need all of these steps. Toys, Gray. Toys. You need more Star Wars figures. I guess, but it's like you have this ridiculous convoluted path for a sequence of which the entirety of it is unnecessary and complex. And it's just like, I was so uninvolved for this first hour of the movie. I'm like, I don't care about any of these people.

There's this like, Saul Guerrero, like in my mind, he's the only character I can vaguely remember because my brain kept changing his name to like Che Guevara every time people were saying it. I'm like, okay, we're looking for a Che Guevara. And it's like, oh, okay, there's this dude. Is he crazy? Like, he's a terrorist. So should I care about him?

But he raised our main character, but now he seems like he's also a monster. She's being forced into this by rebels who are being dicks, who, by the way, are just going to assassinate her father anyway, like, which she doesn't even know. So it's like, there's just nobody to root for. There's this really convoluted thing. And this to me is like the heart of it right here. It's like complicated mess you could just sweep away and replace with a simpler, better movie. Well, also, just one more thing to make the rebels even less likable, if that was possible, is they also make them really, like, bureaucratic and, like, have lots of meetings. And they can never agree on anything and they sit around in committees all the time it's like the one thing you like about the rebels is they're

like ah stuff this let's just get the guns out and blow the thing up right but now they're now they're like their own little mini senate having meetings and disagreements and like can't they're crippled by inactivity it's like oh god i know it's like this is the reason rebels form is to get away from the bureaucracy right but like oh we're starting with the bureaucracy oh god what's with all the politics did did george lucas sneak back into the writing room for that part yeah it was i i totally agree there's those scenes where they're like oh we can't get everybody to agree like you're the rebels right like it should be clear but the other problem was all this was swirling around our main character jinn and we should talk about her at some

point because she was completely like i i didn't like i was not very engaged with her at all like i didn't i never really i never really sort of liked her or understood her story or her transformation didn't do much for me either. And she was kind of, I mean, a lot of, I read a lot of people saying, you know, she carried the film apparently, and she was good. Like, you know, she's a good actress and she did a good job, but the character wasn't very well developed. And from the start, I didn't really feel much for her. And then when she changed, I didn't feel much. And so all of this stuff, all of these weird people who are unlikable for various reasons, swirling around Jen. And Jen,

I didn't really care about. I didn't find her unlikable like some other characters, but she was just a bit, she was just there as well, really, along for the ride. Yeah. I totally agree that this movie, she has to be really likable. You have to be rooting for her. Yeah. Right. And I found myself at one point, like there were three little moments in the movie where I kind of had to laugh, but at some point in the movie when I was just mildly distracted and watching it, I almost started to like giggle because I kept having this thought of like, well, she was in prison. Like maybe I want to hear the Empire's story about why this girl's in prison, because we've just made it really clear

that she's been working with this terrorist organization that even the rebels don't like. So like, maybe she's done some really terrible stuff. And it's like, when you find your mind wandering, like, I want to know what the Empire thinks about this girl. Maybe they have a point. It's like, I think you have not achieved what you want, movie, which is that I should really be rooting for this girl, as opposed to wondering, like, there might be more to her story than we're hearing here. Yeah. Let's go back to the transcript for those trials. Like, I want to find out what was going on.

Whereas in, like, Force Awakens, the Daisy Ridley character, the lead there. Yeah. Like, you're just completely enchanted by it. And, like, you come out of that film feeling good about her. Like, she's just, you just are so, I was just so taken with her character and her story. And this one, like, you know, at the end, she's on the beach there. And I'm thinking, oh, well. Yeah, exactly.

Thanks for helping out with the plans. You were a fantastic tool. Thank you very much. Moving right along. Yeah, I agree. Daisley Ridley was obviously amazing in force awakens this girl i have to say i think she was a good actress yeah definitely definitely better than some of the other people i'm going to complain about later yeah but the character itself as

written i i felt just again uninvolved with like okay maybe you're a criminal and you're being blackmailed into doing a thing and i don't really care about you. Like the end. Two more things on the desert planet and the town of Jeddah. One is we saw much more agile stormtroopers in some of those fight scenes. And I quite liked it. I quite liked seeing stormtroopers being a little bit more capable. Steel cannon fodder. But they seem to have like special ops stormtroopers. Yeah. Like the guys in Blackware is like, oh no, now we're trying to be serious.

Yeah. So, that was all right. But one thing I do not approve of is seeing a Star Destroyer down at planet level. That seems wrong to me. And also it seems like it should be like not technically feasible, like they should be built in in space and one of the joys of seeing the crashed star destroyer in the force awakens on the planet it creates that feeling that the worst possible thing that could happen to a star destroyer is it falls down onto a planet because you know that that's where they crash and die and it just seems it seems wrong to me and it felt it felt like it demeaned the awesomeness of Star Destroyers to see them down at planet level like that and makes them seem a little bit more jokey. And it also makes them seem less awesome that they can just come down and do that.

So I didn't like that. I didn't like it. It's an excellent point. It didn't cross my mind until there were many things in the movie where I was feeling like there's something wrong with this and I can't quite figure out what. And the Star Destroyer, when it was just hovering over the city, I thought it just didn't cross my mind. It was like, okay, it's fine. But the shot where they show it flying away, both times I kept thinking like something's wrong about this and I don't know what it is. And I agree with you, like you're right. It feels like the Star Destroyers should be in real trouble if they're ever in the atmosphere. And this strikes the wrong note by

having it so close to the planet's surface. Knowing that Star Destroyers can come down to a planet is like when you realize that R2-D2 can fly. Right, yeah. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want that to be possible. Yeah, and it's like, there are many situations in the other movies

where this would be quite useful to do, right? Like if I was the Empire, I think I'd be having more star destroyers at ground level i think this would solve a lot of problems yeah send them down to hoth instead of those slow walkers dropping them 100 miles away from the base and having them slowly trudged to the base yeah it's like why don't we just land a star destroyer we don't we don't even have to fight just literally land it on the ground and crush the base end of story i mean they must have one to spare,

right? Just knock it out of the sky. A scene that happens around this time, but up in space somewhere, is when we first see Grand Moff Tarkin for the first time. That first scene where you see him with, you know, looking like Peter Cushing, the actor who played him in the original film. My goodness, that was breathtaking. How much he looked like him. And they knew it too when they made it. Because they some- I can't remember what they did. But they either did something with the sound or the camera work.

Or when we first see his face. I was like- I almost gasped it was so well done. See now, I thought it was ghoulish. I have to say, when I heard Grand Moth Tarkin's voice, I was like, wow, they have nailed the voice of this person. Yeah. Right. But when they do the reveal, it looks, it just, all I kept thinking of is, this is the best video game animation I have ever seen. All I'm going to say is, like, I could not accept the reality of him in every scene.

Now, again, like, this is an interesting thing because I didn't know he was going to be in the movie. And I mean, to me, he obviously looks like just a CGI face right over over the actual actor. And it's like they did a really good job with that. Like, I'm not going to deny it's an incredible job, but I think they didn't do as good of a job as the movie feels like it so the movie acts like this is totally seamless and no one will ever notice and I thought like man if you're going to do this like you have a great render but but don't have like a full front up shot of him like it was just it to me it was really unconvincing and I hated every scene with him maybe I need to see it again because I thought that one worked so well that I almost thought,

did they find someone that just looks like that? Like, I kind of, I don't know, maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. But for me, for me, Grand Moff Tarkin worked. Obviously, you know, Princess Leia didn't. We'll come to that later. But the Tarkin one did work for me. And I was like, I thought that was really good. Anyway.

