Now, I haven’t seen Rogue One yet, though I understand that many people are making jokes about how many Bothans die in it.
Even though that line was in Return of the Jedi rather than A New Hope.
So let us not make those jokes here but, instead, talk about how this is the movie that sets up A New Hope. You know those plans that got stolen? Well, they got stolen as part of an operation and now it’s time to explore that fully. When I was a kid, there was always a corner of the playground set up for Talmudic discussions of Star Wars lore and the various stories that we heard from the kid with the older brother who read all of the books who explained to us that Darth Vader was thrown into a volcano by Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Well, there were a lot of little tidbits about the various arguments we had on the playground that were (finally) cleared up by the prequels and there are a handful more cleared up by this one.
I’d just ask you guys to use the “spoiler” tags in the comments below if you want to talk about how, oh my gosh, that theory was totally right (or totally wrong)!
I knew it, though. I totally knew it.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Just saw Rogue One this evening and man, I was positive that the two main characters would turn out to be Rey’s parents in Episode VIII. I also told the wife it was a little bit of a bummer to see literally the entire team get killed.
But so many nice easter eggs for the fans. All-in-all a solid addition to the franchise. Report
Agreed, it was pretty solid.Report
We had a Rogue One work outing, and not wanting to be a spoilsport, I went along too. It was almost entirely not awful, so thumbs up as well.Report
Don’t worry, this long post has no spoilers for Rogue One.
Here is what I recommend to people who are going to see Rogue One: Have A New Hope cued up for when they get home.
Rogue One did something that, weirdly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before, or has ever existed. It’s not just a *prequel*. It’s a ‘pre-continuation’.
To explain, a ‘continuation’ isn’t the same as a sequel. Sequels are a dime a dozen, but continuations are rarer. I use the word continuation because we don’t really have a good word for this in movies, but we do in TV. Most movies series, in TV, would be considered an ‘arc’. By a continuation, I instead mean what in TV we would call a ‘two parter’.
Continuations are sequels that lead directly into each other, where you can cut out the credits and maybe some opening and go to the next movie. But that’s not the only qualification. It has to be the same story. I.e., Kill Bill, or Lord of the Rings. But, for example, Back to the Future II isn’t really a continuation, despite it picking up at the ending of the last movie. The first movie resolved too much, and then had to have some other story, it just had a new story was introduced at the end of the last movie.
Most continuations are planned that way to start with, because movies like to wrap things up at the end. But there are a few, a very few, movies that seem like natural continuations of movies that weren’t intended to have continuations.
But what I’ve never seen is anyone doing that backwards, somehow making an *already existing* movie into a continuation of a new one.
Rogue One somehow did that. All this time, we’ve actually been watching ‘A New Hope: Part 2’, and never realized it.Report
T/F?: There will be two more of these, each preceding the last in the story timeline, and this trilogy will then simply be a soft remake-replacement of the existing Eps. I-IIIReport
Going through the 4th volume of A Dance to the Music of Time. Also reading a book called The Night Club Era which is a journalists recollection of 1920s nightlife in Manhattan.Report
Watching Gilligan’s new show (the one thankfully without Skyler).
Discovered that someone bought Gilligan an island.
Gilligan apparently didn’t want an island (no surprise) — so now you can rent your own private island.
Only In Western Pennsylvania.
(Also, Gilligan’s music choices are seriously odd.)Report
There is a new Star Wars? Huh…
Reading Calibans War – Expanse #2. Good SciFi fun with a tinge of horror, self described as space opera and I think that fits. Been watching a variety of BBC shows for a bit now, And Then There Were None being the latest (the one with San Neil.) Also a stack of works on rebuilding electric motors to keep myself sharp.Report
Jimmy Castor’s Phase II is an overlooked classic.
Reading-wise: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius.
It’s inner cleansing, man.Report
Saw it yesterday, solid movie.
The director helped things by understanding that if two planets can see each other, one or both of them better be a moon of something much larger. And that physics is a thing (like disabled ships in stable orbits need help falling out of the sky).
My only quibble was the CGI done to Tarkin & Leia. It was just enough to put me in uncanny valley territory.Report
I did appreciate that it respected how space works better than, say The Force Awakens did. I was slightly bothered by how in both Rogue One and The Force Awakens hyperspace travel seems to allow you to cross the galaxy in minutes. If you follow the fridge logic on that, it makes the universe into one that can’t have dusty backwaters and mysterious hermits because the galaxy would be far too, err, globalized to make room for that kind of texture. Still, this is an extreme nitpick and I thought the movie was a solid addition to the franchise.
P.S.: agreed re: CGI Tarkin & Leia.Report
CGI Leia was scary, and not in a good way.Report
Well, when the face will only be seen for 5 seconds, you don’t commit much budget to it.
But yeah, the Leia CGI was jarringly bad.Report
You could, but you’d need to do the work to explain why a given place was a dusty backwater.Report
This is easy with wormhole-based FTL– it’s at the end of a long chain of wormholes. Much harder with universal hyperspace-based FTL.Report
Gravitational anomalies can cure that issue.Report
They can help with weight loss too.Report
I think I need one of those right now to combat the Holiday 5 I’ve put on…Report
What do you call it when an author posts something based on his own work at a fanfic site?Report
Generally porn, designed as a publicity stunt (or an informal “art book” of concept art — also for publicity and moneyraising, but less “designed”).
Speaking of which, have you seen the Bojack Horseman pornography? (Particularly the magazine cover with Mr. Peanutbutter on it — that’s even worksafe).
Written fanfic, as it has a small audience to begin with, is just sorta weird. And who’d fanfic their own crap? (Niven posted some story scraps of “how to completely break this universe I wrote” but he did them under his own name)Report
Of course, there’s also the pedophilic pornography that quite a few artists put out. They can’t get that on TV or in movies, so it’s rather understandable that it’s generally not under their own name.
Artists have a hell of a time changing their fists, though.Report
It’s a little-known fact that Beethoven’s First Symphony was originally entitled She’s Thirteen, She’s Beautiful, and She’s Mine, but Haydn persuaded him to change it. (Which was a bit hypocritical, given why he was called “Papa” Haydn.)Report
I haven’t yet seen the movie, but this article is massive food for though
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/politics-of-rogue-one-214549
Big spoilers, read at your peril, btw.
I would love to hear what those that have seen the movie think about the article’s interpretation? It mirrors something i have believed for many years: that Imperial Stormtroopers are people tooReport
My interpretations of the movie is that it’s a strongly worded statement in favor of getting butts into seats and selling popcorn.
And agreed that Imperial Stormtroopers are people too: people who’ve been skipping their assigned time at the firing range.Report
@mike-schilling
The awesome truth of your second statement more that compensates the flippancy of your first one, hehe.
Keep the awesomeness for ten thousand years (my new Japanese style blessing)Report
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k3zLiaVhu8MReport