I had a sniffly Rogue One thought:

When we see Bail and Mon Mothma talking about sending a message to his Jedi friend, Bail is heading back to Alderaan. To die. Because it's gonna get blown up soon.

a sniffly Rogue One thought

I know, right? But the look of pride on his face when he says he'll make sure the plans go to someone he trusts, and you know he means Leia, that was nice.

I missed the Williams soundtrack more than I expected.

I saw Fantastic Beasts yesterday. Nice spectacle, but Jacob was the only character I really connected with (and I don't get others' love of Queenie at all; Tina came closer to making me like her, but she still felt like only half a character).

a sniffly Rogue One thought

I actually yelled at him not to go. I didn't get kicked out of the theater, so thankfully it must have been a quieter yell than I thought.

I loved it, except for a few bits that felt like they were trying TOO hard to integrate with Episode IV. And I say this as a fangirl whose favourite of the series is IV.

I must complete another two chapters of class prep before I'm allowed to go see it again...

-Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus are my favorite tragic couple.

Andi and I went to see Rogue One today, and I remarked to her that there is probably already fanfic about them. She replied something to the effect of, "It wouldn't be my fandom if there weren't."

Re Rogue One: I sort of wish that Bail's line had been more towards the end and they hadn't done the CGI bit but that's a minor quibble. I liked the general ending although I was hoping this film would be explicitly linked to TFA via Jyn/Cassian (even if offscreen). I would have preferred that to trying to match it so much to SW.

I can't decide where this falls in my SW ranking. I think below TFA and above Jedi but I'm not sure. I loved that the plot was way more focused than a typical SW movie, and I hate Adam Driver, but something seemed lacking. Characterization maybe? I could have stayed off the Death Star altogether and played up the caper aspects more (getting the squad together, the puzzle of getting the plans, etc).

I could definitely have used more caper and more characterization.

Just saw Rogue One. Some random disordered thoughts.

Prior to going in, I asked Mal what he was expecting (his Star Wars is mostly Clone Wars; he hated the prequels and doesn't really remember the originals). He said "A Disney Princess movie."

It had the WWII-movie feeling that ANH had, and that worked much better than JJ "I am such a hack" Abrams' beat-by-beat reworking. The pre-title opening was a waste of celluloid. I would have preferred it cut down by about 75%.

Neither of us knew who voiced K, but when he died Mal said "It's like Wash all over again" so we must have recognized it on some level. That combined with the "we have to get the tape to transmission dish" made it feel like a lot of Serenity in there.

Forrest Whitaker. Good lord. Didn't he used to be an actor? Everyone else was good, even the CGI. I felt both Tarkin and Leia were too "Polar Express" for comfort, but so many characters in SW movies have been CGI that it was sort of fun for human characters to be so.

So many Easter Eggs. SO MANY.

ETA: Oh, and it failed to answer the ONE QUESTION I was sure it was entirely built around: WTF is a Bothan?

Here's a really good piece by Anne Helen Petersen (natch) about the differing reactions to the Casey Affleck and Nate Parker allegations:

[link]

Volans: "Many Bothans died" was for the second Death Star. This was the first one.