Yeah, but I think this is just a question of of like of how sensitive you are to this stuff and i feel like because i've seen a lot of video games thing like he just he just kept reading to me as a video game rendered character i just want to say with with tarkin though this this is again you know you talk about like the the star wars fan service and and tarkin to me is a good example, along with Darth Vader, who we'll get to later, of you're putting all of this stuff in this movie because we know it from the other Star Wars movies. But I just kept feeling like, do we have to have Tarkin here? Like, is his character in this movie absolutely necessary? And I don't think so. Like, I think you could, again, do a version of this movie where you have the kind of

sniveling, power-climbing subordinate under Tarkin be the entire role. Like, I don't think you need the conflict between these two guys. I don't think he needs to be there except that it feels like they really want to keep tying this movie to the other movies and so that's why tarkin's here right that's why uh like mon mothra's here like that's why a whole bunch of other people are here and i and i just kept feeling like they're unnecessary right like these people don't need to be here i didn't feel that way about tark and i thought i thought for rogue one to work it did have to have several connections with new hope like i had to there had to be a few threads and cables connecting it otherwise it would feel like it was just stuck in there like filler between a couple of bricks and not really seamless and i thought having a few different

threads worked and i thought he like the rivalry between him and ben mendelsohn's character wasn't particularly necessary or interesting but having him there was good because because it also made it also suddenly made his death in new Hope seem more significant. Because when you think about it in New Hope, especially if you're a kid watching, he's just a bit of a boring old man. And when he dies on the Death Star, it's not like Darth Vader dying, is it?

It's just some old bureaucrat dying. But now when you see what he's done before and his association with the Death Star and all that, it does imbue that with a bit more meaning and in a way that worked for me. I liked seeing him in this film. And maybe when I watch it again, the face will embarrass me a bit. But I don't know. It kind of worked for me.

And I liked it. I liked it. I liked having him in the film. I thought he belonged in the film. I thought a film about the birth of the Death Star and the undoing of the Death Star would have felt wrong without the guy we all know was like the boss of the Death Star. So I'm quite happy he was in the film. Yeah.

Again, I just think if you're going to have him in there, it's the CGI didn't work well enough for me for him to be a major character. And I just kept feeling like it was ghoulish every time he was on screen and not in a good way one other scene that i thought was very that i liked just because i liked the look of it was the the death star taking out jedha and eclipsing the sun at the same time yeah that was good that was good okay they were just showing off but it was i thought that was just a love just a pretty piece of special effects i thought that was a really nice little sequence yeah yeah i will definitely go along with that i'll go along with that cool all right any more jedda stuff or should we should we find our way

off of jedda somehow we can get our way off of jedda but i just like this is i've got so i've got so many furious notes on jedda um i just it's just it's because i kept being i kept being amazed at how long the sequence was like that i thought was cuttable and it's like there's so much stuff in here but again another thing that i felt is is emblematic of the movie is that they have their this like this very brief scene with this mind slug right that shea guevara is using on the pilot to find out what the truth is yeah and it's like oh okay we've introduced this mind slug, right? That Shea Guevara is using on the pilot to find out what the truth is. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, oh, okay,

we've introduced this mind slug and it's to interrogate the pilot, the pilot that Saul Guevara doesn't trust for no apparent reason other than he's crazy. And it's like, oh, we're going to use this mind slug, but it just, you might lose your mind afterward. And it's like, oh, it doesn't make him lose his mind. He's like a little sleepy for an hour and we just go right on. And he's like a totally normal guy for the rest of the movie. And that's another thing that feels like, why is this

here? This scene you could literally cut and it would not affect anything. The mind slug thing never comes back up. He's never actually lost his mind. You don't do anything interesting with it. Like I kept thinking what I was expecting to happen is, ooh, maybe this pilot who has defected after this mind slug makes him lose his mind, forgets that he's defected, right? And actually thinks that he's still part of the empire and like has found himself in this crazy situation. Like, ooh, that might be something interesting to do. But nope. It's like we've just introduced this mind slug

and we're blowing right past it and it doesn't matter. It doesn't affect the plot. Like, and we're just going to keep on going. And there's just so many things like that. It's like so much stuff. It's not impossible in the mind slug case there that something more did happen and got cut, but they kind of filmed themselves into a corner

where they had to leave some of that in still. That does occasionally happen in movies, doesn't it? Where they take out a sequence, but they're left with sort of baggage either side of it. Oh, yeah. They can't wriggle out of, so. I would love to know the behind the scenes thing, but I have a feeling like the first cut of this movie was four hours long, right? And I mean that quite literally, and it's it's

something that you actually like this and you see in some of the behind the scenes stuff of uh the the first of the prequels where the the first cut was incredibly long and and they realized they had a hard time cutting it down to be movie length i i just had the same kind of feeling with this like oh maybe there was a whole bunch of more mind slug stuff and it's like oh just just get rid of it like get rid of most of it because we have to we have to jettison so much stuff to get this down to two hour running time like we filmed ourselves into a corner but but so that mind slug is to me just another example of like thing brought up immediately dispatched with has absolutely no consequence but on jetta we bring up what is then perhaps well by far and away my least favorite person in the whole film, which is our blind ninja

dude. Yeah. I loathe this character and this actor. I could not believe how bad his line readings were. I could not believe how ridiculous his character was. And it's like, blind, pointless ninja, you don't need to be in this movie. I cannot believe that you're here. I cannot believe how you're delivering your lines.

You're just awful awful i thought he was so bad so terrible he smacks of probably being someone who's really famous in other markets and they and having him in the film was a really smart tactical move i'm just finding out who he is yeah that that might that might be ah he's a chinese actor martial artist film director producer this was this was my guess was he has to be a real martial artist because his fighting scenes look like him or or he's or he's to help them break the chinese market yeah yeah yeah that's also a possibility but i was paying attention during his stunt scenes is like that really looks like it's you i think you're really doing this and this is why you're

here but but but like i wrote down when his like his introductory line like when he walks across like the battlefield he's like i am with the force and the force is with me and i fear nothing because the force wills it and it's like that is the worst line delivery i've ever heard from anyone it's like awful and i thought there were a lot of really bad line deliveries in the force awakens but it's like everything this guy said every time it just i felt like he was sitting in la at a table reading for the movie. It was just awful. Like, I can't believe you're keeping these line readings in.

And I think the whole purpose of his character was pointless. It's like, he does nothing that they couldn't just have K2 the droid do instead. He did bring the force into the film. Otherwise, there would have been no force at all, would there? Yeah, he is obviously supposed to be like the sort of Jedi character, but I also think it totally doesn't pay off. And it also like causes this conflict. Like I kept being aware of like, okay, so let me get this straight.

There's like a class of priests who are defending the resources that are used to make lightsabers for the Jedi. This is happening like three days before A New Hope, where Harrison Ford is talking about how like, I've never heard of the Jedi. I've traveled all over the universe and there's no such thing. But there's a big industrial base here related to Jedi industries. Like it's, I feel like you should have just gotten him out of there. And also his connection to the force had no payoff and amazingly when they had a scene where they could have had a

perfect force payoff with him on the beach trying to pull a switch it's like hey maybe the guy who's really into the force could use the force to pull that switch uh no you don't even have this payoff scene yeah they did that's how he walked to it and didn't get shot by all the laser bolts because the force saved him from all the laser bolts. Okay. Okay. But listen here. Okay.

