Star Wars Anthology shit talk (Rogue One, Young Solo, TBD)

We have less than a year to figure out everything that happens in Rogue One, folks. To reiterate:

Felicity Jones
Mads Mikkelsen
Ben Mendelsohn
Alan Tudyk
Donnie Yen
Forest Whitaker
Diego Luna

Directed by the Monsters + Godzilla guy.

I'm piling the Lord & Miller Young Solo film in here too because no kidding, Rogue One is only eleven months away. That's crazy! As stated elsewhere I predict Franco the Younger gets the part.

I have been all about Ben Mendelsohn in pretty much everything he's ever been in, I see no reason to stop now

Monsters/Godzilla director has cornered visually-stunning-yet-disappointing like no other though, so I have ~concerns~

The screenplay looks to be a terrible hodgepodge. Story by an ILM technician, first draft by the guy behind Book of Eli and After Earth, second draft by the guy behind About A Boy and The Golden Compass. Then Christopher McQuarrie, who writes Tom Cruise movies, was brought in at the last minute to rewrite all of it. Yikes, people. Also, score by Not John Williams (Alexandre Desplat, whom I only know because of Wes Anderson movies).

Apparently they filmed in the Maldives (!?!) and Mads Mikkelsen is playing Felicity Jones' dad, who is also the Death Star's Oppenheimer.

Now, is Alan Tudyk going to be playing some sadistic lickspittle of an Imperial officer, or a cantina buffoon with a silly accent?

Rumors of Vader being cast for this as well with J E Jones returning to add the voice.

Every attempt I've made to explain this movie's existence to non-hardcore fans has been a disaster. "What do you mean it has nothing to do with the last Star Wars? And nothing to do with the originals either? That's stupid. Why would they do that?"

And I mean that literally. Literally every single person I've talked to about this who doesn't identify as a Star Wars fan is confused.

The common link in all your failed conversations...

TBH, I'm a bit confused too why this is set in the timeline of the original trilogy and not somewhere between RotJ and TFA...? What's the point of going over things on which we already know how they happened, instead of fleshing out some of the unknown events in the 30 year gap between episodes VI and VII?

We don't know HOW they happened though, just broadly what happened. I don't care when they set it really, as long as they come up with an interesting story and some cool new characters. But that's the hard bit.

non-hardcore fans OTM

Christopher McQuarrie did write a Tom Cruise movie that had a very good first 40 minutes (Edge of Tomorrow) and, a long time ago in a Hollywood far far away, the overcelebrated but cute The Usual Suspects. What the hell is a Rogue One?

It's a one that has gone rogue

you mean a 7

A one with an combover

Man-bun One

I did like that promo cast pic they put out.

http://cdn.idigitaltimes.com/sites/idigitaltimes.com/files/2016/01/06/star-wars-rogue-one.jpg

Where my reactions were:

1. Whoa, this looks different. This looks cool. Okay, I can dig this.

2. Alright, Donnie Yen in a SW flick. Let's do this.

3. Man, Felicity Jones is...very, very attractive.

Really not looking forward to the two months of "they don't look like bothans!"/"they're not bothans, idiot; that was the 2nd one" exchanges tho.

I wonder how much Rogue One was either pitched or constructed years ago as the studio(s) hedging their bets against a new SW flick bombing out? "Ok, folks might not dig the new chapter, so let's play it extra-safe and set it back in OT times"

what's with that gaudy red plate that guy is wearing? clashing so sharply with the nice dull palette of brown and grey they have going on. tone it down, buddy!

is this Star Wars or a Lisa Frank lunchbox?

looks like mandalorian armor

https://secure.static.tumblr.com/1abf429207b6eb04c20119407a2a3ca5/y9tpqya/wc3n85aln/tumblr_static_tumblr_static_5zgqb2cc0accsc8kksks004w8_640.jpg
http://cdn.idigitaltimes.com/sites/idigitaltimes.com/files/2016/01/06/star-wars-rogue-one.jpg

the excitement coming from that picture is just too overwhelming

this is gonna be GREAT so stoked

http://i.imgur.com/LSSmvgd.jpg
http://cdn.idigitaltimes.com/sites/idigitaltimes.com/files/2016/01/06/star-wars-rogue-one.jpg

haha, sorry, i'll stop

I'd like to think the movie will just be that photograph Clutch Cargo-ed for two hours.

they should really carry this idea through to other franchises. imagine a Harry Potter without magic and without Harry Potter or any of his friends. GOLD!

is that a promo still for the new USA series Stargate: Alderaan?

xpost I don't know if you're being ironical but there's a Harry Potterless Harry Potter movie coming out later this year.

Star Wars: Redecorating the Kitchen in a Subleased Ranch House in Newport, CT

xpost i was not being ironic, lol i must have forgot that is actually happening

lol what is this Harry Potterless movie, Dudley Goes to Camp?

Star Wars: Weekend Shift Workers Pausing To Watch the Chiefs Lose Thanks To Andy Reid's Clock Management

cast photo looks like another sw w women/minority characters driving the action, so that's a point in its favor already

lol what is this Harry Potterless movie, Dudley Goes to Camp?

― Οὖτις, Friday, January 22, 2016 11:37 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Eddie Redmayne in magical early-20th Century NYC!

a shed full of set photos and such for Rogue One

http://imgur.com/a/N75pb

Donnie Yen apparently tweeted some new helmets, get excited

http://io9.gizmodo.com/why-rogue-one-is-as-important-to-star-wars-as-episode-v-1761067899

(maybe onus is a better word)

Presumably, this will also be the first Star Wars movie not to include a Jedi (or possibly even anyone with Force sensitivity). Perhaps most importantly, it’s going to be the first Star Wars film without a Skywalker at its center.

I guess the writer hasn't seen the two Ewok movies?

rob fuckin' bricken

980 words to say 'disney will make more movies like this if this one makes money'

I have a piece in the pipeline offering the counterpoint that if the movie underperforms it may affect Disney's willingness to take similar chances in the future. It's a lid blower.

Rogue One has the opportunity (maybe onus is a better word) to realize this fundamental quality of the Star Wars universe on screen—to attempt to see if the depth that has always seemed a part of the franchise is in fact real, or merely an illusion.

fyi: nothing about star wars is real

also this is a horribly formed 'sentence'

The answer depends entirely on the fate of this first stand-alone film, and thus it will shape the future of the Star Wars movies far more than the Force itself. Are the pilots of Rogue One up for this integral mission? I’m sure they’re standing by.

srs q: is english rob bricken's first language

his entire premise is flawed bc The Phantom Menace proved you could make an absolute crap Star Wars and people will still want more

also the other two prequels

Rogue One: Integral Mission, winter 2018.

yeah but will people see an absolute crap star wars that doesn't have a skywalker in it

people love skywalkers dude

you're right people unanimously think Anakin is the best part of the prequel trilogy

People were very into the character of Anakin but iirc the unanimous praise was actually directed towards the actors who portrayed him.

Someone saw Rogue One footage at a Disney shereholder meeting:

Most of it was very quick. A shot of the black stormtrooper, possibly called Death Troopers as previously reported, another pic of that same style of helmet and armor but all chrome, reminiscent of Captain Phasma from The Force Awakens, an image showed two AT-ATs that had a slightly different look with the door panel on the side of the body painted a lighter beige color. And a couple cast photos were shown, one of Felicity & Diego Luna and another of Donnie Yen. The clip featured Felicity’s character on what looked like the inside of a ship or shuttle with her arm up holding on and the hatch/ramp open behind her. I wish I could remember what she said as part of the sizzle but it went by too fast. The new stormtroopers looked great. …

It all looked great, had a classic Star Wars/A New Hope look & feel. Bob Iger said that they didn’t have footage but that it & Episode VIII had been filming as previously stated. I’m definitely more excited for the film since it will be set close to the classic trilogy time & like I said it definitely had a similar look/feel.

the most teasery of teasers, maybe a second of footage

https://twitter.com/starwars/status/717841838044872709?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

a burning moisture vaporator? jesus fuck.

