The Watch - Ep. 107: Rogue One Recap

Episode Date: December 20, 2016

Spoiler Alerts Ahead! The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald go deep on ‘Rogue One’, the latest Star Wars film. They cover everything from their favorite moments (3:55), to the cast (24:05), to a larger discussion about blockbuster movies (41:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So download the app for free today. Availability depends on presence of credit history from TransUnion. Credit Wise is offered by Capital One Bank, USA. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Andy Greenwald. I have no official title at the ringer.com

and joining me on the other line. Live from Philadelphia, it's the CGI version of his younger self. It's Chris Ryan. What's up, man, live from Planet Hoss, the 215. I got all my Kirby Pucket and Goodfellas posters on my childhood bedroom wall. Wow. What better setting than,

to go full nostalgia and talk about Star Wars. I just hope that you have a nice taunton carcass to just wiggle yourself into later and snuggle up. Specialty. Yo, we got to talk about... The Irish Jews make Tonton really well. Yeah, well, you know, because they use the offcuts. You know, it's traditionally, you know, they would take like the loins and the, you know, the heart of your Tonton stakes would go to the upper classes.

But, you know, we people, we had to survive. We made students. That's right. Slow braises. Isn't that exciting that you... I was going to start talking about Rogue One, but you two... me to a place that I'm much more interested in talking about, which is fictional cookery. Oh, that doesn't bode well?

No, no, no. We're ready to talk about Rogue One. I am literally fresh from the theater. I just came from the theater. Yeah, I saw it Thursday night at 10, 15th screening at the lovely arc light in Los Angeles. I think you just went this morning. I did. I just exited the arc light 20 minutes ago. I'm ready to go, man. I got to just set the tone for one second before we get into it. Before we even get an officially to the movie. I know people like local color

And I just want to let you know that my last experience I saw the movie credits rolled the music's playing I walk out make a pit stop in the restroom Like all X-Wing fighters have to do from time to time And there were two older gentlemen in there Now I know before anyone else says it older than us And they were in there talking they loved it They were like, I was really good

They were like yeah yeah it's really good One guy was like it had comedy too Made you laugh sometimes And the other guy was like it did it did And then one guy was like And it led right into the first Star Wars movie The other guy was like you know what? It really did. It did.

And then he was like, which is the movie where he defeats him? Which is the movie where he defeats Darth Vader? Is that the second one or the third one? And there's a pause and one of the guys scratched his goate and the guy said, it's the second one, right? It's the second one because in the third one he fights the guy with a multicolored face. What's that dude's name? The other guy was like

Darth Mall and they were like, that's right. Now, there have been moments... Here's the thing, Andy, what you don't know? Yeah. They were talking about Manchester by the sea. the thing. Chris, there have been times during this dark year of 2016 when I have worried about the state of the common man, worried about

our American brothers. Maybe, you know, there was this idea of the low informed voters. This was the moment where I actually got worried. When the pre-pals went into Canada. This is actually a good place to start with Rogue 1 because it's interesting, you found yourself in a bathroom with two gentlemen scratching

their goatees. Two gentlemen of Verona. The end of Rogue one made me ski jump into the sun. Yeah. Because that's how it made me feel. And even though it's been a few days now,

and even though in the first hour, I was making my little post-its of little complaints. I'd like to send Kathleen Kennedy and Bob Eager. And then the last 45 minutes of that movie happened. Yep. Yeah, listen, I'm with you.

I'm sorry I led on a low note. Here was the shocking thing for me about this movie. the tent pole big franchise big IP thing has become so stale and we've become so used to it and generally the way that these things go is they're pretty good for you know 80 90 minutes then they turn to shit they fall apart because it's just robots punching or whatever this inverted it I got to tell you get your posted notes ready for the second half of this podcast because the first part of this movie is kind of a mess the last part is dope as fuck there's no no getting around it and and and and And I have to think, I mean, we've never covered a movie as extensively as we covered this one. We went deep on the trailer, which remains my favorite Star Wars movie of all time. We've talked about what it might mean that Tony Gilroy was brought on, that your man, Gareth Edwards was apparently taken off. We know nothing.

We have no inside knowledge. But I can't help but assume that Michael Clayton, the fixer came in for the first part of the movie. And that the part we got at the end was all Gareth, right? because that was the war movie. And let me say, this was not PG-13. Sorry, Ghost of Jack Valenti. This is not a PG-13 movie because everybody dies. Yeah, well, you know, it's like they had a lot of cooks in the kitchen on this one,

but at the very end, all the cooks were like, let's make some don't-dun. You know what I mean? Like, everybody started rowing in the same direction. And even though, I mean, there's been some pretty extensive online scholarship already. I love saying scholarship, like a blog post constitutes, like a road scholar, you know, reading the Canterbury Tales. There's been a lot of work online about how there's stuff in the trailer, especially stuff on the beach raid from the last 30, 40 minutes.