We're jumping way to the end of the movie. Right. But it's like, I understand. So he walks across this battlefield and he goes, oh, the force is with me and I am one with the force. And you're supposed to think like, oh, none of the lasers hit him. And it's like, okay, I understand that's what you're trying to do. But you undercut that immediately when after he does that, his doubly pointless friend

then runs out after him and sits up with him in the middle of this field of fire and also doesn't get hit by anybody. Yeah, but he'd been blown closer to him by that point. No, he's literally sitting up. His muscle friend is a literal sitting duck, right in the middle of a field of fire. And it like it's ah so infuriating so infuriating look great i'm not i'm not saying there weren't plot holes and things that are not believable i'm just saying there was a force payoff he does use the force to to do something important i think it was totally undercut i think it was totally undercut immediately yeah but you've also got

to remember like he's only he's only He's not a proper Jedi. Yeah. But he was just also a case of like, your character is unnecessary. And it is doubly highlighted by me that you have like an unnecessary squared friend who's also following you around. I was like, what are you guys doing here? What are you doing here? For the love of God, Grey, I'm putting my foot down and taking us away from Jedha. Because this was supposed to be a short podcast and I can't for the life- We haven't even talked about the terrorist scene, right? We haven't even talked about the terrorist scene.

Let's leave Jedha and we might come back to it later because what I really want to know is what you thought of Darth Vader's Mordor Batcave. Ben Mendelsohn, the white robed baddie, finds his way to Darth Vader's bat cave on Mount Doom because he wants to whinge about his job promotion and stuff like that. I know it's so whiny. But anyway, what did you think of the fact that Darth Vader like lives there? Again, from my view, a totally unnecessary scene. Oh yes. It's like you want Darth Vader in this movie in this movie if if you if you have to have darth vader in the movie i can live with the final scene but but this scene seems totally pointless to me and it's like yeah okay so the guy's coming to complain that oh grand moth tarkin's taking

credit for my death star right it's like okay and you're going to whine to like darth vader about this like is this is this the best plan of action, right? Like, oh, Darth Vader. He's such a sympathetic shoulder to cry upon, right? I know. It's like going to Steve Jobs to complain that your chair's squeaky at your desk at Apple. I'm really tired of working on this iPod, right? Like, well, I'm really tired of having you work for me. Get out, right?

That's what's going to happen. It's such a confused scene because it's also like vader has summoned him the whole scene is confusing i think it just it totally doesn't work and i was so aware that's like okay wow here like here we go here's darth vader he's on screen and he just has no presence on screen at all he almost i want someone to make a gif of it when the blu-ray comes out but i was so aware that he's almost doing like a little sassy walk when he comes out at first, like he's swaying a lot. Like you can see the lights on his chest, like swaying back and forth. And it's like,

he's doing a little catwalk thing. It's interesting. It's very interesting. Like before I want to talk about his home, his planet in a second, but the fact you make that point is interesting because I have a really vivid memory. When they re-released the first three films, you remember they sort of, they kind of jazzed them up and reduxed them. Of course, of course. I'm not even sure it was when they added all the crap effects. Maybe it was then. No, there was like a remastered version that came out before. Yeah. And I remember a whole bunch of my friends and I went to see it. And a friend of mine who was a bit older than us by a few years,

I remember him saying after the film what it was, he used to be so intimidated by Darth Vader when he was a kid and now he just looks at him as really camp and funny and he almost found himself laughing all the time when Darth Vader was on screen because he's such a ridiculous villain. And I think that is one of the problems Darth Vader is starting to have. I'll talk about his final scene in the film afterwards which i actually quite liked but but he does have that

problem of being he's so iconic now everyone knows what he looks like and everyone is just staring at him all the time he must feel really awkward like how do i move how can i walk without like he's so scrutinized as the ultimate villain that almost anything he does is going to look ridiculous. And like you said, you were looking at him walking and thinking, oh, his walk looks a bit sassy. And you're looking at his body language. And I thought the way he was holding his fingers when he was doing the choke on Ben Mendelsohn. All wrong. Totally wrong.

Oh, looks wrong. Yeah, that's not how Darth Vader should be holding his fingers. Like every single thing he does. It must be the most intimidating job in hollywood putting on that suit because yeah it it totally it has to be it has to be i mean you you mentioned the fingers i i said to my wife afterward like in in that scene i kept staring at his helmet and and okay not just his helmet exactly where his helmet met his shoulders and i was like something is wrong about this i don't oh yeah i agree yeah i don't know what it is like that curved rubbery bit yeah yeah it was like something

about the neckline of his Darth Vader outfit yeah does not match up with what i'm expecting and i was like is it cgi is it just the wrong kind of plastic? I was like, I cannot believe that this is the thing that I'm paying attention to in this scene. I know. But I couldn't stop looking at the flange at the edge of his helmet. Didn't he used to have some chain there that held his cape on or something? But am I imagining that? Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

I was like, is the helmet over the cape? Is it normally under the cape? But even the texture of the plastic look wrong. And it's like, given that we saw CGI Tarkin before, I was actually wondering like, is this whole helmet just CGI? Is that what I'm registering here? Like, I would believe it.

I believe that they're just like, ah, the hell with it. We'll fix it in post, right? And they just do a CGI Darth Vader helmet, right? And they don't have anybody even standing there. But I agree with you. It's like Darth Vader almost has become a problem for himself on screen. Yeah. I think this scene really didn't help that in a variety of ways because it just,

a bunch of stuff really clang wrong for me. And I have to say, I don't, I'll be very curious to know if you tuned into this, but when the movie movie ended one of the things i wanted to see was who did the voice of darth vader yeah and it was james earl jones yeah and i think like i don't know what the hell happened but james earl jones can no longer do the darth vader voice correctly i didn't mind that i didn't i thought the voice was okay i i have to say there was it was the sound of the voice was right, but he had a weird like rhythm. And I just thought like, man, this is just not this isn't working for me. It's like the flange on your helmet is all wrong.

Your walk was too sassy. And now your your your enunciation of the words is just wrong. And so your finger death grip was wrong as well. Yeah, your finger death grip is wrong as well yeah your finger death grip is misplaced right it's like that's not how that works i love that they spent 200 million dollars on this film and we're talking about darth vader's helmet flange for like five yeah but but this is but this is the kind of thing it's like oh you're having you know a bunch of obsessive nerds are going to watch this yeah and if you're going to have darth vader on screen you have to

get it right and i think they did get it right in his final scene. But this scene was just, it just didn't work for me in any way. And I felt like it just undermined Darth Vader as a character. He didn't have on-screen presence. He's talking to a whiny subordinate. He delivers like a Dr. Evil line where he's like, try not to choke on your ambitions. Oh, that was terrible. It's like he's giggling in his own suit as he's like, try not to choke on your ambitions. Oh, that was terrible.

It's like he's giggling in his own suit as he's delivering that line. It's terrible. It was awful. But also, I'm not comfortable with the fact he has this, like, cliched temple on a lava planet, too. Like, I don't- But that's not where Darth Vader lives for me. He lives, like, in an ultra-sterile room on a Star Destroyer, surrounded by technology.

