Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]
The more I read, the more I believe that this movie was saved by studio interference and meddling...rather than the usual story of that destroying it.

Even the Vader scene at the end didn't even come about until 3-4 weeks before the end.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Indeed. With the way they kept shooting each scene in different ways and the vastly different scripts they had it seems they struggled to put together a coherent screenplay for the film. Clearly they had far too much for the final battle to use. They did a good job on the rescue it seems.

One thing I will say on the downside in the edits is those short sharp scenes at the start (llamu to kafrene to wobani to jedha to yavin) left me quite disorientated on a first watch. And it was obvious that the magic master switch was a made up macguffin so they could use some of the beach footage.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]
Honestly, the first half, until they leave Jedha makes almost no sense. It's a breathless rush through places. So many questions never get answered.

If it wasn't for the magnificent end this would have been very disappointing.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

I'll always wonder until they release the deleted scenes if there was some material that made Saw's character and place in the movie make any sense.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]
I wonder if they will ever release the deleted scenes since there must be at least an hour's worth of them.

The whole thing with that tentacle monster was so random and had no part in the plot. And then Saw was like 'now it is time for me to die'.

The whole thing is just weird.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

There's a hint in the art book on that one. It was originally conceived as a way to get inside Jyn's head and find out what made her tick. So it was supposed to be for her.

The novel made a huge deal about the fact that inside her head Jyn still lived inside that hatch to hide away from all the things that hurt so perhaps that's where they would have gone.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]
That would have been interesting because Jyn got very little actual character development. That first half which had so much cut presumably had more for her to be and do.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Agreed. Talked about it with a few people and felt than in the end Cassian ended up with a much more interesting arc. Compare to Guardians of the Galaxy, or even Stardust (as a fantasy epic) and other films have done a much better job of rounding out their characters before the end.

Mads revealed that the scene where he got to meet Jyn once more before dying was in the reshoots. Even with this added I struggled to follow her sudden shift from no interest in the rebellion to "we must get the plans at all cost." A bit more time for dialogue would have helped the film, but with Scariff taking over an hour they crammed too much into the first half to really develop the characters.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]
I don't understand Saw's paranoia. He's seen the message Bodhi carried, so why does he suspect that an Imperial would be carrying this message otherwise?

 

[Fatty]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] I think you are meant to think that he was already paranoid before any of the events of Rogue One. So even when he eventually does see Bodhi's message it doesn't matter, he is already in the mindset of fear. When paranoid, logical reasoning becomes secondary, and they look for anything that might be the cause of their fear.

Still though, bit disappointed Bodhi recovered so quickly from "madness" after the whole tentacle monster scene (forgot the name of the thing). I also think that Saw probably stayed behind to die not because of any philosophical reason, but because he literally couldn't run any more. Did you see those prosthetic legs and his cane? I imagine he wouldn't have made it either way and would've slowed them down, so he told them just to leave and go.

That's my reasoning for what we saw though, but I don't disagree the first half could've been tighter/cleaner