Official Star Wars Thread

[Dacey]

Kenny Baker, the man behind R2-D2 in the original and prequel trilogies, has passed away:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/a ... -star-wars

[ShyViolet]

[EricJ]

Four out of the original seven Time Bandits gone.

[Ben]

I just saw Kenny not that long ago, and he was always a big supporter of our Elstree Studios events when he could. Peter Mayhew is apparently not doing very well either.

[Randall]

That's funny. I just saw Peter Mayhew a few weeks ago. He seemed addled, but I figured that was just how he was.

[Ben]

Mayhew's been "addled" for years now - apparently Disney paid for his knee operations so he could reprise Chewie for VII and then they used a stunt guy for most of the shots anyway! It apparently his health hasn't been too good.

[Ben]

Rogue One booked for the midnight show tonight!

Reviews and someone I know who's seen it have got me more excited for this, and although I don't have anything to support this yet, I am betting we see a young Princess Leia taking the plans before the film dovetails right into the beginning of A New Hope.

That would be awesome in one way, but on the flipside, I always felt Leia had gone through many adventures herself before getting caught by Vader's ship. Would have been kind of cool for her to get away at the end of this movie and then have a "Rogue Two" movie where she's evading capture and finds R2 before giving him the plans that segue into New Hope.

But, anyway, I think we're going to see her record her "only hope" message into R2 before Rogue One ends! I think I may have goosebumps!

[Ben]

Spoiler free first impressions:

Pretty good, needed more humor, Giacchino's score was vitually indistinguishable from Williams' music, save for different kind of orchestrations which sounded "softer". He also never shuts up, and at least Williams let some scenes breathe...here the music is incessant.

It takes a bit of time to get going and to get used to the new settings/characters, but by the end it feels like a proper old-school SW movie, especially in the sets (including a slight bend in the Death Star control panel whenever anyone pushes a button).

It also verges on feeling a bit TV movie at times, mostly from the casting, although the music doesn't always help, since Giacchino sometimes chooses to write his own variations on the SW and Imperial March themes that just don't really cut it (and then uses them properly later so may as well have just used them in the first place), which feels a bit SW-lite.

Jones is okay, but she's no Dailey Ridley. Peter Cushing is good, but not young Downey Jr in Civil War awesome (a bit of the uncanny valley here), and Leia at the end is definitely uncanny valley disappointing in appearance and screentime. Whoever did Cushing's voice was cool though, but James Earl Jones didn't sound quite right.

Vader's helmet also looked silly small at times and he never felt tall enough, while Tarkin seemed too tall. Beats the prequels but not the originals (match)...it probably equals Force Awakens, even if a couple of things don't quite hit right or make sense.

Probably won't make a return trip to see it again as I did with Force Awakens. Any of the reshoot stuff has been blended in very well...it's in some of the smaller bits that you wonder if they had been inserted, but nothing really stuck out.

So...pretty good, not awesome or even Force Awakens nostalgic, but a good, solid, decent SW film that arguably is just as much of the saga as the official Episodes.

[Bill1978]

I'm on the fence about this movie but the fact I heard that

C-3PO and R2-D2

make a appearance is enough to justify me seeing this in the cinema. Weird I know, but that's how I roll with this series I guess.

[Ben]

Bill, just so you know, it's for less than ten seconds, and not where you might think they would be.

[Bill1978]

Seriously 10 seconds is all I need to help make me feel like this movie is part of the real bigger picture.

[Ben]

Oh it's part of the bigger picture alright. I'd even say it should be included in the saga of films, since technically it does have two Skywalkers in it...

This is the prequel fans have been looking for.

[Bill1978]

That is fantastic to hear. I am hoping to catch it during the Christmas break when I will be in a town with a cinema instead of having to travel an hour to watch a movie.

[EricJ]

I'm also saving this for my vacation in February (where I'll be trapped on a ship with an all-Disney theater) but good to hear there's something to look forward to.
Darn, between this and the rather easy box office for "Fantastic Beasts", it's getting harder at the moment for old X-Men Origins: Wolverine survivors to try and persuade the masses of Why Spinoff-Filler Side Stories Don't Work. (Ie. no main heroes, we already know how things come out, too much anal-retentively catalogued pageant of lore references we already remember from the better more-established movies, and studios' increasing desperation for creating Brand Names instead of actual linear sequels or new stories.)

...Guess we'll have to wait for the goofy Han Solo movie to drop the ball.

[Dacey]

And she's gone.

http://animatedviews.com/2016/star-wars ... rt-attack/

This has been a very, very rough year.