He doesn't live in a rural environment. He's an urban guy now. This is one of a few places where I felt a little bit uncomfortable. And the reason I felt uncomfortable is it felt like the prequels were bleeding into this movie. It was a nod to the prequels, bleeding into this movie it was a nod to the prequels and you should not be nodding to that yeah and it's like why is he on this this lava planet it's like he's this is the vader from the prequels is what it feels like who who lives on a comic book lava planet and says no yeah right and and is just sitting in a in a like a bath of milk all day long there were a few

scenes in this movie where it's like this is happening because of the prequels and as we mentioned in in the uh the force awakens review there were a bunch of like very clear middle fingers to the prequels in that movie you know from from my reading of it and it's like we're not getting that in this movie like that's that's not what's happening this time and i think that's why it's like it diminishes darth vader and disney i mean disney have obviously those those prequels love them or hate them preferably hate them disney has a massive stake in yeah of course of course so you can see what you can see why occasionally they're going to want to give those a little boost and you know keep them alive so yeah i didn't like it but also also, I just didn't think Darth Vader should live in such a cliched place.

You know, like, it's just like, okay. That's why it just, it felt very Dr. Evil to me. Like, this is a caricature of a villain, not an actual villain. So, I could almost just completely pass on the visit to this rainy, rocky planet where they go and have this, where the dad dies. This is where on second viewing, I went out to get some popcorn. Yeah. But the problem is, this is also the sequence where our two protagonists have their transformations.

Like, you know, the most important part of their arc happens here. Our stone heart killer, who's supposed to assassinate the dad changes his mind at the last minute for reasons that are never explained to us other than he just didn't feel like it that's exactly how it read to me it's like i don't feel like it today yeah i haven't got a clean shot and i won't bother like and but that's his like that's his moment where he you know is re-questioning everything about his existence and also our main character jinn like who's never really cared about uh the rebellion and is happy just to keep her head down and not get involved in politics like you know i know her dad dies and that's supposed that's what changes her but i didn't really i didn't feel it i didn't feel

i didn't feel her suddenly getting this new steel and this new resolve to defeat the Empire. Because it wasn't even the Empire that killed her dad. It was the rebels. So it's kind of like, fair enough if, like, the Empire had, like, killed her dad in front of her. That would make her think, okay, I've picked a side now. But it's kind of her own team that killed her dad anyway with this attack. Because they bungled their messages and stuff so it's kind of like i don't understand why either character changed at this point really yeah yeah you don't understand because there's no good reason given it's like i also kept thinking

with this scene it it also felt a little prequely and ridiculous to me because i kept thinking like boy it sure is convenient that you guys are having this meeting on an open platform in the rain while someone's supposed to be sniper shooting you from the hills right it's like yeah it's like you couldn't have a more torrential downpour and you're like this is where you want to have the meeting it's just like i know this is supposed to make this scene look serious but it makes it look ridiculous like you're all going to get pneumonia after today and some and some ridiculous unguarded unmonitored ladder that leads up to the with bright big big bright lights that leads up to the platform as well yeah it's it's total it's totally ridiculous yeah and i agree with you this is where again i think the the actress who's

playing jinn does a good job but the but the the next five minutes are to me another example of like the writing is just terrible because it's, yes. So now she's on the side of the rebels because her father is dead. But she knows the rebels are the ones who actually killed her father. Right. She calls them out on that. She literally says, you guys might as well be the empire yeah and according to my clock not three minutes later in her very next scene because they cut to somewhere else and then they cut back to her she's at that bureaucratic meeting where nobody can agree on things and

gives a rousing speech about how they should all be fighting the empire and the empire is so evil and there is literally nothing that has happened to change her mind from her previous lines of, you guys might as well be the empire. Okay, she's on the side of the rebels now because you need her to be, not because anything that happened. And again, it seems like trivially easy to rewrite this to make her be on the side of the rebels

by, I don't know, maybe not have the rebels be the one who kill her father. Like maybe you could make that change. Have Ben Mendelsohn do it. He's already killed her mum. Kills her dad too. It's a straw that breaks the camel's back. It's like, it's not that hard, guys.

And makes him even more evil. The thing is, I keep getting the feeling that the director of this movie wanted to do a thing. Which is, he wanted to show like, ooh, it's not just black and white, right? Like everybody, everybody's shades of gray in this, in this war that the, that the rebels and the empire are fighting. And I can understand that as a story that you want to do, but I think this movie just didn't do it in a convincing way. They don't have characters you like who are caught up in this situation and then you just as like okay if i don't like the characters and i don't like the rebels i i feel neutral to the empire because you haven't actually straight up shown them doing anything really terrible except kidnapping the one guy in the

beginning so it's like i'm just supposed to go it just it doesn't work i think there's a version of this that you can do but it's like i don't think this successfully pulled off the feeling of like oh maybe the rebels aren't always good it just felt like terrible writing is what it felt like well i mean and in ben mendelsohn i think you had the perfect actor to achieve what you just described because i i really rate him not just because he's australian oh well but i think he's really good at playing characters that have this kind of charm charismatic charm and and knock about likability but also a kind of scary menace where you're not quite sure how unhinged they are i don't know if you've watched him in bloodline i've never seen him before as far as i know but i thought he like he stood he stood out to me as

just a very good actor in the movie yeah like he's a and he's perfect for achieving what you wanted to describe he always plays these guys who you're interested in but you don't quite trust him and you know that they're like gonna end up being a psychopath or something so when i saw he was playing this role i thought oh this is gonna be great but i think he was really let down by the script and i think he was his character was just as mediocre as all the others and i felt sorry for him like i felt like he had nothing to work with and i think he i don't think he came out of the film with great distinction. I felt like he was just surviving on rat cunning, but he didn't have much to work with. And I was really disappointed, really disappointed by that character in almost every way.

I think talking about this, this problem of who do you like, there's one scene, which to me comes just so close to being ridiculous which is right after we have this disagreement with we can't get we can't get the alliance to all agree that we're going to go after the empire and get the death star plans and we get this totally unconvincing speech from no reason from jinn about why we should all be on the same side and do this together oh thank good you didn't call it rousing. You called it rousing a minute ago. I thought it was the least rousing speech I've seen. No, it was terrible. I also love this, like, oh, so bad. She pauses for a moment and there's like shout outs from the crowd behind

her where they're like, what do you propose? And then somebody else says, let her speak, right? But it's like, but nobody was talking. It was dead silence. But they're acting like they're shouting over the car. It was terrible. But she gives this totally unconvincing speech. Right. And then, of course, a bunch of people who are going to, you know, they're going to follow her because of her amazing speech. Are they like, oh, let's let's go off.

Yeah. But but the main the main character, what's his name again? I still can't even remember. And Andor. Andor? Yeah, Andor, whatever. Andy, right? Yeah. Okay, so Andy's standing in front of a bunch of guys who have been roused by her speech,

her terrible, boring speech. Yeah. Right? And here's what he says. He says, we've all done terrible things on behalf of the rebellion. Yeah. Right? I have to believe that everything we've done was for a good reason

and i couldn't face myself if i gave up now and it's like dude you sound like a terrorist on the edge of being deprogrammed right that like like you you have to believe that all the terrible things you've done for the rebellion are for the right cause. It's like, you're not going along with her because this is really good. You're going along with her because if you don't, all the terrible things you have done were just terrible things. It's like the worst line ever. It feels like maybe if her speech had gone slightly differently, he would have woken up and joined the Empire and been like, my God, these rebels really are just a bunch of terrorists. Like, what am I doing? And this is why I kept feeling through this whole movie, like, why am I wondering what the Empire is actually up to?

