Xander ,'Conversations with Dead People'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
-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:
Volans: "Many Bothans died" was for the second Death Star. This was the first one.
Yep. I believe Mon Mothma was in Return of the Jedi, nsm A New Hope .
Thanks for the link, Fiona. That's as measured a response as we'll get on the matter, I think. (I keep confusing Anne Helen Petersen with Karina Longworth, who does the terrific "You Must Remember This" podcast.) Ugh, I've been wanting to rewatch Manchester by the Sea since I saw it in TIFF and have now lost much of the desire to do so for fear that this grossness would taint the memory of the emotional response I had to the film the first time around -- which is probably the strongest emotional response I've had to any films this year.
On a different note, what about them stills from Blade Runner 2049? [link]
My main takeaway is... if Deckard has aged normally over the 30 years, does that now settle the whole "is Deckard a replicant??" question or not?
If I were a replicant in a society that hunted them down, you can bet I'd make sure my appearance aged appropriately. So, probably not.
Replicants were physically indistinguishable from humans, right? Otherwise why would there be a need for elaborate psychological testing to find them? I'd assume that ones without the "die early" countdown would age like regular folks.