BellularGaming

Michael · @BellularGaming

15th Dec 2016 from TwitLonger

So I saw Rogue One. Here is my review. The most mixed I've been about a film.


As always, this is just my opinion, and I really do hope you enjoy it. I'm happy that I saw it for the sake of the wonderful 3rd act.

Act 1 & 2 are tonally inconstant & ponderous messes. The structure is ponderous and annoyingly inefficient - a far cry from what I'd expect from Star Wars. The edit was all over the place too. I didn't find it to be confusing, just rather annoying. Writing isn't great, but it doesn't really hurt the film much either. If the entire movie had of been on par with the first two thirds we'd be in trouble. It reminded me of some of the editing & cutting issues from Warcraft.

Act 3 is fantastic. It easily tops it's equivalent in The Force Awakens. I wont say much else about it though.

Character wise Jyn & Cassian are fine, but that's it. The smaller characters are far better. We get to see who they are through how they react to the events in the movie. That's a far more effective way to get the audience to be naturally engaged with a character. Granted, it's easier to do that with smaller characters.

The cast do a great job though, and my flat response to Jyn & Cassian is nothing to do with their actors. The side cast are all brilliant in their roles.

I'm going to bring up Interstellar here. It is a flawed movie, but it is at least tonally inconsistent. Most of Rogue One is both flawed (as I described above) and tonally inconsistent.

One of the strengths of the final act is that it is tonally consistent. In those scenes, the movie knows what it is, and executes that well. It's a war film, and a pretty good one.

For the rest of the movie we get this strange mix of war film vibes and marvel styled action comedy. This just doesn't work. This isnt a spoiler, but one scene has a small girl who is separated from her mother while a firefight takes place around her. It is shot to be harrowing.

....and then we're right back to that oh so familiar 'big studio' action comedy tone that's been so successfully brought to bare by Marvel.

It really does hurt this movie. I'm not saying that having those jokey elements are a bad thing, but they work in a certain type of movie.

The visuals are also quite strong, and there is some lovely cinematography. But once again we get into the area of tonal inconsistency. It is shot like a war film. This matches some scenes exquisitely, but once again, highlights some of the problems that I mentioned above.

Production design is top notch. I love how the Imperial tanks are reminiscent of the WW1 landship.

Is this another tale of a studio creatively suffocating a bunch of artists? Tough to say really, but there is an inescapable feeling that the whole thing was cobbled together so that it'd have a little bit of appeal to everyone, but equally not be that great either.

It's an inoffensive action movie with an excellent third act. Probably worth watching on the largest screen you can find that's got a good quality projection.

3/5.

Nerdwriter recently did a video that I found to be pertinent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukk5TJL27pE

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