And this is one of those moments. Like, what are all the terrible things not only you, but all the dudes standing behind you have done on behalf of this rebellion? It was awful. It was awful. I mean, it's not a new idea, is it? That the rebels are terrorists and are just killing government contractors and employees and things like that. But yeah, that hit at home. There's a good story to be told with this but i just like this movie just doesn't achieve it and and is ridiculous in a few points but but that his little speech there i think for anybody watching the movie again listen to what he is

actually saying and and it's amazing it's it's like he's on the verge of an epiphany about how he's been doing everything wrong his entire life. But he's going to double down on all the horrors he has committed and go along with this girl to steal these plans. Yeah. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's like, I can't believe this is in the movie. So he does double down and he goes off to this planet.

I made a couple of notes about this planet. I called it the Maldives data planet because when I looked at it, I thought, oh my goodness, it looks like it's set on the Maldives. And it turns out it was filmed in the Maldives. So... Oh, was it? Yeah. So I was quite pleased.

And Maldives is my favourite place to go. Yeah. In my notes, I have it as New Dubai, right? That's what it just looked like to me. Like, oh, okay, they're in Dubai now. Got it. Yeah, that isn't what the Maldives is like, by the way. It has been Dubai with all the buildings and stuff.

But, and I had a few thoughts about it. One was, I thought, like, a low-lying, watery, salty planet seems like the worst place where you would keep your archives of data. Like, why would you put all your hard drives which i'll come to in a minute they seem to have all these old-fashioned platter hard drives on this like sea level sandy watery planet anyway i i love that you brought this up this didn't even cross my mind watching this movie but it's like i have spent enough time in hawaii to know to know that Hawaii is destroyer of electronics.

Yeah. I guess this is not a good place to be keeping your hard drives. I'm so glad you mentioned that. Yeah. And I also thought it seemed like a bit of a rubbish place to have the final battle, like in this beachy place. And I thought it was going to be terrible for that battle until the 8080s turned up and having 8080s walking around and blowing stuff up on a paradise palm tree beach was awesome that

worked really well for me that was one of the best things in the film seeing those things crunching around in the sand and knocking over trees and that redeemed it like that seemed like the worst place for that whole final battle except for the fact it was awesome for the 80s i thought yeah so this is this is where on my first watching of the movie uh there's a there's a little thing which made me totally laugh at this battle scene like i get laughed out loud in the theater and then felt bad for it uh which is like they've landed 10 guys on this this dubai maldives place and when they detonate a whole bunch of charges they show that the detonations have are occurring like all over this island yeah right um but it's like okay there's 10 guys but you've also already established that this this island is so enormous you need ground-based horizontal elevators to shuttle

people back and forth because it's enormous yeah right but within 30 minutes you have dudes covering the whole island and there's explosions everywhere and so i laughed out loud yeah when they were showing the explosions all over the place i'm like how did these guys get there it's like there's water between they'd have to get to the central dep Depot and then go back out further to get to the other landing pads. Like, it's totally ridiculous. But, but moments after that happened and like I laughed at that ridiculousness. When the fighting shows up and I have to agree, like when the at-ats show up, it's like, okay, I'm having fun. And this, this was the part of the movie that I liked the best, was like the last three quarters

of the battle scenes on the beach. It was the only time I felt like I am having genuine, unadulterated fun watching a Star Wars movie. And I really liked that. I thought it was great. I will depart a little bit from that, because my note I wrote here was I felt like the final battle scene out on the beaches was mindless, repetitive, and completely charmless.

And one of my problems with it was I lost track of the number of times there was a scene where a stormtrooper or a baddie was just about to shoot someone and then they got shot from the side. That happened about ten times. And I was thinking, oh, gosh, how many more times are they going to do this? And then they went and bloody did it with the finale at the top of the tower as well oh my god that was awful where where jinn's just about to get shot by ben mendelsohn and he gets shot from the side it's like it was almost like they were spitting in my face at that point it was like you thought you thought we've done it too many times well cop this we're gonna do it to cap the whole film off as

well yeah we've done it to an atat and we we're going to do it as like the final shot of the final villain. It's like, yes, this is going to happen. Yeah. I guess I do have to clarify that by this point, I don't mean any of the stuff on the actual beaches. It's like everything above the beaches. Right.

I enjoyed all the shots with the X-Wings and the TIE fighters flying around. Yeah. Right. And that's great. AT-ATs on the beaches, they appear from nowhere, just like on Hoth. I'm like, don't care. Because they're on the other side of the beach troops. Actually, if you're looking at the geography of the battle, it's like they've come from

the water. I'm like, ah, whatever. I don't care at all. They're just, it's cool. Right. It's cool. I like't care at all. They're just, it's cool, right? It's cool. I like seeing them. Yeah. I like seeing X-Wings actually engaging with them, right? Instead of having to use your snow speeders and tow cables. All of that stuff was sort of fun. I did find it a little bit

distracting that I think for continuity reasons, it seemed like the X-Wings were being piloted by the American Association of Retired People. Like all the X-Wing pilots were really old. And it's like, I don't think that's a career where you're making it into your 50s. You know, like not many grandmas are flying X-Wings. But apparently this is what we do have now. It's like, okay, what a secure career that must be flying an X-Wing. It doesn't look like it on screen. But apparently everybody lasts decades in those pilot seats

but but i just think like the shots of it were fun the cinematography was done really well yeah the like the over the shoulder shot of the x-wing coming out of hyperspace into the battle it's like i really like that it just felt fun uh so like that is all the stuff that i really liked the what did you think of the well it's not really a battle is it but the sequence in the tower where they're actually stealing the plans i was surprised by how low tech it was and i was getting a lot of kind of backblaze hard drive related anxieties as she was taking out those those that platter hard drive and flopping it around on her belt and i wasn't aware like boy

it's really convenient you have a clip exactly the size for this hard drive um it seems like quite low tech and then they were zapping it up and it was i guess i guess it was just it was you know mcguffin here here's the thing one of the things i like about star wars is it's like a universe without communications technology yeah right like if you if you watch the original one it's like people are constantly uninformed or ill-informed about things you know they don't have yeah star trek communicators it seems like it's a world where we have faster than light travel somehow and fax machines right but yeah but no news organizations, like there's no TVs or anything. It's like, isn't there some like Hoth Daily newspaper, right? Where you can find out

what's going on. It's like, nope, there's like, there's none of this. But I think this is a case of world building where like, it just kind of works. It just works. And it's like, okay, for some reason, communications in the Star Wars universe is just difficult to do. And I'll just go along with that. I will totally accept that. I'm totally fine with it. But then this movie starts breaking it down a little bit because I'm aware of like, don't think about it too hard what's happening in this scene. It's like, okay, wait.

You're broadcasting the plans so okay so yeah you can send the plans wirelessly from the ground to the ships yeah and then the ships are receiving those plans but then they're immediately put onto a little key and it seems like the key is the only place that these exist yeah but you've broadcasted like this is not it just doesn't it doesn't seem like it's a narrow band signal it's a wide band signal like the ships are getting it yeah like why not send it to every ship and every you know put it everywhere put it on the web put it put it on youtube yeah it's it's like so you've received the plans but they're not in the ship they're only on this little card yeah and it's like and you guys haven't signed up for Backblaze?

Like, I don't, like, I just, it bothers me because it becomes a moment of, you want these characters on the ground for the end of the movie. So how do you get them on the ground and the plans in the air? This is how. But it introduces something that now messes with this idea of, in the Star Wars universe, communications technology is terrible. Like I would have much preferred if they did something even, I mean, maybe even dumber and lower tech, but like physically take the plans off planet, right?