You a fan of moisture vaporators?

i prefer their earlier work

https://twitter.com/starwars/status/718043194378682373

Gotta say I love the siren.

Can't beat a quality British accent on the villains.

Epic Forest Whitaker + burly dude with dreads is producing a mild Battlefield Earth flashback, but it'll pass.

Also more tears from the MRAs +++++++

I can't tell from the IMDB page who is playing Mon Mothma, but holy hell that's good casting. I would almost swear they face-mapped the original actress onto someone. And the costumes and sets look terrific as well. Looks like we finally get to see a Grand Admiral actually doing things on screen instead of just sitting at a conference table.

actually got chills when Donnie Yen popped up with some badassery - and i'm not a man who often chills

Gotta admit, looks terrific.

holy shit, this looks amazing

Also 99% certain that Alan Tudyk will be voicing the gangly-looking droid you can see in a bunch of shots.

ohhhh shit

Some of the comments on the twitter make the point* that we don't see Darth Vader in this, which is interesting - it'd be a better movie without him, but I can see how it could be seen as 'cheating'.

*mostly in the key of waaaah, but so it goes.

I sure as fuck HOPE we don't have to see Darth Vader in this. Have we not seen enough Darth Vader in our lives? I think that would suck. But this is only the first teaser trailer. If he is in there, there is a chance they'll save it for a later reveal.

if I recall correctly, Darth Vader wasn't exactly in love with the Death Star in the original film. Maybe he got involved in a later stage.

With the counter ticking down, they'll finally be captured, but as they are being escorted to their doom, their captors will suddenly fly horizontally off one of those rail-less bridges. Looking around, they see a distant black-caped figure giving them a double thumbs-up..

Checking twitter, there is mixed speculation as to whether DV will be in this. Some seem to think the shot at 1:18 is him. Once again, I really really hope that this is someone different from the Galactic Empire.

yeah, looks fun

against all the odds marvel's current darth vader comicbook is really good - if he does have to be in rogue one it'd be nice to acknowledge the comics somehow

Hang on, is the protagonist called Gin Ulcer?

Some seem to think the shot at 1:18 is him.

I tried to pause there and that just looks to me like someone with a hood up. Not bulky-looking or broad-shouldered enough to be Vader.

As long as JEJ is still with us I'll be cool with Vader being in things.

http://i.imgur.com/RKmPjfH.jpg

Pretty excited to see Ben Mendelsohn as a creepy imperial fucker.

xp that looks like the emperor to me.

Guys we get one of these movies every year now! THE SYSTEM WORKS

Why are the rebels and the stormtroopers trying to catch trains at a metro station

Also does anybody else think they cast FW basically just to be the guy who says the trailer stuff? I bet you he has one scene and we just saw most of it

this trailer only for my true rebel scum

The Mon Mothma actresses from ROTJ, ROTS and this trailer:

http://i.imgur.com/hL4icUM.jpg

^^Many Bothans died to bring you that picture.

That's consistency!

which one of these characters is Manny Both'anns?

Same actress as ROTS in this new one I think

https://41.media.tumblr.com/18e0030586da8d61c4ec140204defbc4/tumblr_o59phifPxu1rixqh9o1_400.png

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/southpark/images/e/e9/ScottTenormanMustDie30.gif

why are females in movies? someone explain to me

I have no idea how people can watch things and have that reaction

they made the main hero of the trailer human, now that's some xenophobia, I will not countenance this continued hatred

good point, main character should have been a Bothan, they are constantly dying in the background for the rebel cause, but never get a starring role

lol

glad to see the trend started in Rebels of small unaffiliated groups that are rising up getting drafted into a coordinated rebellion

Okay, I was skeptical, but this looks pretty good. In fact, I daresay I'm more hyped about this trailer than I was about any of the Force Awakens trailers.

Can't beat a quality British accent on the villains.

Epic Forest Whitaker + burly dude with dreads is producing a mild Battlefield Earth flashback, but it'll pass.

Also more tears from the MRAs +++++++

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, April 7, 2016 7:18 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm all around

the guys from The Raid were criminally underused in Force Awakens; they need to correct that with Mr Yen this time. Ip Man vs The Empire is some sort of dream.

I hope they eventually make an all-female Star Wars movie. Hospitals will need to get some extra help in the stroke wards on the day it's announced.

hehe "stroke wards" i c what u did there

so just to confirm, this movie is not part of some other trilogy right, just a one off? Trailer did admittedly look pretty good to me, and that story line in particular is a good one, if you're going to just revisit old stuff. Probably anticlimactic tho

it is the same actress from ROTS:

http://www.hitfix.com/harpy/mon-mothma-actress-gets-the-last-laugh-after-being-cut-from-star-wars-revenge-of-the-sith

although she looks younger now

it's not part of another trilogy, these will all be one-offs

guys the Bothans died getting the plans for the *second* Death Star
sheesh

yes, but I need that joke NOW

hey hey we're the Bothans
people say we Bothan around
but we're to busy asking
"wtf does 'Bothan' mean as a verb"

we're not bothan nobody

I had the stomach flu last night and was Bothan out of both ends.

Mon Mothma!
Poet and a prophet
Mon Mothma!
Taught me bout the Bothans

Nice.

"wtf does 'Bothan' mean as a verb"

Basically the same as 'smurf', e.g. "Many Bothans bothaned to bothan this information."

Oh, bothan

Also does anybody else think they cast FW basically just to be the guy who says the trailer stuff? I bet you he has one scene and we just saw most of it

I think they cast him so I can say "Star Wars: The Forest Awhitakens", and then shuffle embarrassedly off the thread.

lol

there better be some good forest whitaker content in this thing, is what i'm saying

dude has had too many "I'm a cop / I'm a crooked cop" roles in the last decade, I want some Ghost Dog Awakens

Apparently his character's name is "Eel Leader" so it sounds like that's the direction they went

there better be some good forest whitaker content in this thing, is what i'm saying

― μpright mammal (mh), Thursday, April 7, 2016 3:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think you'll have to wait until the blu-ray release for the star wars: rogue one: special forest whitaker'd edition, unfortunately

Why are the rebels and the stormtroopers trying to catch trains at a metro station

Shit, that is actually Canary Wharf tube station. Unless they went to all the trouble of building a set that looks *exactly* like Canary Wharf with some SW moulded panels stuck on.

Oh wow that's terrific. You can see exactly where the signs and benches are, just covered in a big hollow sci-fi box. And they painted

http://www.whiteclarkegroup.com/images/event-images/Canary-Wharf-tube-station.jpg

bleah. painted the floor, it looks like.

BTW those beige troopers are wearing the third helmet from that Donnie Yen instagram shot. Neat!

ah yay another movie about a death star.

that makes, what, 4 now?

oh dude spoiler alert - we don't even know for sure what kind of weapons system it is, that's what they have to FIND OUT

oh yeah we saw it being built in Ep III also.

so 5 of 8 Star Wars movies have a death star

also 5 of 8 have some form of huge walking tank

7 of 8 have a Yoda

patterns are everywhere

how do the at-ats travel from like the snow to tropical island

do they go through water
can they fly

i have questions

http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhrm9fxyWl1qatgt2o1_1280.jpg

No lightsabres, though. That's a first?

also 5 of 8 have some form of huge walking tank

7 of 8 have a Yoda

patterns are everywhere

8 out of 8 feature white people in leading roles

This trailer doesn't seem to show any aliens. Possibly one at 1:04-1:05 behind the character in the foreground. Hands/arms look to be the wrong proportion for a human.