That's just not in the movie, and it suggests that one of the major reshoot, such, you know, questions that they had, or one of the major topics for the reshoot was obviously how it ended, because we can get to that part. But I do want to talk a little bit because you brought up IP, brought up like the way these things are working. working now. This is,

this movie, like I was eight years old, in all the best ways, you know? Not in the, how do you make friends' ways? But like, only the good stuff.

And, you know, I think that the first time you see Darth Vader, there's, and he has, like his one-liners, and you're kind of like, okay,

great, and glad, like, you know, Nick Kroll got in, you know, like a screenplay polish on this or whatever happened.

But, um, when Darth Vader's, like, throwing dudes around the hallway with his mind. And the beginning of New Hope, they reshoot the beginning of New Hope, and you're kind of like feeling the way the page is literally turning. It kind of is the best pop use of the actual idea of like what a sequel could be.

Well, it also, dare I say it, the movie felt like it had stakes. And the reason it felt like it had stakes is because there's not going to be a rogue too. And this movie is very unique because by being. being part of the, you know, the expanded Star Wars universe, a Star Wars story, or whatever. What if Robe 2 is just, like, dust blowing around? On corpses? I think that would be amazing. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, it's like part of the Cremaster cycle or something.

Mark Trears Roak 2. Exactly. Mads Mikkelson is around. He's available. And by the way, he looks great. Wow, what a leading man he was with his weird man bun. Speaking of, I just want to know the note when they were like, Riz Ahmed, we love to unite of.

You're terrific. We love your career. We love what you bring to it. But can we just get you the Lin-Manuel Miranda hair? Can you just get the Hamilton just head transplant? Because that was working for him. It had stakes because people could die. And that is such a weird thing to say, especially as someone who generally does not like when movies just pull the death card or go dark to try to get us to react. But it was truly, truly shocking for a movie, a tent pole action movie set in a very lucrative franchise. universe to be able to say, nope, not everything has a happy ending. Not everything works out. Yeah, and I think that's despite what Michael Giochino's score is trying to tell us throughout the movie. And I thought it was really interesting because there was obviously a tug of war over what to do with this. Garrett Edwards obviously pitched this movie and sold this movie or was sold this movie by Disney and Lucasfilm as this idea that we're going to make a Star Wars war movie. And even though there's obviously been war in every other Star Wars movie, it's right there in the

Oh, my dude. Yeah, he wanted to approach this via, like, you know, this is the longest day or the, you know, the great escape of Dark 30 of Star Wars movies of the saving private Ryan of Star Wars movies are all movies. I've seen him reference and interviews. And obviously that requires there to be casualties of war. But for as dark as the film gets, especially in its third act, they try as hard as they can to soften the blow in places. So I think that's why you get the PG-13. And that was, you know, I almost feel like this movie plays darker as a silent film. Yeah.

Because if you don't have K2SOs of one-liners and you don't have the sort of typical fanfare score, if you have like one piano plink, you know, playing through this, if it's like the hunger preview, I mean, you're going to have like a completely different experience. I wanted to ask you whether or not you felt like, you know, they were obviously worst, And I think that we can kind of like go back and forth here between good and bad. But one thing I've been reading about, you know, this is an interesting movie. A lot of people having a lot of different reactions, a lot of people loving, not loving. But one consistent criticism I saw this in Aosk's review is just like, it's great that there are stakes,

but I didn't care about the characters because of all the Frankenstein's monster plot business that happens in the first hour. So where were you at when it came to, I'm emotionally committed to Felicity Jones at the end of this movie? The first half of the movie is a mess. And I think that here's a shocker, end of your shocker. In order to criticize Rogue One, I'm going to say something positive about Westworld. If Westworld has given us anything, it really did give us a tool to describe the way Hollywood thinks about our entertainment, which is if you give someone a tragic backstory, then they are believable as humans. And I don't know how much of that was in the original script. I do know that this is a rebellion I rebel is not in the movie.

And the thing about rebellions being based on hope, which is corny times a million, is in the movie three times. I understand the Save the Cat, Robert McKee's screenwriting 101, that foregrounded who she was as a kid. Although, come on, Star Wars. Haven't you learned not to have kids? Like, we don't need, didn't Phantom Menace teach us anything? Yeah, I mean, actually, one of the things I love so much about a new hope is, that it's not a child who's innocent and is looking at the world with stars in their eyes. It's an annoyed sort of punkish teenager.

Yes. And so I understand why they gave us that fraught flashback backstory, but that was put in place of giving us any reason to understand who she is as an adult. So instead, we just know that she's in prison, and we know that Forrest Whitaker thinks that she's the greatest soldier he's ever seen. but Forrest Whitaker is huffing on that gas more than Steve Martin in Little Shop of Hours. So I don't really know how much of what he says can be believed. So we actually, so it begins, the problem begins at the top. We understand her motivation because we've seen every movie ever made, but we don't know who she is. Now, that doesn't apply to every character, but they're so eager to get moving.