Have a little cannon and launch them into outer space, have a droid take them up or something. But I don't like that. Like we're using a satellite dish to just broadcast them it's it doesn't it doesn't ring right for the universe for me and it starts messing with all kinds of other stuff like how is it how is it so hard with these plans to to keep them like it's leave them as physical plans that's totally fine but it requires rewrites for how is this how is this going to end and it just it really felt to me like they just want to keep the characters on the planet this is what we're just going to do don't think about it too hard because it won't make any sense if you do so the a big character

we haven't spoken about yet is the reprogrammed imperial droid k2so who follows our heroes around all over the place what did you think of that character? Okay. Overall, I actually quite like K2, but I think this was in no small part a side effect of, I've got nobody else to like. Yeah. Right?

It's like, if you took K2 and put him in almost any other movie, I would be super annoyed by this robot. But in this one, I felt like I like K2. His death scene was the only moment in the whole movie that registered emotionally for me. Yes. I was like, I am sad that he has died, right? Like this is a sad moment. This is what art is supposed to do.

It is supposed to invoke an emotional feeling. And I've been sitting here for this two hours feeling nothing. K2 dies. I feel sad about it. So it's like success in that part movie. But they had just a lot of snarky stuff with K2 that I felt was too much. What did you think? I agree that the sort of the selfless death of k2 was probably the only like emotional moment in the whole film but i had problems with the believability of a droid in the star wars universe being capable of humor and sarcasm and all those things i don't like that's never something we've been taught,

that's never been shown in Star Wars, really. I feel like C-3PO does that, though. Like, C-3PO makes jokes. Yeah, but C-3PO, but C-3PO, we laugh at C-3PO. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. We don't laugh with C-3PO. C-3PO isn't deliberately funny. C-3PO is funny because we see the humour in it. C-3po is completely unaware of the fact that he's funny whereas k2 is like deliberately sarcastic and i'm sure it's like a problem with his reprogramming and maybe there are emotion chips or maybe like it's funny that he just says everything he thinks and i can imagine a droid doing that i can imagine a

droid having this kind of verbal diarrhea and just being tactless. But K2 goes beyond that. K2 is deliberately sarcastic and funny. At the start where K2 just says the probability that you're going to get killed by her with that blaster is like 80% or whatever, or it's very high is what K2 says, that's funny. And that's K2 doing what a robot would do

and just not having the tact to not say it. But then as the film goes on, you know, it becomes more deliberately sarcastic and more human and it didn't quite work for me. But you're right, you've got no one else to like. No one else in the film is ever funny, ever. I hadn't thought about this until now, but I'm trying to think of any points in the film when

Jin or Andor are funny and jokey or ever. They're not funny. Pointless Ninja guy makes a joke about, is your foot okay? When he's taking out a bunch of stormtroopers. Yeah, I guess those two. I guess those two, Ninja guy and muscle are supposed to be a bit of light relief. Right. But they're so pointless and awful that you can't really root for them. But they sort of joke, but even then it's very little. Yeah.

So, I mean, K2 is the only source of humour in this film. Whereas, you know, in glory days of Star Wars, we've got Han Solo and Chewbacca and Leia, who's so sassy and all that sort of stuff. We've got like multiple sources of levity. And here we've got a robot who i don't believe can be funny so so you've got to like k2 almost out of necessity yeah that's exactly it it's like if k2 was in the the original trilogies i feel like i'm almost certainly i would be annoyed by him but here he's like a lifeboat right like oh oh thank goodness the thing is there was i mean talking about a whole bunch of

the the like callbacks and and fan service stuff it's funny you mentioned that line about k2 because the thing i really liked about him is is early in the introduction that he has exactly that scene where you know the two of them are going to go off to i don't know whatever some some planet subtitled on the bottom of the screen, 7. And he says, would you like to know the probability of her using that weapon against you? And Andy says no. And I love that

he says, it's high. It's very high. As he's looking away. And he does a little hand gesture. And here's where I think, this is good because it's connected to the other movies without having him just do the same thing that C-3PO does. Yeah. Right.

He doesn't be like, oh, it's 97 percent. Right. I actually like I love the fact that they do this. It makes him feel droid like, but his own person. Right. That he's like, all right, you stupid human. Like, it's really high. I'm not even going to specify it, but she's going to shoot you with that gun. Yeah. Well, it's almost like,

cause he didn't want to know. So he's almost not allowed to tell him, but he can still tell him it's high. Yeah, exactly. But later on it's like, oh, you have to do the C-3PO thing when you're in the canyon. And he's like, oh, we have a 20% chance of failure right now. Like now we have a 37% chance of failure. It's like, then it just feels like you're just copying the other movies. Yeah. And I don't like it. And I thought that little K2 moment, I just, I loved. And I thought if you could do this consistently with him throughout the rest of the movie,

it'd be great. But they don't. I do have to say the other reason why he's very likable is the animation that they do with his eyes, I think is fantastic. And I would love to see a behind the scenes thing because I feel very confident that they do with his eyes, I think is fantastic. And I would love to see a behind the scenes thing because I feel very confident that they looked at a bunch of like animals, like dogs or chimpanzees, because they keep having him do this like, look at you, look away thing, look down, like his eye animation, even though it's so limited, I feel like they're really able to provoke a very particular emotional

response to him with that. So I think the animation on him was really good. And it's another reason why when he dies, it is sad because you have this kind of, he's different, but likable, and he's been animated in a very good way, I thought. So should we push towards the end of the film then might as well considering this podcast is it can end up being about as long as the film if we're not careful i did want to say one thing actually before we talk about the very final bit and that is the rebel fleet when it attacks the entrance to the gate one of my problems with the rebel fleet here is it suddenly seems much more

capable than i remember like they always the rebel fleet always seemed terribly underpowered and and like a hiding to nothing but they seem like a real dominant force in a lot of this battle and they're real and not many of them are getting taken out and that the empire seemed really scared of them i felt like the rebelsbels suddenly seemed like more powerful than I remembered in this final battle. Like they seemed almost too good. I will agree. There's a shot that I think that is poorly done where it seems like there's maybe 15 X-Wings, like red, gold and blue leaders, right?

Each who have maybe five X-Wings with them. And they show a shot of hundreds of TIE fighters pouring out of one of the ships. Yeah. And it's like, the X-Wings are holding their own pretty well. Yeah. It's like, okay. I mean, maybe this is why all of these pilots are so old is because they're the best in the universe, right? They're just fantastic at what they do.

Yeah. But it seems a little too outnumbered. And maybe you could just pretend that like the empire is not super concerned about protecting this base because there's a shield generator around it and they think it's fine yeah like but instead yeah it's it's like those x-wing pilots are too good they're way too good for the numbers that that you're seeing on screen the thing that drove me crazy and this i think is a side effect of like you have too many characters is in the battle sequence we have our troops on the ground what is their objective we want to get

the plans okay great the plans have to be beamed off of the planet understandable i don't like it but it's understandable uh okay the shields blocking our transmission so now we need our pilot to tell the rebel fleet up above to take down the shields. What the hell else is the rebel fleet doing? Right? Like, if the rebel fleet has come to this planet, their explicit goal is to provide air support for the troops on the ground. But there is a shield between them and the troops.