I still appreciate the theory that Darth Vader is a strong black man and revealing him as a shriveled old white dude in ROTJ was straight up racism

"theory"

somehow that got "Back That Azz Up" stuck in my head

patterns are everywhere

it's like poetry

how do the at-ats travel from like the snow to tropical island

Always wondered abt this as a kid

Movie about the Rebels stealing the Death Star plans has the Death Star in, what a shocking development, color me amazed, etc. etc.

at-ats travel in imperial at-at carriers obv

yeah, afaik they're air-dropped

built on-site, abandoned after use. evil empire, ffs.

AT-ATs can swim, and their powerful legs allow them to jump from planet to planet.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Y-85_Titan_dropship

summoned to the battlefield from an alternate robodimension where they graze peacefully and forced into battle by the power of the dark side

Blissfully ignorant of the horrors of harpoons and tow cables.

after playing that star wars battlefront game, seeing people scattering in the trailer in front of a couple at-ats really kicked in my impulse to run

mr veg & i had a v silly conversation about the at-ats wherein i posited that they had rocket boosters on their feet & mr veg was like lol those things can barely walk as it is, etc

picturing them *trying* to fly is v funny

One of my favorite t-shirts I own has this image on it:

http://fashionablygeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/feeding-the-chicken-walkers.jpg

<3

disney will really be missing out on an audience of hip young millennials if we don't see at least one at-at twerking

at-ats w palm trees in the background Thrilled me tbh

summoned to the battlefield from an alternate robodimension where they graze peacefully and forced into battle by the power of the dark side

lol @ this, reminded me of much happy childhood study of the manual for starcraft

Yeah, palm trees definitely gets us into a new climate. Was so ready for an unfamiliar setting after TFA.

This trailer doesn't seem to show any aliens. Possibly one at 1:04-1:05 behind the character in the foreground. Hands/arms look to be the wrong proportion for a human.

technically all the organisms in the trailer are aliens tbf

The great debate: Are the people in the Star Wars movies humans?

I think reading that thread years ago was the first time I'd realised the Star Wars crew are all filthy alien scum

I did waffle for a minute over how to differentiate between basic human-type space people and less human-ish space people, but just decided that everybody would know what the hell I meant. Is there any wookiepedia-approved guidance for delineation between bipedal space species?

lol we got the scoop on gizmodo

http://gizmodo.com/the-death-star-has-the-most-impressive-public-transit-s-1769764825

This makes the 8th movie where shit happens on planets. Can't they just shoot a camera off into space and film the void or something?

You'd think it was called "Planet Wars" or something.

Has anyone even fought a star in these movies yet? Such a ripoff.

Wow I've learned a lot abt At-At transport today thx ppl

Are AT-STs the babies of AT-ATs? I've always wondered.

DEATH stars, if those count xp

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--GLtQuylw--/18mnsllx67vt6jpg.jpg

this is mechanically separated AT-AT. it's what the empire uses to make their AT-STs. disgusting

So AT-STs are basically walking dinosaur nuggets.

Chicken (McNugget) Walkers

(That took me way too long.)

This has nothing to do with Rogue One (or does it...?) but since this is currently the happening Star Wars thread, I thought I should post here that I just learned the name of the Tusken Raider that attacked Luke, and his name is URoRRuR'R'R. That is precisely the kind of name I used to give imagined characters in elementary school. It's stupid and I love it.

The best part is when you pronounce the name backwards

http://www.balloonsabuzz.com.au/images/stories/virtuemart/product/scooby-doo-ruh-roh.jpg

roislecxe

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zatanna#/media/File%3AZatanna_by_Brian_Boland.jpg

please note I stated this back in January so I guess I scooped Mads Mikkelsen about his own job?

http://io9.gizmodo.com/mads-mikkelsen-might-have-just-dropped-a-huge-rogue-one-1773632382

I wouldn't put it past Mads to be making a silly Star Wars joke

young han solo, everybody
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/35/22/4c/35224c0084fcb54ded5713bbbfee0715.jpg

Coen Brothers continuing their scouting work for Star Wars, there.

he was good in that coppola film as well.

ruh roh!!!

The much-anticipated “Rogue One” is due for release on Dec. 16, but we’re told bosses at Disney are not fully satisfied with the first cut from director Gareth Edwards.

One Hollywood source told us, “The execs at Disney are not happy with the movie, and ‘Rogue One’ will have to go back into four weeks of expensive reshoots in July.”

let me guess everybody died at the end and nobody liked it

The source added, “Disney won’t take a back seat, and is demanding changes, as the movie isn’t testing well.”

yup

Just slap a new Blake Shelton song over that bleak ending and get ready to watch some focus group faces light up.

they can just add a scene where someone yells "oh wait they're not quite dead" and throw all of them in a dumpster of bacta

(Honestly would not be at all surprised to learn that some of the complaints were along the lines of "Where's Rey?")

xpost Or like the ending of Freddy Got Fingered, where a kid walked out of the shot and into a plane's propellors, showering everyone onscreen with blood just before the studio-mandated paste-in of the kid saying "I'm okay!"

What, somebody didn't read the script? "Hey, we can't sell any dead Han Solo action figures this way."

(Honestly would not be at all surprised to learn that some of the complaints were along the lines of "Where's Rey?")

― I Do Dumb Things And Then I Cry (Old Lunch), Tuesday, May 31, 2016 2:04 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This boils down my son's complaint about the trailer. "This doesn't have anything to do with the last movie. I have to wait for three years to find out what happened in that one?"

I'm bummed. The trailer looked so so good to me.

Back in my day, kid, we had to wait three years AND suffer through issue after issue of Starlog to get production reports and rumors! Suck it up!

Maybe the director spent the entire SFX budget on blow and all of the battles wound up with him smashing old-school Kenner vehicles into one another against a green screen while his coke buddy goes "PEW PEW P-PEW" offscreen.

i never ask the entertainment-industrial complex for anything but i did ask for a cynical girl space fighter jock star wars movie so of course it's getting cold feet now

Edwards is obviously good at making things look cool, but he's yet to demonstrate the ability to tell a good story. Or even make a non-boring movie. Trailer tells us nothing really.

Man, the trailer before Civil War looked incredible on the screen.

Current best trailer-to-worst movie ratio champ is Jarhead but if this is bad it would come close.

thought it looked cheap & dull, but the at-ats picked things up a bit

Star Wars universe is supposed to look cheap and dull

ehhh the Rogue One trailer wasn't that good imo
xp nah, Star Wars looks used and lived-in, not cheap and dull

Rumour: 40% of R1 is being reshot.

Some crew initially heard J.J. Abrams was supervising the reshoots.
Gareth Edwards is doing the reshoots himself but with a partner, Christopher McQuarrie.
Christopher McQuarrie, the final writer on Rogue One will be working extensively with Edwards onset to make sure they’re on the “same page” with the most recent draft of the film.
Christopher McQuarrie’s draft of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was considered superior to the film they shot previously.
It was not Edwards’ fault as McQuarrie’s draft wasn’t completed when much of the film was shot and revisions kept coming in that made the film feel uneven.
32 sets have been recreated for the reshoot.
The crew expects they are reshooting 40% of the film.
They are working 6 days a week for 8 weeks.

http://makingstarwars.net/2016/06/how-extensive-will-the-rogue-one-reshoots-be/

this is why I give no fucks when hollywood complains about films not making enough money because of piracy or whatever bullshit

Do you care to clarify that line of reasoning at all?

Anyway, sounds like they rushed it, if McQuarrie was that far from finished when they started shooting. I liked the trailer a lot, though! Especially in the theater.

Just that Hollywood should stop flushing its own money down the toilet before they accuse their audience of stealing from them

because they're reshooting some stuff?

40%? jesus christ.

Literally all American films of any size are represented wholly and specifically by anything Gareth Edwards ever does.

