Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, December 16, 2016) Movie • Page 87

I definitely wasn’t following movie press when I saw that movie, I just know there’s like 13 people with writing/story credits on it lol

 

Oh yea. This is a new aspect of it though.

 

Also, I have always felt like I was in the minority because the Darth Vader hallway scene felt extremely tacked on to me and I enjoyed it about as much and felt it was as smooth & natural as when Peter Jackson clobbers you over the head with LOTR references in The Hobbit movies.

I followed it really closely both as a big Gareth Edwards fan and as someone who loved Star Wars as a kid and wanted to see another cool Star Wars movie. Plus I really loved the whole feel and vibe of the early trailer that apparently hinted at the version of the movie that didn't work.

 

One of the trailers made it seem like they went to the Death Star to steal the plans. But then it’s just some planet.

 

The ending battle scene that most people seem to love is my least favorite part of Rogue One, but I still think it's an amazing movie. I honestly would kill to watch a three-hour-long, moody, atmospheric, Gareth Edwards-directed Star Wars movie that is light on action and fan-service and heavy on his gorgeous tracking shots, but I also do get that that wasn't exactly what they were looking to put out at that time.

 

Fan service is great when it fits with the story and isn’t forced. The Vader scene was my favorite from rogue one.

 

I think a lot of the “fan service” in Rogue One is not really fan service because they make sense to be in that story. Tarkin involved with Death Star? Oh yea. Red and Gold squadron? Sure, we know they were around those days. The Ghost being around with Chopper? They were based out of there at the end, so of course they’d be there.

The two most egregious moments are the Dr Evazan/Ponda Baba moment and the R2/3PO scene. The former for serving no purpose and no logic to them being there. The later, despite there being some logic as their corvette was there, to give them their own isolated scene with nothing else really happening is pretty lame.

 

Rewatched this last week and I like it even more now after Andor.

 

Love that OG trilogy aesthetic so seeing it brought to life with modern effects for that final space battle was insane. Lost my mind in my imax seat. I was hootin and hollerin when they rammed that star destroyer

 

TBC I love this movie. Shame Edwards hasn’t seemed to do anything since?

 

He’s got a sci-fi film in post production called True Love, with John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Allison Janney, and Ken Watanabe. Greig Fraser seems to be one of two credited cinematographers. Very hopeful about that one.

 

Vader hallway scene slaps

 

Still my favorite of the Disney films because, as someone mentioned above, it captures the aesthetic of the original trilogy with modern filmmaking. Rewatch this weekend?

Andor compliments the film well, too.

 

Kind of feel like now, in retrospect, MAYBE, given how much people loved Andor and its tone, were Gareth Edwards to direct Rogue One today, they might actually let him finish it as intended. I’ll always wonder what his cut was like.

 

Explain. Cause, given that Gilroy did Andor and “saved” Rogue One, I don’t understand this at all.

 

I don't believe Gareth's version was a "mess", but that the studio's vision for the film was different than what Gareth put together, so they brought Gilroy to get it closer in line with what they were looking for

 

#ReleaseTheEdwardsCut!


[Or, y’know, root for him to make more good movies not directly tied to the corporate monster that is The Star Wars. Idk, that works, too.]

 

no we must keep creators in the box we designed!

 

HIs breakout film Monsters was fantastic

 

Seems like a shitty box for Edwards.

Make a Star Wars movie! No! Not that way! Go to timeout! Okay, we will let you have a cameo in The Last Jedi.

 

I do love Rogue One as it is, I just have that feeling that I also would have loved Gareth Edwards' version of the movie. Even when someone like Gilroy described it negatively it sounded absolutely awesome - but like I said, I am a huge fan of his who also happened to be really into Star Wars as a kid. It was like a hand-picked match-up just for me.

I think it points to the lack of clear direction overall at that time when you look at the fact that they hired Gareth Edwards to make a Gareth Edwards style war movie in the Star Wars universe and then balked when he delivered a Gareth Edwards style war movie in the Star Wars universe, and then brought in someone else and spent millions and millions of more dollars to shoot more material and change the whole thing at the eleventh hour, when around the same time they also hired Phil Lord & Christopher Miller to make a Phil Lord & Christopher Miller style Han Solo origin movie and then realized at the 9th or 10th hour that that wasn't at all what they wanted and fired them and hired Ron Howard to shoot the entire movie over again and change the whole thing.

I know hundreds of millions of dollars is play money for Disney, but it just makes me think of the stories of the original Star Wars movie and how it was reportedly kind of a mess until it was saved by the editors.

I really went into Andor with a huge grudge against Tony Gilroy because he came off like a jerk in the press around Rogue One and ended up being absolutely blown away by it. Hands down some of the best Star Wars content ever produced. I think I need to do a Rogue One rewatch now too.

 

Every time this comes up I just imagine the directors being tied to a chair - gun to their head, because we all know those who got into this career can't have a passion for big sets or to step in and live in the world of the fandoms they were a part of while growing up. Dude's second film was Godzilla. It's not as if he isn't a fan of these blockbusters.

 

See I don’t know, because I don’t even know if I have a sensible answer lol. I guess, knowing that they had another director for the Vader scene, and it’s hard to say this with any certainty whatsoever because I have no idea what the true story was behind the scenes, it at least seems somewhat like they wanted - I don’t know - more of the fan service moments that have been mentioned I guess. Edwards has always had a very atmospheric, moody tone to his work (a lot of Rogue One and Godzilla feels spiritually in line with his first film, Monsters), and I’m not sure that’s what Disney was looking for at the time. Maybe they didn’t like how slow it was, maybe they didn’t feel connected to the characters in some way, I don’t know. So, yeah, they brought in Gilroy and he did whatever it was they asked him to do to change it so that it might feel more in line with what Disney was going for at the time in the Star Wars universe. After the disaster that was Rise of Skywalker, they put a pause on films and seemed to be reevaluating. So then, years later, we get Andor which has probably the least amount of fan service callbacks and references and also filled with long scenes highlighting the mundane, day to day minutiae of being a space cop. I guess, and again I’m totally open to being wrong here lol, I was just wondering aloud if, given the recent direction Andor took, they might have been more receptive to Edwards’ vision for Rogue One.

Or maybe not given how negative Gilroy was towards Edwards’ work, I don’t know. Overall I feel bad for the guy. I’m sure he was a childhood fan of the series and it had to be pretty exciting to get the chance to put his own name on the universe, and then he got stepped on almost immediately. Glad he’s continuing on to do what he wants for sure, but I do feel bad for what happened. He handled it very graciously and stayed pretty tight lipped when he could have gone off.

 

I am very glad to hear he has a new project coming up. He definitely seemed to handle himself like a professional and didn't talk about any of the behind-the-scenes turmoil publicly, but it does look from the outside like the whole thing kinda took a toll on him and he laid low for a while afterwards.

 

Oh, hey, that was apparently my 3,000th post. Go me I guess.