What else would they be doing except trying to take down the shield and get down to the surface? what else would they be doing except trying to take down the shield and get down to the surface like they can't possibly have any other goal except to get maybe slaughtered by the capital ships that are up there like just hanging around it's it was crazy making to me and it felt like it's just a side effect of like oh right we've brought this pilot character along who again i think is entirely unnecessary like most of the characters here. We need to give him something to do. So he has to be involved in this, again, like Rube Goldberg machine of we need to get the master switch to send the signal, to talk to the fleet, to tell the fleet to do the thing that's the only thing that they're doing. It's bothersome. And again, I think it's a side effect of the terrible writing yeah why can he

talk to the fleet but the plans can't get through the shield is there something special about his ship or the that switch well yeah exactly it's like this doesn't this doesn't even make sense if you think about it too long right again it's like the data transmission problem here of like oh we're monkeying around with how communications work and i feel like all of the writing problems about the rebels are dicks i have no one to root for i'm wondering if maybe the empire is right about these terrorists i feel like it was really for me summed up in in one moment of the movie where i did have a little bit of an emotional reaction and it was the totally wrong emotional reaction and it's when they have the rebels get the hammerhead ship to make the disabled Star Destroyer crash into another Star Destroyer and crash into the shield generator.

And I was watching that scene. And all I kept thinking of is, God, there's a lot of people in those ships. Right. And it's like, I am feeling bad for the Empire in this moment. And it's like, this is the wrong emotional reaction to be having. And I don't want to be having this emotional reaction. And what's even weirder is the music choice is sort of a sad song in this moment. And it's like, I know this is not how I am supposed to be feeling. But like, I have been led here by all of the mess that has occurred before this.

So that in what's supposed to be a moment of triumph, I am having the exact opposite emotional reaction. Like thousands of people are dying in those ships right now. Good job, rebels, with your suicide ship, right, ramming into the side of them. It was, that to me is like the pinnacle of like, I am reacting to this movie in the wrong way because the writing is terrible. The music was not as good. Yeah, I think it was, to me, it was a little bit unremarkable. Like I didn't notice it very much, you know? So it wasn't bad or anything.

The only time I noticed it was in this, in that scene where I felt like this music is wrong. Otherwise it just felt like background music is wrong. Otherwise it just felt like background music. But I wonder if it suffered from not having John Williams this time. Okay. I didn't, I didn't realize that he wasn't doing the music this time. So they have somebody else. Obviously they used a few little squirts of his original stuff at certain times. And those are times when you were like, ah, Star Wars. But most of it, most of it was written by someone else. And like, I don't want to kick someone for not being John Williams

because it's a pretty hard act to follow. But I do think it showed that it wasn't quite as good. I didn't know that it wasn't John Williams. And I made a note during the film saying, the music's not as good in this one as it was even in the terrible prequels. I was noticing the music wasn't as good. And then I looked later on and found out that someone else had done it. So anyway, our heroes down on the ground get Death Starred.

You know, they get blown up and thanks for the plans. You did your job. That was very noble. And then we get the plans onto the Rebel fleet and the Rebel want to get away. And then Darth Vader turns up at just the right moment with his reinforcements and stops anyone being able to get away except perhaps this one ship with the plans and then we have darth vader get onto the get onto the ship and he's almost like man for man now trying to get his hands on this on this data card of the plans

almost like it's a relay baton being passed from from one person to the next and darth vader's chasing them what did you think of that scene i liked it i i really liked it i agree yeah it was awesome okay yeah it was super fun to watch yeah but it also felt like an introduction to a video game or something like it again didn't feel like it needed to be in this movie but i will totally agree like watching darth vader slice through a bunch of rebels you know slice through a bunch of terrorists maybe right who knows it was great i thought it was really well done and this is like what darth vader should be he feels menacing yeah he's he's moving forward there's there's a clear objective right he's trying to get the one copy of of the data that they have they don't have it on all the ships he's kind of a bit angry and stuff and yeah yeah it's i i really liked it i do think again though that it it's like a little bit of the prequelness here where it's like it's the different darth vader it's the clearly more powerful force using darth vader from the

prequels because it's like oh oh, well, in A New Hope, he's not like taking out six guys at once by clenching his fist. That's not the Darth Vader who shows up later. So I think that scene causes problems. But I do have to say, like, in isolation, I just love this sequence. I think this sequence is great. It was a good sequence. Yeah.

It's one of the best things in the movie. It's really enjoyable yeah the door closing right and and the rebel ship getting away that that shot of it falling away from the main ship i really like that i like that as a reveal yeah i still feel like it causes problems but it was it was just very and very enjoyable i thought it was great there's a few because this is a scene i've been thinking a lot about it's funny because one of the one of the fundamental problems this film has that we haven't even mentioned, but it's the elephant in the room, is that we all pretty much know how it's going to end. Yeah. Because we have to know how it's going to end.

And yet the funny thing was, even though I knew that Darth Vader wasn't going to stop the ship and get the plans, that scene still had some tension and some thrillingness to it because of the desperation of the men who were getting killed. It was like, it reminded me of a scene in like submarine movies when the submarine's filling up with water and they're shutting doors and people are trying to not drown on a submarine. It had a real kind of human tension. Yeah, there was, there was real visceralness to it. Yeah. It actually made me think of a, like a scene in Watership Down where a bunch of rabbits are trying to escape a warren that they're in. Yeah. It's the same, it's the same thing of like narrow, confined space, clear problem, obstruction, right? You can understand it emotionally. It was, it was great.

And I also see the problem with how capable Darth Vader is there. I mean, he's, he's doing, he's doing amazing things. And this is the same guy that two or three days later is going to have sort of an old age pensioner fight with obi-wan kenobi on the death star where they're these two slow lumbering old men so i do see that problem but even though darth vader is clearly too agile and he's doing things that are too amazing he does kind of have a kind of lumbering, oafish movement to him, even as he's doing it. So even though he's a bit too athletic and it does break the continuity, they didn't overdo it. They didn't have him doing Darth Maul karate cartwheels.

There was a kind of hulking, lumbering, get out of my way, boom, bang, I'm a big, I'm Hagrid the Giant trying to get these plans. Exactly. They went too far, but they didn't go too far by too much. Right. And it kind of, it kind of worked. Yeah. I completely agree. Right.

He has like a Frankenstein's monster feel to him. Yeah. Which is again, why the scene works. He's not agile. Yeah. He is, he is a tank coming to crush you. Yeah. That's what he is.

Yeah. Yeah. So that worked. And anyway, he, it was a great scene as the ship gets away and he's there in the airlock having missed it by that much and then we have the final few seconds where the plans are handed to our princess layer in her white robe and we turn around and we see her face and she says her cheesy cheesy line at the end oh my god what did you think of those final few seconds then it's's awful. Just really awful. Yeah, they kind of dropped the ball, didn't they?

They did in much the same way Revenge of the Sith mucked up their Darth Vader ending. I mean, surely the way Princess Leia looked freaked you out. Talk about Uncanny Valley. Yeah, it was... There's a few problems with this thing. It's like, okay, so this whole sequence with Vader is amazing. And I can see why they want to end the movie on this. But I kept thinking, doesn't this belong in the space battle?

Right? Like this seems like it should come sooner in the movie. But I also just had this problem of like, Leia seems really happy in this shot. It's like, oh, she's getting away. Like she's scampering away and she's clutching hope in her hands. And it, it feels emotionally wrong. It's like, wait, you're the princess. Like who knows how many people have just died here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she's just seen, she's just seen several ships full of all her colleagues crash into a Star Destroyer. Probably, probably a thousand people she's Facebook friends

with have just died in front of her. Yeah. And she's like, woohoo. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, got away. Right. Yeah.