It was not Edwards’ fault as McQuarrie’s draft wasn’t completed when much of the film was shot and revisions kept coming in that made the film feel uneven.

rly love the visual here, spectacled man sitting at typewriter alone in windowless room, intern coming in whenever a page falls free & dashing carrying it aloft to the full-scale exploding galaxy mockup in the next room

lol worse things have been done

I think they admitted that the James Bond film that was shot during the writers strike had a lot of Bond dialogue written by Daniel Craig

It was really weird in that scene where 007 went on and on about his favorite Pokemon

oh wow you're not kidding http://collider.com/daniel-craig-quantum-of-solace-script-problems/

lol latebloomer. I think if Craig did another Bond film he would probably be irritated enough to talk about pocket monsters all day

xp lol that explains a lot about how bad that movie was

I liked how it was straightforward plot progression and action scenes without Mendes' sloppy emotional beats tbh

the problem with mendes is he really think he's a maestro at composing a beautiful shot but his films grind to a halt when he's not shooting action scenes (and sometimes even then too.) skyfall was about as exciting as road to perdition when craig wasn't riding motorcycles on top of trains. He's terrible at narrative momentum. forster wasn't especially a good pic for QoS but I think the Bourne-style pacing kept that movie going forward pretty briskly. Said this elsewhere but I kinda want to tell these producers that no one really cares who's directing a bond film, you just need a craftsman like Martin Campbell. You don't need a name. Cf goldeneye and CR.

Gareth Edwards is more mendes than anything unfortunately, I did like the Rogue One trailer but parts of it skewed towards a skyfallian portentousness.

Ok wait apparently it's not McQuarrie, it's Tony Gilroy, and there were no test screenings.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/one-of-the-writers-behind-jason-bourne-is-now-helping-w-1780449151

Something is happening, for sure!

it's me, I'm actually on set and not on a vacation right now

the problem with mendes is he really think he's a maestro at composing a beautiful shot but his films grind to a halt when he's not shooting action scenes (and sometimes even then too.)

wait, "he really think[s] he's a maestro"? you have it on some authority that his hubris dominated the editing? i ask because the most riveting moments in the last couple bond films were consistently the most beautiful: the skyscraper assassination setup and manor approach in skyfall, belluci's walk through her house and the casino approach in spectre.

God knows what I want out of a bond movie is not pacing or a sense of momentum but a riveting building approach.

i don't really like bond movies, so an interesting moment or two is fine by me

I talked to Mendes and he assures me his hubris was meant to take center stage, and then he asked me a few times if I saw American Beauty and kept saying things about winning awards

kind of agree that Bond movies are about crazy moments and sequences and not being actually good films at all

http://io9.gizmodo.com/weve-finally-got-some-solid-details-on-rogue-one-a-sta-1782419027

http://www.ew.com/gallery/star-wars-rogue-one-characters/2642918_forest-whitaker

???? (Forest Whitaker)
This character has a past that Star Wars completists will recognize immediately when they see his name, even if he looks very different than the way they've seen him elsewhere. (He even looks different from when we saw him in the teaser trailer.) There's so much to say about this character, we’re going to save his revelation for later today. Check back to EW.com around 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT for a deeper exploration of this shadowy figure ...

I'm calling Garindan or IG-88.

Casual attendees of Rogue One: "Where's Rey?"
Those same people seeing episode 8: "Where's Darth Vader?"
Seeing episode 9: "Where's Benjamin Button-ized Han Solo?"

Jar-Jar's dad, Bowl-Bowl Binks.

Well, that's unexpected -- he's a character from the Clone Wars series:

Meet the Rebel fighter who’s so extreme that the other good guys aren’t sure if he really is one.

Forest Whitaker’s character has been one of the more closely held secrets of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but Lucasfilm is ready now to make his identity official: this shadowy freedom-fighter is Saw Gerrera, a figure with a surprisingly deep background in galactic history.

The warrior — seen in the Rogue One trailer asking, “If you continue to fight, what will you become?” — was actually first seen in season 5 of The Clone Wars animated series, when he was a young man on the planet Onderon, unleashing guerilla combat on the droid army of Separatists who took over his world.

Along with his sister, Steela, he fought alongside Darth Vader — back when the Sith lord was just an impetuous young Jedi named Anakin Skywalker. In the episode A War on Two Fronts, which aired in October 2012, Saw and Steela were part of an insurgent group being unofficially trained by Anakin, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the padawan Ahsoka Tano.

Nice

The recent in-canon, between RotJ and Force Awakens, novel Bloodlines has a tossed-off line about the terrorist tactics of some factions during the rebellion with that character namechecked.

That's cool but I hope for once they don't waste the top-tier folks they've got in this cast with, like, five minutes of onscreen time a la Von Sydow in TFW - or Terence Stamp (!) in one of those prequels. I want to see more Donnie Yen/Whitaker/Mikkelsen actually survive through most of the film at least. But --- err -- wishful thinking, right?

I want to see more Donnie Yen/Whitaker/Mikkelsen actually survive through most of the film at least. But --- err -- wishful thinking, right?

also TFW s/b TFA etc etc

i will be happily surprised if any of those characters survive this film (2x for minorities)

Rogue One panel happening at Star Wars Celebration Europe right now, new poster just revealed, new trailer at the end of this panel.

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13729090_1208749735843292_4187951896588660538_n.jpg?oh=8cbd0dc9f0299468dc41ecd46ab2a3eb&oe=57ECC9B9

tight

I like the new beachy look. Summer fun wars!

lol Gwendolyn Christie just gave Felicity Jones the very first Jynn Erso action figure

http://imgur.com/E3XIvr3

http://i.imgur.com/E3XIvr3.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/62PmXkH.jpg

Ha

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-new-look-at-the-making-of-rogue-one-a-star-wars-stor-1783734715

^ BTS

https://twitter.com/gavzilla71/status/753984085165563904

^spoilerish re: trailer

is that even still a spoiler

Yeah, the livestream cut away and showed the BTS reel again. Curse you, Kathleen Kennedy!

i mean idk it's not a spoiler to me I can just post shit willy-nilly if u all want

I swear there's been an article every week where someone involved with lucasfilm admits "yeah, Darth Vader is in this film"

Yeah but the reveal is that under the mask he's Sean Bean.

pretty sweet poster, looks like everyone's running to catch mark barrott's sundown DJ set on ibiza.

Finally got all the aliens that were missing last time around. This looks fucking rad. Can't wait for something with more dialogue, though.

lol at Alan Tudyk's DGAF droid

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--L-0cVeYf--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/ft5jmvrvoewrk7meefoy.gif

he looks like the iron giant
http://www.sideshowtoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/902331-product-silo.png

star wars: the guns of tattooine

http://www.avclub.com/article/meet-rogue-ones-edrio-two-tubes-guy-two-tubes-239898

Meet Rogue One’s Edrio Two Tubes, the guy with two tubes

Still tippin' on two tubes, wrapped in two tubes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfW-MPUjC_0

They call him Two-Tecs, he tote two tecs

New trailer and it's pretty sharp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wji-BZ0oCwg

Really want some dark Battle of Algiers-style Star Wars on the screen

Well that looks sick.

What's with the black monoliths?

still not over the palm trees. goosebumps.

DOPE :D

Looks good.

this looks GREAT

Er, that's not the new one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdj1zb9sMY

(Seriously, why are embedded videos and images suddenly showing up in my browser as big black vertical rectangles?)

(I'm blaming Obama tbh)

There's a Moderator Request Forum thread about the embeds and I've emailed stet about it.

mendelsohn + "Rogue One" + tropical setting makes me wonder if plot will be mendelsohn's dad dies, leaves family death star to all children but mendelsohn, etc.

I had to switch to Firefox to check - Chrome's buggered for ILX Youtube embeds.