And then, you know, they had this amazing set piece at the end that it's based on how much we care about these people. That like when Donnie N., who steals the movie, by the way, shows up, we don't know his name. We don't know why they're so cool with just riding away with them. We don't know their reaction to the destruction of the city in which they lived in. Right, and she's wearing this necklace, which sort of suggests, you know, her mother gives her this necklace that suggests that there is a connection between her and the force, but she doesn't have the force. And I know that Garrett Edwards has been like there is no force, really.

Nobody has the force in this movie, although obviously they brought Darth in. And, you know, clearly some of, for the most part, I mean, Felicity Jones is able to do what she does on that sort of landing. platform on the mining planet that they're onward, which, you know, that's quite a climb up that ladder. In the rain, too. The force would help in the rain, yeah. And by the way, I think that... Unlike Ben Bloodline Mendelso, she doesn't have any that Imperial Gortex on, you know,

she doesn't have any breathable fabric, so that was impressive. And I think that there's where Diego Luna flips from, you don't know anything about my life to, I got your back 100, let's go into this. suicide. But you can see the scraps of that story because we first meet him, he shoots a dude in the back. So he's not a good... And they play that off. The exit music to that

is like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Like he exes out a snitch. That got noted to death, but there's the bones of it. I mean, that's my guess. That is literally the Han shoots first of the whole thing, writ large, right? Like, we meet him

and he's not necessarily a good guy. We basically are introduced to a rebellion that is becoming as much of a bureaucracy and governed by fear and half measures as the empire. And then we're sort of built up to this moment where Diego brings his homies and it's just like, we've done some gutter-ass shit and we are ready to redeem ourselves.

That is a through line that must have been in the pitch. Like, I never want to speak ill of the god Tony Gilroy, but my assumption is that maybe the movie was better, it was just too gnarly. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, there's always, the stories are always more complicated. Here's my read on it. I think that the first 20th,

minutes, I think, and I could be completely wrong because if you were going to reshoot something, you'd probably have a nowhere. It was like, we need to know her backstory and we need to care about her as a child. So while I could imagine this being reshot, I think that the first 20 minutes on whatever planet that's on, that's not Jeddah, is it? When she's on like the kind of dark Irish planet with like the dark, dark soil as a child. The dark Irish planet, otherwise known as Irish. Yeah. Yeah, right. I think that that is Gareth Edwards' like vision.

You know, like that, it's incredibly stark. The cinematography is rich. It's a, you. And then as we start planet hopping, and as they start needing to throw cryons on everything so that you know, and now we're on this planet, now we're going on this planet. And it was funny, you know, last night when I got into Philly, I fired up a little Force Awakens. And I hadn't watched that in a while. And that has a lot of the same issues where...

Yes, it does. whether it's like because it's screenwriting as bullpen or what, there's just like, what are you, what? Like, we're Max von Cedown was in the first scene and they need this thing. But like why was it such an effort to find this thing? So Oscar Isaac has to go to this planet, but then he leaves the planet and he escapes thing. And he goes back to the planet, but then he gets captured. I mean, it's just like so confusing.

And it's so, it literally has like a lot of that same, like, I flew to this other planet to tell a guy something. Can I make it just a general suggestion just like for all Imperial forces and rebellion fighters? I think if you can have sentient droids, you could probably invest in the cloud. You know what I mean? If you got hyperspace. Like my man, you can travel light speed without even worrying about it. Like you can probably go wireless.

You probably don't need a thumb drive to save the universe. Yeah, right. I don't know. I don't want to tell you what's up. We're nitpicking here. but you know what's interesting is that you can hear in our voices there's like a little bit of extra and that's just because this movie

yeah look the end when you realize that it's really going to go there and the movie does a pretty interesting faint I think at the end when the first person to go down like a hero is the robot and that was the moment where I was like so that's all that's going to happen like they're going to save the day also the most lovable character in the movie

great great well done Like, they actually, all of those characters that they get together on the ship, that's really well done. Like, those are very well-drawn, amazingly cast, really enjoyable characters. And to do that in that short of time is impressive. I just, you needed more of that and less of all the other business, you know? You just needed less of it. Yeah, and I think that there's something about that middle section where they do have the, like, she has to make peace with her father bit. Right.

