KissingSunlight said:
Squilookle said:
TFA- at least characters were 3 dimensional and underwent change in that movie.
I am going to disagree with you here. How did the characters change from the beginning of the movie to the end? Rey is still an overpowered know-it-all who missed her parents. Finn is still a stormtrooper with identity issues. Poe is a God of Pilots.
Look, you're not wrong. There are some deeply disappointing problems with the way the characters are written in TFA. Rey and Poe are indeed written as overpowerered nigh-flawless beings, which kind of sucks. But at the same time, they clearly care a lot about their goals, and you can sense it. When Rey bites into the food she traded for scrap, you can tell it's the moment she's worked so hard to get to. When Poe and Finn (who is now no longer a stormtrooper, so there's a change) hatch their plan to escape together, and blow up those ventral turbolasers and both yell in triumph in a thoroughly human way, we can't help but smile along with them. Finn pretending to be in the Resistance to avoid getting beaten up- human. Relatable. Kind of funny too considering how bad he is at pretending it. And you want complicated relationship with a father? Kylo has it in spades, across three generations no less.
But Rogue? Nobody new besides K-2SO survives the Qui Gon test.
(This excerpt is the Qui Gon test, by the way.
I can't embed the timecode so skip to 6:46)
Jyn basically just feels abandoned by her dad. Much like Rey. Cassian
does have some tragic backstory to explain why he's so involved with the Rebels now, but we never hear what it is. Outside that they're all basically stoic and want to fight for the cause. That's not character depth. If it was you could go ahead and call every pilot in the Death Star battles a main character. Also Cassian is given one job, to assassinate Galen, and he can't even pull that off. Not because an unforseen hurdle is put in his way or the enemy anticipates his move, but just... he decides he doesn't have the heart to do it. And THIS is the guy the Rebels send to do assassinations? Pathetic!
If they wanted him to avoid carrying out an assassination they could have done something... -anything- to make it worth watching. For instance there's a James Bond film where he's ordered to kill a high ranking Russian general for the deaths of British spies. But Bond has evidence to suggest the General may be innocent. He tries to persuade his boss, who threatens to give the assassination assignment to someone else. Bond then takes the job so that he can get to the general himself and find out the truth. It turns out his hunch was right, and the general is being played just as much as the British by someone else. Had he killed him nobody would have ever found the guilty party. Just imagine if Cassian had the depth to think up something like that!
Rogue One were for adult fans of Star Wars. The Force Awakens are just like J.J. Abrams's Star Trek. TFA is a Star Wars movie for people who don't like Star Wars. Specifically, the prequel trilogy.
Give me a break. The cameos alone in Rogue One were designed for kids to squeal at for recognising the character and nothing more. K-2SO lobbing a grenade over his shoulder to wipe out a squad of stormtroopers without looking is something out of a kids cartoon on the exact same level as Poe Rogue-Squadroning his way through those TIEs. Don't even get me started on Vader+lightsaber strolling up the corridor of the ISD Fanservice. The Rebels solving all their problems by straight up ramming two ships together could have been written by an 8 year old.
The rest of the Scarif space battle was pretty mint though, I'll give you that. But don't go pretending Rogue One was in any way more 'adult' just because of the body count. The way the two films deal with the struggles of parenting (despite both films having a golden opportunity to showcase it) are like night and day, for instance.
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At the end of the day- there's more for people to rewatch throughout TFA. When people rewatch Rogue One they skip straight to the space battle because nobody matters anyway.
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