Chrome has started blocking Flash on all sites. The embeds should be fixed to show HTML5 ones.

Love the shot of the Death Star from below. Not enough space movies take all dimensions into account.

Yeah - the star destroyer coming out of the darkness of space at the beginning was a nice touch, gave it a sense of physicality.

this actually looks pretty interesting. a unique spin on SW cinematography at the very least.

xpost I'm using Safari, and it's still messed up for me.

I like that Death Star eclipse shot. I hope this Death Star gets blown up and the Empire had to rush out another one for Ep. IV.

xp one of the things Gareth Edwards discussed in that showreel from last month is that one of the more important sets was built as a 360-degree set, with crew members put in costume so they could shoot in any direction without having to reset. That's a pretty new approach for these movies!

I guess Vader won't really dominate proceedings in this but would love to see at least one demonstration of his power far beyond anything he did in previous films. Or at least just Force-lift an AT-AT and hurl it at some Rebels.

We've never seen Vader actually fight anyone but other Jedi/Jedi trainees in the OG films, just yellow-eyed Hayden Christiansen chop up a bunch of Seperatist goofballs in "Revenge of the Sith." Definitely would be interesting to see him go ham on a bunch of Rebels. (The "Darth Vader" comic has been great for that stuff.)

nothing i can think of less interesting than the idea of turning yet another classic SW character into a leaping CGI lightsaber acrobat.

Vader straight up calls up & murders a guy over his television in ESB and they've never topped it

otm

I think there should be a scene where he takes his cloak off. Wouldn't he look weird without the cloak!

there's all kinds of new stuff. i heard about rockets in an umbrella -- they're tested at fort detrick? i can show you a dozen poisons! stick it in his food, he'll die in three days! no trace! put something on his cloak, make it fall out -- he'd look fuckin ridiculous without his cloak!

Vader's never a leaping acrobat. More of a heavy presence, batting away or choking minions with a gesture. The ROTJ fight is far from overchoreographed when it comes to swordplay but every strike seems ready to overwhelm any defense.

The Rebels cartoon has done pretty well with that, and the recent Marvel comics as well.

vader: no cloak but: with ~spats~

think about it, let me know

wth this trailer looks like trash idgi

vader vs Luke is ESB is the scariest vader, like he's this huge monstrous dude stalking and striking, it's the closest he comes to a horror movie character in the whole series.

also vader is introduced while choking a bitch to death as he holds them up in the air like a child

i liked vader's hint of a british accent in ep IV

It would appear that Gareth Edwards and his team have been drawing heavily from the Clone Wars + Rebels cartoons for their notes on setting and tone which means this is probably going to be AWESOME and also most of the characters are doomed

Giant gun backpack dude = toast
Yip Man = toast
Felicity Jones = redemption martyr toast
Forest Whitaker = "Nah, I'll sit right here while they blow up my house with me in it" toast
Droid = the droid always survives
Diego Luna = witness

NO SPOILERS TOMBOT

Rosebud was his lightsaber.

Anyway, international trailer, couple of new bits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48XWkN0jBQY

all the rebels look really dirty and haggard, so you know they got that right

maybe not in the command center. Mon Mothma still looking senate-ready

Many Bothans died getting her dry cleaning

v good

Ok, this is cute. I dig the klaxon mixing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMmiNeVrbDk

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--m8qgvg1A--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/sjqq32orf3wyzxd5anqk.png

Why does this dude need to carry around so many iphones, though

Amazed he gets reception out there

one for each carrier, too difficult to swap sim cards on the run while wearing Death Gloves

'everything that has transpired has done so according to my design'

https://spfaust.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/62535_jelanimemory1.jpg

https://youtu.be/sC9abcLLQpI

the dialogue looks terrible ("save the dream"???) but i'll watch the shit out of that

the dialogue has always been terrible

it was relatively good in the last one

true!

this movie looks amazing, I don't care how corny the dialogue is

yeah this looks great

damn, that's an exciting trailer

the overhead shot of the giant half-buried jedi blew me away

jedi statue, i mean

this must be the trailer where they're afraid some of the audience won't understand the setting/premise because it sure spelled it all out

Starting to look like Edwards was a good choice for this -- his tendency to concentrate on the human scale rather than spectacle, that got him noticed with Monsters, kinda backfired on him with Godzilla, where people just wanted more Godzilla. But this is a better sci-fi sandbox in which he can work that stuff out.

Certainly looks gorgeous

most definitely

the original trilogy had some lush planets but it was the forests of endor where it was fairly nondescript forest, or dagobah where the greenery was so dense it seemed claustrophobic

the beach/palm trees battle stuff in this looks ridiculous

that's a generous interpretation of Godzilla Phil

Well, yeah

oh cool a death star

lol did you just drop in here having read and seen nothing about the movie

you bet!

all I did was watch the preview

it also has a darth vader

*whew*

Love everything about this trailer except for the music.

That ain't A Death Star it's THE Death Star. Check yo'self, foo.

felicity jones seems kind of a bad actor - not sure about the plummy delivery

Οὖτι, it has THE Death Star. Well, the first one. It takes place before the original 1977 film and they steal the Death Star plans and do all the junk that was in the opening crawl of the first film to be released.

There, you know it all now, no need for further introspection

That line about hope seemed really off and I'm wondering it if was a voiceover recorded for the trailer

so i guess they are going to cover the info getting to Princess Leia in this, since ANH starts and she already has it. so maybe we'll see a cameo of young Leia.

One would hope

Was there a rumor or confirmation Jimmy Smits was seen on set? I think they possibly did the next best thing and have the intel handed off to Leia's father at the end, with the implication one of his secret cells will handle it. They've structured a lot of the recent books/cartoons around the different rebel cells leading up to this point, with Leia making some appearances but most of it being handled by intermediaries, or in the case of really important intel, Bail Organa himself

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/05/rogue-one-star-wars-jimmy-smits

btw anyone else notice the orchestral theme in this trailer is an interpolation of the Star Wars main theme, where the last one was an interpolation of the Imperial march? very well done versions, imo

mendelsohn looks perfect in this

Can we just watch the trailers and forsake the films

I feel like Mendelsohn looks sort of ...neutralized? His best roles have been as fun, quirky bad guys and this character just seems comparatively cookbook

Just wish he could keep his accent. Boba Fett's a Kiwi now, why can't we have Imperial Australians?

Do we know who's in the Vader suit? Prowse is both too old and persona non grata at Lucasfilm, so I'm curious.

I mean the person in the Vader suit is the hand inside Kermit the frog it really doesn't matter so long as the voice is right

You say that, but like 30 seconds of Christiansen in the suit is still being mocked 11 years later.

A) true

B) George Lucas

Jeeze. Come on mate. You'd prefer another target, a military target? In your own time.
Dantooine? Yeah, nah. Boys, when you're ready, have a lash.

It's this guy

http://www.spencerwilding.com/

This guy!

http://blazingminds.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Spencer-Wilding-Doctor-Who.jpg

I am pretty psyched now that there's a detectable storyline in the trailer. Before it just looked kinda cool but I wasn't really all that sure of what I was seeing.

Also v excited for what I'm calling "The Pacific Theater" At-At's

I'm not the only one who thinks she looks exactly like a lego minifig in this shot, right?

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--I7g0sIrN--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/kfokxw1rzirofueser8c.png

Diego's not really bringing the crucial look-like-you-belong-here ingredient to impersonating an officer, either

i hope there's some kind of 'inglorious basterds in the basement of the tavern' moment where he's called out for not being clean-shaven.

I think Rebels impersonating Imperials poorly is a running joke of the series!

Nobody's ever going to top Han's radio conversation, though.

"Situation normal..."

Uh we are all good right here... how are you?