And I think that Galen might be one of the characters that they wrestled with, because this is essentially a guy who says, I'm going to create a genocidal weapon of mass destruction, because I'm afraid that the empire might find my daughter at some point. Which they're going to do anyway. Right. Yeah, and it's really unclear as to what is happening with him. And I think that his comeback middle of the movie with the hologram,

which is like a Star Wars staple, obviously. obviously, and that engages her sort of sentimentality about the whole mission. But, you know, just like the – I like all the interseen fighting within the rebellion, and I think they did that better than they – then Lucas did in the prequels, where it's just like mind-boggling center procedures and stuff. For sure. And, you know, the other thing that it did better than – I want to say, in some ways, better than the original trilogy, which is it made magic or the force, whatever you want to call it,

feel special, as you were saying, there wasn't much of it in it, but it also felt religious and almost supernatural, right? Based in Donnie N's character, based in the sort of faith in something that might not even work anymore, based ultimately not in believing in something, but believing in each other. I mean, all of that was laced through that pretty elegantly. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I really liked about Force Awakens, but I think it could be used as a criticism against it, is that it kind of had a feeling of being made by people who made up their own Star Wars stories with toys. You know, and I mean that in the best possible way.

There's multiple scenes. There's Oscar Isaac talking to John Boygan and the beginning of the movie when they're in the Thai fighter. He's like, I've always wanted to fly one of these. They're reenacting scenes from the original trilogy throughout the film. And I think it had a lot of, it wasn't just fan service. It was a love letter to fandom. This movie had a similar vibe because, but it was a little bit more pure.

Because this is the kind of story where if you paid attention to the crawls at the beginning of these movies, there are lots of tidbits of information. And Jason, Concepcion and Ben Lindberg did a great speculative piece about what other sort of tidbits could be left around the Star Wars galaxy that people could feast on. But this is literally something where it's like, well, how do they get the plans? That seems crazy. But isn't it hard to just sort of – I feel like this is a little sour graves, but I can't help but think – What if? And what if this movie was made by a multinational billion-dollar conglomerate that was comfortable with something as radical as Gailen Erso being a bad guy, who then has second thoughts at the end? The movie...

Well, then it would have... I honestly think it needed to come out after episode eight, and maybe even after Han Solo. The problem that I think that they ran into, and this is just speculation, but the problem they ran into is they just did not have the Kwan yet. They just... I know that Force Awakens is the most successful movie that ever... ever came out. But the franchise, franchise, because franchise can teeter one way or the other, and I think that's

why in terms of the order these films were coming out, if we wanted the version of the movie that probably was in Garrett Edwards's head. And you know what? We give that Garrett Edwards an enormous amount of credit. I don't know, maybe he just literally didn't get it, like, which is another reason why reshoots happen is like, they come

back, they go to the editing room, they're like, you don't have it. We need something else. But for, in the case of the movie that we think he wanted to make in the movie that we sort of envision in our heads, I think that movie needed to come out in 2018 or 19, and episode A needed to come out before that so that you would have had basically back-to-back blockbuster movies with these characters that everybody loves, and there's just so much momentum for the franchise, and then you make the weird movie that's just straight up like, this girl's dad built the Death Star, and then she had

to spend her life correcting his error. Not to spend her life, burn her life, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do a little cast rundown, because I want to get your thoughts on that before we go back to the big picture stuff. Yeah, should we take a quick break from our sponsor before we do that? Whoa, that's a great idea. All the way from Philly. He's running the podcast. Let's do that.

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Yeah, absolutely. So should we start with, why don't we start with the dark side, my brother? Yeah, do you want to talk about nicotine-stained teeth director Orson Crenic? I love that that dude's name was, his title was D. rector. That's such a sub-tweet. Is that why he used to wear the white cape? First of all, I just love, I mean, I shouldn't joke because we're very close to this in this country as well, but like when people are just like, fuck it, I'm wearing capes. You know what I mean? Like that that's what we're doing. I was kind of hoping that in there's like a cut scene from

like one of those scenes when they're all like in the empire board room watching the test and somebody just goes up to them afterwards and just like, nice cape dog. Yeah, seriously. But also it's not just cape. Nice cape, my G. He had to go to the North Face outlet in the Death Star and be like, can you accessorize this? Because I planned to going to some pretty ill temperatures, like some pretty weird climates. Like, I am fully going to have staff meetings in a monsoon for no reason.

Yeah. No reason. Just bring everybody outside. Like, come to me. Come to where the weather is. You know, Mendelssohn had very little to do when you really think about it. But he seethed. He carried the screen.

I was fine with him. Yeah. that he had there was probably like more they could have colored in there with um this idea that this guy that you know like ambition in that world where you're dealing with these all powerful beings ambition has a ceiling and a consequence and you know we could sit here and and talk all day about the reanimated peter cushing um i have basically everybody i know who uh who saw the movie agrees that that it would have been great if they just had a shot of tarkin through the the off the window reflection,

but the idea of making him like a full on, like, character, like hanging out is pretty wild. Also, because, you know, the whole... Can I just jump in just to say, because it doesn't work. Like, he's like the BFG from the Spielberg movie, you know? It's the uncanny valley. Yeah, he really does look like that.