And it's like, this Leia does not feel like the Leia on Hoth who was trying to get everybody out of the base before her. Yeah. This is a Leia who's zipping off to have a fun adventure in the next three movies. Yeah. And I just, I didn't like it. I think the line is really clunky. It doesn't work. And I just, I didn't like it. I think the line is really clunky. It doesn't work.

And she looks terrible. I just don't think they need to do it. And it's what it strikes to me as is like the layer on screen is supposed to be reflecting emotionally what they want the audience to feel, right? And that's why I think this scene comes at the end as opposed to in the actual battle itself is because this is what they want you to leave on.

Right. What they don't want you to leave on is a nuclear holocaust where everybody dies. Everybody who we've just been following for the last two hours and supposedly caring about from from our from our guy and our girl and our robot and our ninja and everyone. Everyone's just everyone's dead. Yeah. And we're supposed to go, woo. Yeah. Yeah. But and I'm convinced that's why the movie ends this way. everyone everyone's just everyone's dead yeah and we're supposed to go woo yeah yeah but and i i'm

convinced that's why the movie ends this way and and that's also why they have leia react as they want the audience to react not as the actual character of princess leia would react and and that's what i thought is bad ending uh really really bad ending i'm also surprised that they would want the audience to feel that way i don't know i thought it should be a bit more bittersweet well i mean okay so i i'm convinced this is like a like a marketing decision right that they want people to walk out of the movie feeling like they just had an amazing adventure and i mean i have to say my my second viewing there happened to be a bunch of families with with kids in the theater. I was watching how they walked out and everybody seemed to walk out like, oh, boy, that was fun.

Fun adventure. Right. In a way that I think even children watching a movie that ends in a nuclear holocaust where everybody dies, they probably wouldn't have like leapt out of their seats and like fun and excitement. I feel like this is a committee decision that we don't want people to go into a star wars movie and leave on a downer right right we want them to feel like you're leaving the theater on a high like wasn't that a rip-roaring adventure that you just had don't go you say the empire strikes back then yeah but that's what makes it such a great movie yeah that's what makes it one of the best movies ever made yeah but it's it's like but you can't produce that consistently yeah right and so i think that's why this occurred even if the the downer ending i think would have made the film stronger i think that's that's why it that's why

it didn't happen how would you have ended the film and that's a tough question because i haven't thought of an answer myself yet but i'm just thinking what could you have done differently could you have had the rebel blockade runner get away and then gone back down to the planet and had the tidal wave and that's kind of what i'm thinking right is like you see that the plans have made it out but but you do end with a big explosion where everybody dies right the only problem with that is though the darth vader chasing the plans scene was so good. I almost couldn't have taken much more after that. Like, that was a real rollicking way to end the film.

Like, it was a real thrill. And things ended so quickly after that. And we see Princess Leia for 10 seconds and bang, the ship's gone and it ends. So in some ways, that kind of high energy ending did kind of work it was just the cheesy line and the distracting way that princess leia looked that ruined him i would have been quite happy for the movie to end with the blockade runner going away and darth vader at the airlock and that would segue nicely into a new hope but just the cheese of the line yeah and the distraction of the face and did all of that.

Yeah. And her wink at the camera as she takes off, right? It's too much. Yeah, I would have it have a much more downer ending, but I agree with you. Like, I can understand, you know, if I was working at Disney and on the committee that's making these movies, like, you have a bunch of things that you're trying to do. And I would probably, under those circumstances, decide to do it this way. Whereas if you're asking me, how would I end this movie? It's like, well, this is involved with questions about how I would structurally rewrite almost every single thing that occurs in the movie.

Because, well, how would you fix this disaster in the last 30 seconds? It's like, you know what they did? What they did was fine because there's nothing that you're really going to do that's going to fix all of the problems that I have. What's your closing thoughts then? I mean, what have we done? What's happened? My closing thoughts are the feeling I had on my way to the theater last night when I

was going to watch it, which was I was happy to see a Star Wars movie. And more than that, I was happy on my way to the theater to have the feeling of the pressure is off, in a sense, that we know that from now until the end of copyright protection which will be at the same time as the heat death of the universe disney is going to be releasing star wars movies some of them will be good and some of them will be bad but i feel like after force awakens we've all had a bit of a catharsis and i can go see a star wars movie and if it is bad, if I don't like it, that's fine. There will be more Star Wars movies. And while that makes Star Wars less special, it does mean that it becomes like any other

movie where it's like, well, you don't have to see bad movies and you can just rewatch the movies that you think are good. While I think it's pretty clear that I did not like this movie i'm i'm fine with that i don't like i'm fine with that because there's going to be more to come and some of them i expect will be good and some of them i expect will be bad but it feels like the pressure's off what is it about force awakens that has created that scenario you could have said this before force awakens oh they're going to make a bunch of more star wars films. It doesn't matter anymore. What was it about that film that created this new scenario? Well, I think we do want to have a conversation about Force Awakens again, but now is not that time. I will, unless

you want to go for another two hours, because I actually have a whole bunch of thoughts. But I will just say that Force Awakens, the feeling was, I am seeing a Star Wars movie and I'm really liking it and I can see it multiple times in the theater and I'm happy, right? And I'd like, I've had that good experience. And it was simply just the confirmation that like, this can happen again. Okay. Right? There can be good Star Wars movies.

They won't always be terrible. That's what it is. That's why I feel like Force Awakens was catharsis. So Force Awakens basically made it clear that those first three films in the 70s and 80s weren't like a one-off. There are good Star Wars movies, you know, because then there were three terrible ones in a row. It was like, hang on, were those three the only ones we're ever going to see? Right. So Force Awakens just proved that those first three weren't a fluke or, you know. Yeah. It's not that Force Awakens was as good as the original trilogy,

but it's that I can watch and enjoy and feel like I'm having a fun time watching a Star Wars movie. Right. That's what it confirmed. Like, this can happen again. Yeah. And so now seeing Rogue One, I'm feeling like, God, what a mess. It's not like an additional feeling of disappointment that,

like, they'll never get it right again. And so that's the feeling. I mean, Rogue One is an order of magnitude better than the prequels. Oh, yeah. I'd rather watch Rogue One three times in a row than watch one of the prequels once. Yeah. Yeah. Just to be clear. Yeah, just to be absolutely clear. I don't feel like I wasted my time seeing Rogue One. And not just for work purposes. I'm glad I went and saw it. It was good enough to be worth, you know, your 10 quid and a couple of hours in an afternoon.

Maybe I obviously liked it more than you, but I think it was, you know, like I said, my thumb is above the horizontal. So it does get a slight thumbs up for me, but it is very flawed. And it's just not fun. It's just not a fun movie. That's the problem. It's like I could forgive a bad scripting if it was fun, but it wasn't even that fun.

It took itself quite seriously except for the droid, and there were lots of mindless battles. Like the old-fashioned ending of a film, It took itself quite seriously, except for the droid. And there were lots of mindless battles, you know. Like, you know, the old-fashioned ending of a film, just people just shooting the crap out of each other for half an hour happened. So, anyway, I'll be curious to hear and read and see what everyone else in the world thinks now. Yeah, me too. I'll be curious to see what the reaction is.

All right. But let's go back to all of my notes about what happened to Jedha, because I have many points that I want to still hit on. Yeah.