Donald Glover is officially playing Lando, y'all. http://www.starwars.com/news/donald-glover-cast-as-young-lando-calrissian-in-upcoming-han-solo-star-wars-stand-alone-film

:D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkAd4XWwNos

kind of a bigger name, but.. this seems fine?

*star wars nerd voice*
who is playing Sana?

fuck those guys about "pandering" though, those guys are awesome casting

Eh, there is no way to see Forest Whitaker and not think of "Battlefield Earth" unless you have not seen "Battlefield Earth." (Directed by second unit Star Wars director!)

I must be brainwashed by the new sjw media because someone mentioned "another movie with a female lead? is this a thing now?" and I was like "idk I guess?" like it seemed weirder that the jedi council had so many dudes in the Lucas films

I have never seen Battlefield Earth! My first thought with Forest Whitaker is nearly always Ghost Dog

The only person who reminds me of battlefield earth is Barry Pepper

https://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/forest-whitaker-battlefield-earth.jpeg?w=700

there they go pandering to half the human population again.

pandering has no place in this sequel to a prequel to a genre exercise.

They are pandering to robots.

But yeah, totally, this so-called pandering is only conspicuous due to the equally if not more conspicuous total lack of diversity in the earlier films and for that matter virtually all films.

can't believe they didn't hire a white guy as lando. SJWs!

Social Justice Wars why not call it

EPISODE V
THE EMPIRE STRIKES CUCK

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Donald has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from Twitter and pursued them across the internet.

Evading the dreaded Imperial Eggfleet, a group of SJWs led by Luke Cagefan has established a new secret base on the remote social media platform of Medium.

The evil lord Breitbarth Vader, obsessed with finding young Cagefan, has dispatched thousands of remote trolls into the far reaches of cyberspace...

lol

I have never seen Battlefield Earth! My first thought with Forest Whitaker is nearly always Ghost Dog

^^^^ THIS!!

i always think of Panic Room and the Crying Game

I think of all sorts of stuff he's popped up in, from Fast Times to the Shield to Species, if I'm being honest, for the scene where he's playing a psychic whe sees like a train car covered in blood and mumbles "something bad happened here." Or the Key and Peele bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxwMTAy1gP0

But sci-fi Forest is Battlefield Earth, all the way.

he was in fast times? I didn't realize he'd been acting for quite that long

that day you realize forest whitaker has been in every single movie

I always think of this when I think of him because I saw this scene again after years and years and was like "oh shit that's forest whitaker". I had no idea he had been in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYV5f0Aqo4w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSeovXwmOR0

I love that the director's summary of the movie is the same thing I've been using to describe it to people who aren't sure when this film takes place.

"So, that opening text at the beginning of A New Hope, this is that movie"

eee it looks so good

i am excite

WOAH. i am excite too!

lol @ "So, that opening text at the beginning of A New Hope, this is that movie"

i want to say why didn't Lucas sell Star Wars 30 years ago. but the tech was not there, no way you could have had anything, even the side-movies, look this good.

It's a movie about the text crawl drifting through space.

this and the new ATCQ could not come at a more necessary time

Emilia Clarke has been cast in the Han Solo movie :|

saw that. Kinda hoping she's an alien of some sort.

I wonder if they're being to branch out with all these Star Wars Gaiden to something like what the Marvel movies do, where you start blending genre together and start telling other kinds of story inside your ostensible superhero film, for example.

Might as well, it's not like they're ever going to stop making these things

they've been describing Rogue One as a heist movie quite a bit

I expect Lord & Miller will bring a different sensibility to the Solo movie too

I think Marvel probably has more freedom than Star Wars because of the basis in comics. Star Wars movies can only really be legitimized in terms of previous Star Wars movies, so things like visual style and music are going to stay pretty constant. That probably constrains the kinds of stories that are possible too. A heist movie is not a big departure in a franchise where smugglers play a big role.

You can tell all kinds of stories in the SW milieu

Star Wars, Clone Wars, Rebels, Oh My

I gave vague memories of seeing a book? Comic? That even did han solo and chewbacca in a zombie siege story

oh certainly, there's a bunch of things you can do with the SW universe(everything from Dead Trooper to Kotor 2, for example), but in terms of 90-120 min yearly franchise blockbuster releases, how much can they do before it starts getting away from the mythic space opera? Thinking about this more, I wonder if they're locked into certain tropes or aesthetics because otherwise, Star Wars turns into something more like Star Trek/Mass Effect/Firefly/Battlestar.

Then again, fuggit; some of the shots of battle footage in Rogue One has street-level urban fighting, shot with handhelds in a way that folks even on here were comparing to Battle of Algiers, which is a galaxy far, far away from space fighterjock samurai wizards. Maybe the mold should be broken.

Dead troopers, that was it

Yeah, the zombie novel was Death Troopers, by Joe Schreiber.

imagine if they did a movie that didn't have the Death Star in it, would be pretty crazy!

I keep thinking how awesome some of the characters in the trailer seem and kind of hope they're not super fleshed out, leaving a little mystery? I just keep thinking, who are these guys?! Is that guy blind? That other guy just took out a whole squad of stormtroopers!

Digging through the credits on imdb again really made me remember that not everyone has a publicist team sculpting their imdb profile because Wen Jiang has this profile picture (sorry for imdb links, I'm not going to dig around to beat their image link-busting today)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0422638/mediaviewer/rm886348544
and I'm thinking hmm, seems like a cool regular guy

and then there's this picture
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0422638/mediaviewer/rm1330189568

whoa badass!!!

btw I am five

no crawl!

http://www.nme.com/news/film/star-wars-producer-explains-rogue-one-wont-iconic-opening-crawl-1871135

whaaaaat

Would look kinda silly beginning with "Episode III.ix" anyways

It's not like Caravan Of Courage had a crawl. Or did it?

The Clone Wars animated film didn't either. It had that newsreel-type thing at the beginning.

Same with the CW series. Rebels doesn't do a crawl or a "newsreel" IIRC.

Yeah I think that's fine. Save the crawl for the proper 'episodes'.

apparently no Star Wars main theme either?

i don't get it. movies are 2 1/2 hours nowadays anyways, a crawl is like a 2-minute freebie.

It's an artistic choice, I think, to reinforce the spin off movies being tangential to the main narrative.

it's all a spin-off. the "main narrative" has been changing with every additional movie.

otherwise the first film's crawl would've been all about Anakin Skywalker and the fall of the Jedi

Can you not see how they'd want to differentiate stylistically between the more mythical main sequence and the (presumably) more idiosyncratic secondary films?

I'm not trying to be a Disney Corp stan, just explaining how the decision makes perfect sense to me.

oh yeah it makes sense from a branding perspective.

imo it would make more sense if this was about Darth Vimo on planet Uowa looking for the lost Crystal of Blimba. this is a movie about the Death Star w Darth Vader, they aren't fooling anybody that this is some "side story". they just want to keep remaking A New Hope, not that there's anything wrong w that.

like the point of the crawl was "Hey look, it's like Flash Gordon!" not "This is canonical tales from the uber important Skywalker mythology"

I would be amazed if there was more than 5 minutes of Vader in this, just because it's not a movie about him and he obviously takes up all the air.

would be more than in Attack of the Clones and he was plastered all over coke cans for that one

er, Revenge of the Sith

hopefully his cameo is someone asks a question and he walks in and says "Noooo!"

"Do you like sand?"

Actually the lack of crawl is because this is an in-universe film, made about 10 or 12 ABY in the New Republic, based on the true story of the brave men and woman of Rogue One.

Executive producer has ties to the Solos and all that

imo the question is whether there is any Tarkin content or if Vader has been put in this film as a stand-in

For some reason I'm very excited for Mon Mothma in this

tmi

As it seems unlikely Vader gets to do anything exciting in this they could've just gone with only showing him via hologram - paralleling the first glimpses of the Emperor in the later films.