It takes you out of the movie, and it just bums me out that, like, what is our fate on this planet? It's just to become Muppets. Like, it's just fucking to become digital cartoon Muppets. Like, that is... Just because you can do it, check yourself. You don't need...

to do it. Like, there weren't enough people, there weren't enough dorks like high-fiving each other. I'm including myself in this in the theater because they got the man with the most sunken cheeks in history resurrected through some digital fuckery. Like, you don't need to do it. We got like 11 days left in this year and you're still out here just raging against robots. I just, yo, just don't do it. Also, like, let some like sunken-faced English actor eat. There must be a dude who's like, I got the cheekbones, I got the hollowed out eyes. I'm mean. Let me do that. Okay, go on.

Well, be that as it may. I thought that that was, there was an interesting, the life in times of like what it must be like to be middle management in the empire. Yeah. Was a really cool thing. And I thought that the last shot of him was phenomenal of him, just sort of seeing the Death Star merge and knowing what's going to happen is just, it's so crazy.

And that's what Edwards does so well as scale. We've talked about this a bunch of times in the lead up to the movie. It's just his ability to be like a magic. and the Death Star emerging on the horizon. That's insane. It's also insane, but insanely perfect for this series. There are a couple things, but one of the things that Star Wars,

just as a franchise, and we're not talking about the prequels here at all, but the first three movies, and then even Force Awakens did this too. They do better than any of the other major IP tickets is this sense of scale. And, you know, partly it's because they, you know, it usually, I mean, obviously it's changed a lot,

but they've eschewed, like, major, major CGI stuff. They've done a lot of stuff, made it more physical, made it more grounded. Even JJ Abrams did that, even though he sprinkled lens flare on top of it. There are moments, like when you see the Imperial Walkers that are still can take your breath away. There are moments that I loved in this, like when we saw the Watch Tower, just that dude on the Watchtower at the Rebel Base, that's a wonderful shot. It's a wonderful. Yeah, even by that same token, the Wii, we complained about Cushing, but I admit I was pretty psyched to see Red and Gold Leader.

No, that's true. I did like that too. But how about the fact that we... Did you notice who the X-wing pilot, who is sort of the lead X-wing pilot was? No. It's Claire Underwood's boyfriend from House of Cards. Whoa, whoa. Let's just take it down a peg. What? This is set in the larger... Boy, the photographer. This whole thing is set in the larger Underwood expanded universe? Do you think that's true? Yes. This is what happens if Frank Underwood stays president.

Well, that's also weirdly prescient. No, I just want to say, like, for as much as we're going to be talking about this movie in and of itself, but I just think it's worth noting that it's not just that most tent pole movies collapse on themselves in the end into just total visual incoherence. This movie made sense visually. The battle, the infantry, the space battles, where people were flying, what they were flying from, and two, I could track it with my yeoman's eyes, you know. That is no small thing.

That is very elegantly designed, and I found. that very impressive. But did you think, did you like Mendelso? So anybody else on the dark side that you want to mention before we jump to the good guys? Was there anyone else in the dark side? I mean, I'm anti-Dartreth.

I'm anti-Darth Vader. The last scene, of course, I think was amazing because it fit in with... Your anti-Darth Vader, like just being in this movie? Well, the end made sense to me because at the end, everything I was saying before about how the force is sort of supernatural to these people, when you see what someone is capable of and that wholesale slaughter, like that fueled, you know, that went into the first movies in a way that made a lot of

sense. When he first comes out, he looked a little bit like Rick Moranus and Spaceballs to me. Like it's just... They gave him a little bit of like a weird walk. Yeah, it's just, it just didn't work for me. It just was like a, it just felt like a stunt to see him, you know, with his shiny suit. It just, you know, I wasn't super into that. But more impressive to me was with the good guys. Can we get into the good guys for a second?

Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. Can we talk about my boy Diego? Diego Luda brought it. He was so, so good, and it was so exciting to see a strong, surprising actor cast in a role that is basically written for Chris Evans, you know, or Chris Pratt, or someone named Chris. And it goes beyond the ethnicity of the actor, which I also thought is something to stand up and cheer about. but he catches you off guard. He comes at the part differently. He's a little bit, he's not built the same way.

So I'm immediately invested into wondering who this guy is and what he has to do. And he managed to make a performance that navigated that obvious gap in the middle of it that would explain his motivations, right? Yeah, he managed also to project a world weariness and a cynicism and a kind of just a beaten down quality that I think is really difficult to transmit

because it's not necessarily there on the page. it's more just like when he kills that informant he has an expression on his face it's like I've done this before and I'm really tired of doing it yep I hope yeah excellent excellent job I have I hope I mean at this point anything's possible

but I wouldn't be angry if we saw you saw young Cassian in the Han Solo movie why not yeah right I mean I guess that's possible I wonder I wonder if I know the Felci Jones had an option for a sequel which I can't imagine how they're going to figure that out Huh, yeah, that's an interesting one. By the way, shouts...

