soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2017-01-02 07:49 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2017-01-02 07:49 pm
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
I saw Rogue One yesterday, finally! Overall an imperfect but worthwhile movie.
It dragged a bit in all its setup, but it found its feet by the time Rogue One departed on its mission to retrieve the Death Star plans, and from there on I found the movie totally had me. It was really emotionally effective at telling the story of "here is a thing that needs to be done to stand up to evil, and we're what's available so we're going to do what needs to be done no matter the cost." I cried when everyone died, and I was so proud of them all. I had a lot of feelings.
I felt there were a few too many major characters though for me to easily keep track of everyone, although this was probably not helped by my general face blindness problem. (I mean, this is what leads to me missing important characterization set-up details because I don't realize that dude from that earlier scene is the same person as one of our main characters, whoops)
I was also pretty mad that there were SO MANY DUDES in the movie. SO MANY. Like pretty much all of the secondary characters and background characters in any given scene were dudes. It's great we had a female lead but that doesn't absolve the movie of the REST of its gender-related casting choices.
But on the other hand! This movie was really great at not being super white. Of the main Rogue One team, everyone but Jyn was a person of colour. So that's a good thing.
In terms of other good things! Tbh one of my favourite minor details in this movie is that it had multiple places where it allowed capes to look really really dumb. Capes can be wonderfully dramatic and attractive if you have exactly the right wind conditions but they are inconvenient and awful in bad winds. And in, for example, Krennic's opening scene, his cape was plastered hilariously unattractively against him because of the wind from behind and it was AMAZING. Thank you movie.
I also loved that the bits of Darth Vader we saw in this movie all involved Anakin being the most unnecessarily overdramatic person ever, which is extremely him and it was amazing. The ridiculous lava castle lair! His careful placement of light and his choice of entrance location so that he would cast a huge looming shadow to intimidate Krennic! His terrible pun about choking!
I was very happy that this movie didn't choose to go the standard route of having a romance between the male and female leads. I don't have a problem with romance being a thing that most people are into, but it's nice to have a little variety sometimes, to reflect the variety of human experience. Not every important emotional relationship is romantic or sexual in nature! So I was glad that Jyn and Cassian were hugging each other on the beach at the end instead of kissing.
And as I said in my opening paragraph, I really appreciated the type of story this movie chose to tell. It wasn't a movie about a special magical chosen hero saving the day for everyone, it was about ordinary people making choices. I think that's really important.
(in other, entirely unnecessary thoughts, I keep accidentally thinking Cassian Andor's last name is Andorian, on account of being primed by a) his first name and b) the existence of Andorians as a species in the other big Star fandom. Dangit.)
It dragged a bit in all its setup, but it found its feet by the time Rogue One departed on its mission to retrieve the Death Star plans, and from there on I found the movie totally had me. It was really emotionally effective at telling the story of "here is a thing that needs to be done to stand up to evil, and we're what's available so we're going to do what needs to be done no matter the cost." I cried when everyone died, and I was so proud of them all. I had a lot of feelings.
I felt there were a few too many major characters though for me to easily keep track of everyone, although this was probably not helped by my general face blindness problem. (I mean, this is what leads to me missing important characterization set-up details because I don't realize that dude from that earlier scene is the same person as one of our main characters, whoops)
I was also pretty mad that there were SO MANY DUDES in the movie. SO MANY. Like pretty much all of the secondary characters and background characters in any given scene were dudes. It's great we had a female lead but that doesn't absolve the movie of the REST of its gender-related casting choices.
But on the other hand! This movie was really great at not being super white. Of the main Rogue One team, everyone but Jyn was a person of colour. So that's a good thing.
In terms of other good things! Tbh one of my favourite minor details in this movie is that it had multiple places where it allowed capes to look really really dumb. Capes can be wonderfully dramatic and attractive if you have exactly the right wind conditions but they are inconvenient and awful in bad winds. And in, for example, Krennic's opening scene, his cape was plastered hilariously unattractively against him because of the wind from behind and it was AMAZING. Thank you movie.
I also loved that the bits of Darth Vader we saw in this movie all involved Anakin being the most unnecessarily overdramatic person ever, which is extremely him and it was amazing. The ridiculous lava castle lair! His careful placement of light and his choice of entrance location so that he would cast a huge looming shadow to intimidate Krennic! His terrible pun about choking!
I was very happy that this movie didn't choose to go the standard route of having a romance between the male and female leads. I don't have a problem with romance being a thing that most people are into, but it's nice to have a little variety sometimes, to reflect the variety of human experience. Not every important emotional relationship is romantic or sexual in nature! So I was glad that Jyn and Cassian were hugging each other on the beach at the end instead of kissing.
And as I said in my opening paragraph, I really appreciated the type of story this movie chose to tell. It wasn't a movie about a special magical chosen hero saving the day for everyone, it was about ordinary people making choices. I think that's really important.
(in other, entirely unnecessary thoughts, I keep accidentally thinking Cassian Andor's last name is Andorian, on account of being primed by a) his first name and b) the existence of Andorians as a species in the other big Star fandom. Dangit.)