Vader strictly uses hologram to speak to his superior, all other transactions are done as in-person threats

Guessing that following an early terrorist action in the film, Vader is called in to make sure everyone is in line

seriously when do the damn tickets go on sale

better line up now or they might run out

On sale Sunday night/early Monday morning.

we'll see if the robots at fandango agree with you Ned

xxxxxp mh how quickly we forget the tiny Vader sitting on the walker's dashboard as they approached the Hoth base.

they're leaving the crawl out of rogue one so that they can perfect the technology to somehow make the crawl go even slower on the next one

I have never acknowledged tiny Vader and will not be starting at this point

I'd like to take this opportunity to say how great marvel's current darth vader comic book is

kthxbye

Was.

I have never acknowledged tiny Vader and will not be starting at this point

love darth vader comic, want more comics with the original characters introduced in it

Good news for you then - Gillen-penned Doctor Aphra is coming next month.

I think I knew that but keep forcing myself to forget as to recreate the joy of learning it anew

There's also Vader consulting with his three Star Destroyer commanders by hologram in Empire, during which one of them is destroyed by an asteroid, implying necessarily that he's appearing as a hologram at the other end.

inserted for movie continuity, totally not canon

fight me

I just rewatched that, lols @ dead guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nZx5BFwPCI

For real though I think Vader is only in this to make it clear that Mendelsohn's guy is a genuinely scary MF. You can't really have a villain between ROTS and ANH without calibrating them against Vader one way or another.

I mentioned that I read the pre-Rogue One book, right? It's by the author who wrote the Tarkin novel in the new continuity so Tarkin plays a part, but it's part of a triangulation with Mendelsohn's character and the emperor's new order. I'd be mildly surprised if Tarkin isn't at least mentioned, but I could understand him being absent due to a need to avoid weird casting problems.

But yes, he is a ruthless social climber who sees the Imperial cause as his path to glory and doesn't give a shit about people, even the energy specialist he knew in his youth.

If the new in-canon extended universe has given us anything, it is that the Emperor is a total motherfucker who encouraged his underlings in their constant fraternal conflicts in the sith tradition to both harden their abilities and winnow out the weaker ones. Krennic (Mendelsohn's character) did not come up with the huge space weapon design but by the time this film rolls around he's forgotten that, and it's his project despite others wanting to co-opt it. Obviously it's not his after this movie!

Netflix heads-up: they're still streaming at least the first two "Ip Man" films, starring Donnie Yen

On sale, and all.

lol fandango's email service is useless

Waiting in Alamo's virtual line. We'll see.

Got mine. I don't think even Douglas Adams would have imagined a virtual queue being such an effective Turing test.

Hahah a fine comparison. Got mine as well -- was hoping for opening weekend but my preferred times weren't open for purchase so afternoon of the 22nd will have to do. (Already have the day off work to start my Christmas break so hey.)

Donnie Yen is my number one reason for wanting to see this. saying that, they totally wasted the guys from The Raid in force awakens

Also,

http://www.avclub.com/article/rogue-one-presales-nearly-take-down-fandango-246517

I got Friday night at 7:30pm at one of the better theaters nearby (a Cinemark). I tried to get Thursday night but it was sold out within about 3 minutes.

People can't wait for twenty minutes in their climate-controlled homes for the Internet to sell them a ticket, but they'll stand outside in December for an hour to get a seat.

This is why we aren't doing anything substantial about climate change, isn't it.

Sorta

When I was in high school, the Return of the Jedi rerelease was opening and some people I knew were standing in line all day at the city's largest theater. The thing is, until I got there about an hour before showtime, there were only about 20 people in line and it was a 700 seat theater. I think we rolled by and yelled "neeeerds" at the dudes in Jedi robes

Tom are you seeing it at Air & Space?

is any of the film in imax?

i would roll my eyes but lol my downtown silver spring theater is nearly as expensive as air and space

i feel like my 5-y-o might not QUITE be up for this? on the other hand he watched han solo get knifed by his own son a year ago

Even though director Gareth Edwards didn’t shoot Rogue One on IMAX cameras, and he didn’t shoot the movie on 70mm or 65 mm film like Christopher Nolan might have, he did shoot the movie on the Arri Alexa 65 camera, which is essentially a digital version of a 65mm camera. That means we’ll be getting quite the widescreen spectacle on IMAX screens, one that has a larger surface area of imagery that was captured by the camera and will be projected onto a massive screen for maximum visual potential.

off-topic (but distantly related since Marvel and Lucasfilm are both Disney?) url but I thought this was good: http://screenrant.com/marvel-studios-movie-color-grading-mcu/

the Arri Alexa is the same camera Marvel's been using, but it's also the one used for Fury Road and Jupiter Ascending, both of which look excellent imo

I have no idea if there's any ongoing communication between Edwards and Rian Johnson, but Johnson and his DP, Steve Yedlin, definitely have a strong handle on what kind of processing digital requires.

But yeah, my post-processing obsession aside, there's no reason this sucker wouldn't look great in IMAX

(seriously though, who the fuck at Marvel Studios came up with this completely flat color scheme)

Neat little vid, but my own aesthetic choices was always to max out the contrast and vividness with any photography I shot, from scanning in rock pics from my SLR 15 years ago to cat photos shot on my iPhone 7+.

So I'm biased as fuck. But seriously, there's no reason the films can't look hyper-stylized to match the hyper-reality of the characters. Like this:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cieEzdkuhoo/UiQkN2G9hxI/AAAAAAAARn8/Qgzf8Ev-a5k/s1600/tobattle.jpg

otm, I felt like the Dr. Strange visuals were good but the colors should have been wild

fwiw I guess Episode VIII is on film, probably some hangover from the Abrams decision to shoot that way

Rogue One looks amazing so far on digital, as far as I can tell by watching the trailers

I dunno - I like the way the MCU films look, especially compared to the DC stuff. Yeah, the color grading is more subtle, but it adds to the feeling of... maturity? that they all have. I don't know how good it would look to have all of the A-list actors that Marvel manages to get traipsing around some hyper-colored world.

did you watch that video? imo there's a difference between subtle and "we didn't even tweak the color curve"

like at least come up with a good house style

Agree with that dude re Marvel's color grading. Really bothered me in Avengers Assemble and Winter Soldier especially.

I watched the video. Pretty sure they're not just printing footage straight out of the camera! Maybe they were probably trying to match the Nolan Batman stuff?

but it adds to the feeling of... maturity? that they all have

But I think that's just an outgrowth of the assumption or the arbitrary culture-wide decision that only certain visuals are acceptable to communication certain themes. It's a cinematic equivalent of joyless dour austerity that doesn't connect with the joy that can be inherent in your genre. I figure it's a fixation on look and figuring the deeper bits will just come along naturally. Maturity seems more the result of how you handle or portrait emotions and decisions and choices, and those can be blown-out and oversaturated as possible, if you get the portrayal part right.

I wonder how much --if any -- of their decision-making process for these movies is guided by looking forward to the home video market. Aren't there still TVs that can't reproduce pure black?

most televisions can't do pure black, unless you have an OLED screen, although the majority of newer ones do fine and it doesn't stop people from watching the majority of content which does have at least some pure black

the complaint is not that they did nothing, but that the color grading is pretty uniformly bland and lacks one specific thing (pure black) that'd help a lot even without tuning the rest of the color scale

fwiw there were a lot of complaints about the Snyder Superman movie having a horrible palette too, but that's kind of its own thing

the nolan films definitely had pure black values, but also were shot on film iirc

I'm going to drop this in here as well, admitting I'm guilty of talking about this in nearly every genre film thread now and I'll step back: https://storify.com/tvaziri/steve-yedlin

The gist of it is that film, depending on the type and usage, has a very specific color grade depending on what you use, and production tools are used to tweak that much more with digital processing but you retain that base color curve that some color scientist at kodak or wherever probably worked out over decades. Shooting on digital actually captures much more color data, giving you free reign to nondestructively adjust the palette in all kinds of ways (some of which are just a wise decision to emulate a film stock, realizing that the work's been done in another medium). So, given relatively endless possibilities... do something with it, even if it's a throwback kind of emulation!