I want to talk to you a little bit about Forrest Whitaker. Before we need another podcast to talk about Forrest Whitaker. I just want to say, since we might forget to get to it otherwise, all the things that you can do wrong in a movie, full stop, all the things you can do wrong in a movie of this size and scale, they really stuck the landing. Like, giving them there from here to eternity moment on the beach that actually was to eternity was really knocked me...

Oh, yeah, I was going to talk about that with Felicity. Yeah, I mean, like, we can talk about the ending when we get to her. Okay, I just, I was really surprised by it, and they got it. You know, they got it. Yeah, and they did the thing that is really difficult to pull off in a lot of these movies, which is, like, it's not will they or won't they, but is there a spark there that's a little bit more than just camaraderie? Yeah. And it gets it sort of the way that I'm sure in a, in combat or those kinds of intense situations,

that the lines between how you feel about somebody get pretty mixed up, although I know we're talking about Star Wars. You know, it's not that deep. But it is deep because you never know if there had been a Rogue 2. Cassian and Gin might have been brother-sister, and we didn't know about it. You know? Oops.

Okay, I want to talk about Forrest Whitaker for a second. First of all, congratulations, Forrest Whitaker. Hell of a year for you. A rival this. A big year for Forrest Whitaker making non-traditional choices in his voice and accent work. Yeah, so you could make the argument that there is the, Disney version of this movie, there is the Garrett Edwards version of this movie, there's the

Tony Gilroy version of this movie, and then there is the Forrest Whitaker version of this movie. Yeah. I think that they did a lot of work on this character, because the Saga character in the trailer, the one who says, what will you do if they catch you, what will you become if you continue to fight or whatever? That guy has no hair, so, and then

the movie, I think that there's a bunch of stuff of Saw training her as a child that got cut out. Because when he rescues her in the beginning, he has no hair. So he's He's younger. Those are from the younger scenes. And then for the rest of the movie, he got, what was that guy,

the Brazilian runner and murderer, Osko Pistorius? He's got his legs. Don't put South Africa's shame on Brazil. Don't do that. Don't do that to Brazil. Brazil's had a long year, you know? South African writer, and then he's got the hair, and he's got the Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet Gas Tank,

or as you said, the Steve Martin from Little Shopper. That's a much less cool reference. Thank you for calling me out on that. And he's got like three packs a day voice for some reason and a little bit of like a weird action. Like what was the accent? I don't know. I mean, he also just, you wonder why he wasn't in the rest of the movie?

It's because he left it all on the floor, man. Like he didn't have any. I mean, I literally think the Forrest Whitaker had no performance left in him. He just didn't have any more. Nor did he have, nor did his character make any sense. but, you know, that's what, that's the, that's the burden that these, in these first two post, in these first two post-Disney movies, there's just a lot of people showing up in rooms after years apart and being like,

you're, you're back! He's like, weird timing, today of all days, when everything showed up. Also, why, why does he want to die then? I just feel like, weird choice then, too, you know? He was just like, I'm done fighting, but you must go on. He's got, and you have like five seconds to do it. He's got a truth. He's got a truth monster that, by the way, your girl, Helen from the night of, really needed that in the same context.

The night of would have been a two-episode miniseries when the tentacled monster just grabs his head. It's just like, nah, he didn't do it. Check the financial advisor. So I thought Forrest Woodker was, you know, a nice bit of gravitas, but I have to admit was the part of the movie where I was like, do they know what they're doing at all? Or did this thing just get completely, you know, overmanaged to the point where. they just blew up another planet. And that happened a lot in Force Awakens, where they were just like,

Star Killer Base blow something up, and then another thing gets blown up, and then Star Killer Base gets blown up. He was sort of a low light for me, but it's hard to find any others, especially, is it Alan Tudic? Yeah, Alan Tudis. Nice job, man.

Good job by you. A hell of a way to make a living. But shouts, shouts to the Warriors of Jeddah. I mean, Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen were dope. Like, those dudes, the movie that they were in, like it's, you know,

we're talking about how these things get chopped up and it's not the actor's fault and, you know, apparently it's not even the director or writers who are credited its fault often. Those dudes kept it

1,000 throughout the movie. Their performance is tracked. You got it, you got their relationship. Even if we didn't know what their names were, we got it. And that gave their moment

at the end, real, real power and strength. They actually were able to sell various things like, I just know you have the face of a killer, you know, things like that

where you would just be like, man, but Donnie N, you're like, yeah, that's right, he knows. He knows. He brought a sensibility that is in his movies as well, which is that you can smile and still be badass. Like, you're allowed to have many, many reactions to things, which is not often the case. Absolutely. Let's talk about the star of the movie.

Let's talk about, I mean, first of all, if you are a young British woman and you are not headlining a Star Wars movie in the next five years, fire your agent. Fire your agent. You know, like, this is, this is what you were put on earth to do at this point. Well, somewhere on the set of Agent Carter. She's just like, damn. No one told her it was canceled either. She's just literally.

She's sitting on the set. Yeah, let's talk about Felicity Jones. Does she have the range? Yeah, she just didn't have the part. You know, she was fine. That's a good way of putting it. She carried herself well. She sold it, you know.

She did the thing that she had to do where she smolders and rebels and, you know, she had to have the father scene and she had to have the, I mean, that is not an easy part to play, especially when... She's got the cool scene where she's got that helmet with the visor, and you can tell just like she's very... It's like, by the end of that, by that point in the movie, her eyes are so distinctive. Yeah.

That, like, they are like a movie star trait. You know, it would be like having just Tom Cruise's smile. Shouts to Space Mascara doing great work in this movie. Also, by the way, side note, I had no idea that space pens were so important. I didn't know there was a Mac store on Jetta. But yeah, these, all the dudes in this movie, good or bad, had these outfits with the accessorized penholders full of space pens. How much writing are they doing in the rebellion?

Clearly a lot since they don't have wireless. Really, dope tunics in this movie. Dope tunics. What is, whatever, look, we don't need to get lost in that stuff. She was very good. It's a shame that, you know, it's like many of these things. Like, I imagine that early version of this movie was pitched as the story of this character. because it is the beginning, middle, and end of this woman's journey,

and it is not a happy journey, but we need to know what she's doing and why. And the easiest way to give her a reason that audiences will understand and believe in in the least amount of screen time is make it daddy issues. Say someone in her family got hurt, and then you're done, then you're out. People can understand it and move on. And that's a bummer to me only because there's something else there.

There's an interesting character there. And we, as an audience, for almost 40 years now, We love scoundrels in this universe. You know, no duh, they're making a Han Solo movie, because that's all we've ever really wanted, whether it was Han Solo or not Top Line. I mean, I think ATO. is so important in this movie

because he actually is basically the Han character, because Cassian is essentially the other side of, I mean, the Yin and Yang to Jin Orso, like, in a way. Like, I mean, because she's... I think there's a version of this movie where she is basically, like, an out-for-herself, rebel without a dad, running away from a destiny of like really fighting for the rebellion because she has these complicated feelings about the rebellion because they're trying to destroy what is her father.

But the idea basically being that like they need somewhere to put the one-liners and they gave them all to a robot. Yeah. They gave them all to a robot. And it was a version of a robot that we hadn't seen in this world before, one who kind of wanted to kick ass, which is, you know, that's a change. Yeah. You know, isn't it weird? I mean, we've been having this conversation. We're going to keep having this conversation.

But it's very weird to talk about movies that are meant to be continuations of these cultural totems of our life as if they're just the least worst version of them. You know, they were cobbled together. This is the version that is now canon. But we're talking about the potential of every moment and every scene and every performance, assuming rightly so that there are many, many other options out there. The fact that the job is essentially now being compiler-in-chief, you know, you basically have to make the best possible mixtape of a movie, that's very strange.

Now, people who actually work in film will probably jump in at this point and say, like, that's what movies have always been. You always have to compile the best out of the takes. But on such a granular level of, like, what's this character even going to be? Is this character even going to be in the movie? I mean, you mentioned in our last pod that you had read that Riz Ahmed's character, he played a different character in the movie than he showed up on set to play. He said that.

He was like, when I first got the role of this role, The character had a different name and basically had no backstory. So they obviously, and that might be for purely storytelling purposes, or it might be because they were like, we need to give this guy, like we need to make this guy interesting because so many people die trying to get him out of jail. Right. Yeah, well, I mean, that's the kind of thing you get paid the big bucks to think about. Yeah. One other note just contextually, like I obviously just saw the movie, so this is fresh in my mind.

but when I sat down, the trailers before the movie were big, dumb, and loud. And one thing that the Kathleen Kennedy and the current curators of the Star Wars legacy have managed to do, and I commend them for this, is that they have managed to hold on to some sense of wonder and elegance, that somehow this is still the classiest franchise. That's going to fall apart probably inevitably one way or another because that's what's going to be. The shot of the Jedi in the dust there, like the Jedi statue that's... Exactly. You know, like that kind of stuff, you don't...

No other really... No other franchise really has that, or pays that much deference to it. Yeah, and so before the movie, I mean, I saw this sort of best-case, worst-case scenarios, like the Spider-Man trailer is there, and who cares, man? Like, I'm just seriously, who cares? Like, I guess people who are really into tracking Robert Downey's face? facial hair. But was Tom Holland good in Civil War? Sure. But seriously, you can't even pretend like we care about this. This does not matter. You're going to make five more of them. There's going to be more of them and more of them. There's no reason for it to exist other than to maintain the IP and whatever good on you. And then the flip side of that is the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer, which only succeeds because they're like, we don't care either. Now, like, I'm excited for that movie because it's funny. James Gunn is a funny guy. He is deconstructing it.

He's having fun with it. He managed to carve out this piece of this massive billion-dollar thing and basically does a piss take and good for him. But it was nice to have a movie that was neither. That was neither dumb and pointless nor nihilistic and winky. I think we should commend it for that. That even though we're criticizing all sorts of things from space pens to just plot incoherence,

the movie carried itself with some dignity, you know? Yeah, I think that we can leave it on this, which is basically, obviously you and I have some generational affection, a large amount for Star Wars. And so we're going to give it the benefit of the doubt anyway. And we've talked about this a lot in the last couple of weeks. If these are going to be the primary works of Hollywood right now, that's why they warrant so much attention and consideration. And I think that while they could do a better job of just really basic storytelling stuff, like just get William Goldman. in there to fix this, you know, like before you guys start shooting things on five different Ireland planets, just smooth out some of the rough edges. But if you're going to do it this way,

I mean, like, I'm really all for it. Yeah, I wish, you know, obviously this is the sort of thing that I'm going to say, but because this is yesterday's battle, and I mean that literally, like this is a story, they're filling in gaps in a story that's 40 years old, I wish that, and we exist in the world, this was never going to happen from Disney, but I wish they cared more about the politics of it, thought about it a little bit, considered pitching it for modern sensibility. It's interesting to see people's readings on that

because there's been a lot coming out of it. Absolutely. And it would be interesting to see, you know, a movie like this pitched in a world where, okay, who are insurgents, who are rebels, what does an empire mean? What does it look like? You know, and this movie had...

Yeah, Jason wrote a really good piece today for the ringer about how, you know, the difference between a rebellion and an insurgency is really a matter of perspective. Totally. And this movie was ready to maybe picket that scab, but really wasn't able to ultimately. And I mean, let's also just talk about the mass death. Like this movie, people died in this movie. And I was really surprised by that. And I was moved by it in ways that surprised me as well. But, you know, you can fall back on one of George Lucas's most brilliant things, which is if you make them stormtroopers, they look like robots and you can kill tons of them and nobody cares because they're faceless. That was very smart. And we certainly saw that continue in this movie. But, Tons of people die. Tons of people. And you also actually, and this is one of the cool things that Force Awakens does is that when John Boyaga takes his helmet off, all of a sudden the stormtroopers become real. And you actually heard their voices a bunch in this movie.

So I think that they are doing something interesting with the idea of, okay, we have this universe. How do we keep playing by the rules that we set up? How do we keep, you know, finding resonance in something from a previous thing? in the next film. And that's really all you can ask from these kinds of movies. So before we sign off, you tease this piece that the guys wrote on The Ringer about other pieces of stray Star Wars IP. Yeah, yeah. Can you toss one or two out there so we can yay or nay them just because people should go read the piece? Well, my favorite one probably was what happened, you know, because Luke in the beginning of a New Hope is like I was going to go to Tashi to get the power converters.

Yeah, totally. And Jason talks about the effect the empire and the rebellion have on small businesses. Oh, that's terrific. That's, you know... Yeah. I guess, like, you know, you can see him in there. They're very much like that. What's going on at Moss Isley, you know, like, what happens at Moss Isley after the shootout?

What about, like, an American tale style cartoon, like, a Womp Rats life? You know what I mean? That would end pretty fast when Wedge hits it from, like, three miles away. Yeah, I'm saying it's not a long film. Maybe it's more of like a web episode. But there's definitely something there. I mean, if you want to imagine the small business films, like, Gaila Nersos, it's like, I'm going to be a farmer. It's like, cool, bet, like, and you left your smoothies just on the table.

That was the most heartbreaking moment for me, but what... What was he farming? And who was he farming for? Like, where they just... Yeah, there was nobody there. It was just, like, self-sufficient, I guess. It was grown ponetails. Like, that's kind of a cool life, I guess.

He's the guy making Odwala drinks. I just read about the Odwala dude. Yeah, that guy. That dude. that had a sad ending in the 90s, but he's back. He's making nut milks. I know. Like, if this, Chris,

maybe this is, we all be so lucky. Listen, Chris, maybe this is, I know we have one more podcast coming next week that we've already recorded, but like, if this podcasting gig doesn't work for us in 17, or the world keeps going like it's going, we could always fall back on nut milk. Like, that is a good thing. Yeah, I think there's a huge market for it. There's a huge market for nut milk, and it's only going to expand in 17. Especially on planet Ireland.

Yeah, seriously. It would be a lot healthier in the swamp grass they're growing. It was great talking to you. I'm really glad you got a chance to see this, and I'll catch you at the Ton Ton Barbecue. Happy holidays. May the Force be with you, Buretti! Thanks again to Capital One's Credit Wise app

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