Rogue One looks pretty awesome

I think that the MCU look was calculated so that people would talk about the characters and the stories and the action, and that every review wouldn't spend a bunch of time discussing how distracting the look was. The characters are all heavily saturated primary colors, doing outlandish things all the time. Remember that the first Iron Man movie was a huge gamble and the way the MCU has panned out only really felt like a "sure thing" after Joss Whedon actually managed to not fuck up the first Avengers movie. Intentionally conservative color calibration and muted contrast makes sense to me in that context.

Back to Rogue One: Interesting chatter in the latest Empire magazine re: Edwards' shooting on this :

(Kathleen Kennedy) " Crafting it through the lens is very much a product of his style...but it's very, very hard to do inside these giant movies where you have to plan everything. Finding that balance for Gareth was tough." (end quote) And then this from the author of the piece: "It is also the reason why John Knoll's brainchild is giving him such a headache now, during these final stages. Because Edwards doesn't block his scenes out ahead of shooting, instead allowing the actors to find and hit their own marks while the cameras roll, 'that can make it a little harder to make sure you have bluescreens in the right places.' Sometimes Knoll would just have to say, ' Okay, we shot it, but there weren't any tracking marks (to indicate where VFX elements would go). (...) So, he admits, "it's been a little harder in post." (...) You do get that spontaneity in-camera that outweighs those concerns (...)"

I dunno - to me it reads like Edwards brought a really new and refreshing feel to this as a SW film but the executives were flummoxed. I hope that, if this ends up being a great SW film, he's allowed to make another. Though seems like he may have rocked the boat a bit for these people.

Or maybe I'm projecting since I work with "creatives" all the time and they are often freaked out if production templates are not adhered to, even if it means a potentially better product.

Though I also see Knoll's point about having to do more post VFX work if kept shots occurred without bluescreen in the b-ground. Guess it's a good a time as any for someone to come up with tech that allows for dropping in bluescreen after the fact - somehow? Though impossible to do if shooting on film, I'd imagine.

tbh the idea of not storyboarding a star wars movie is legit terrifying to me but i am kinda anal about preplanning lol

not blocking i mean

you totally have an 'X' under your desk chair to indicate where it goes

y

MCU muted colors suck and is why none of the films stand out visually. feels like a stylistic choice regurgitated from the 90s to pander to the manbaby demographic. there is a cultural line from Image Comics to Limp Bizkit's "Faith" to Gears of War to those "gritty", "dark", desaturated fucking movies.

Star Wars seems to sill be colorful though who knows w this Rogue One thing.

Muted colors equalling "gritty"? -- I blame Matt Mahurin.

the executives were losing their shit over Edwards' handling of this movie so I dont know if the final product is 'his vision'. it sounds like they basically fired him. I have a good source on this but I cant name names.. hes currently working on episode 8.

to compare, episode 8 is already in the can with about a day or so's worth of reshoots and about a year to do post production. rogue one is a dumpster fire that has 50m worth of reshoots being done the summer before release. I hope it works out.

I knew I could believe in Rian Johnson

If one judges by the look of the trailers Rogue One at least *looks* fantastic. Much more visually epic and exciting than JJ Abrams' "TV Guy With A Big Budget" approach on Force Awakens. If Edwards was indeed fired at would be cool if he went out with the best looking SW film to date.

*it would be cool

I have a guy and he confirms what we all know: Darth Vader doesn't fuck. His dick did get burned off. fyi

skipping this one if there isnt at least a jackoff sesh

not to be captain save a jj but if you think force awakens didn't look fantastic you need yr eyes replaced imo

https://cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/thefilmrealm.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/rey-sledding-force-awakens-900.jpg?w=768

i'm psyched for Rogue One but Gareth Edwards track record to me is very much all hat & no cowboy as far as his "visually fantastic" style is concerned. Monsters and Godzilla were 90% insufferably boring sweaty characters staring at the horizon and/or running

Xpost ) yes that was one of the few shits where I went "aaah". Not enough of them, imho. My eyes are fine.

Err "shots" lol

smdh

I have a guy and he confirms what we all know: Darth Vader doesn't fuck. His dick did get burned off. fyi

tbh this is kind of a relief - the thought of a wheezing vader pumping away at some poor unfortunate with his armour round his ankles is... disturbing

I find your lack of dick disturbing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htqVHdIB2qs

http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/rogue-one-gareth-edwards-tony-gilroy.html

Optimistic about Gilroy being heavily involved why because he good at job

Not if you read what happened with the script to bourne 3

i was thinking the same thing

They should just hire workmanlike hacks from now on.

The three Ip Man films are on American Netflix, and after watching the first one and consuming enough whiskey, I'm struck with a _strong_ impulse to find the filmmakers/studio execs and grab them by the neck & shoulders, yelling "Goddamit, you got Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang in a Star Wars film, don't fuck this up!"

Gilroy made Duplicity and Michael Clayton, right? Those are not great.

Michael Clayton is awesome, fuck you

kingfish I think in terms of managing your own expectations you have probably made a gross error by watching Ip Man before going to see this.
hindsight is always etc. though, it was unavoidable

http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/gareth-edwards-on-rogue-one-diversity-reshoots.html

I don't know enough about the business to tell how much of this answer is dancing:

A lot has been written about the reshoots that were done on this film, and it's rumored that Tony Gilroy came in and shot some of the new material himself. What really happened?

Tony is a great writer and he had done a few days' work on Godzilla. We had always planned to do these pickup shoots, and in this day and age when everything has gone digital, you don't have to be so literal about preproduction, production, and postproduction — the whole thing blurs together. When we did the pickup shoots, Tony came in to write the screenplay for those scenes, and because we shot it documentary-style and had so much material, essentially, we ended up being a bit crunched for time. So we all dove in and did different things: Tony did some second-unit on the pickup shoot and so did I, and we went from 600 visual effects to 1,600 visual effects. The scope of the movie just got bigger, and so there was this divide-and-conquer mentality that went on. I think the results are really good and that's all that matters, is the movie.

lol "documentary style"

(Xpost) my takeaway: There was a lot of unscripted stuff (improv?) going on in Edwards' shoot and they got stuck with a ton of footage to wade through. Lucasfilm didn't want any waste so they called in Gilroy to try and make it all slot in. Or something.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/uhyisxycrq0b3lp7n29q.gif

yikes

Tight

fart joke

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/12/11/strong-non-spoiler-first-reactions-rogue-one-star-wars-story

Got tix for late Wednesday showing. Can't wait.

some complained about an abundance of fan service, with numerous in-jokes and references for die-hard fans

Oh nooooo

Please don't throw me in the briar patch, whatever you do

yeah that sucks, if true.

well fuck there goes my plan to keep my expectations deliberately low

Ste are you familiar with the story of the tar baby

lol

or br'er rabbit even ;)

some complained about an abundance of fan service, with numerous in-jokes and references for die-hard fans

this gives me the same reaction a lot of people feel towards undecided voters

https://twitter.com/GermainLussier/status/807868306694602752

all of the little team-building cuts in the trailers were extra clips, maybe?

there were a couple lines that sounded like voiceovers just for the trailers

Yeah I was expecting one of the characters in the movie to say "in theaters Friday!" but apparently that line is not in the movie :(

disappointing

reviews are in. The more negative takes sound sadly plausible

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rogue_one_a_star_wars_story/reviews/?sort=rotten

although Richard Brody does rather undermine his credibility with this:

There’s none of the Shakespearean space politics, enticingly florid dialogue, or experiential thrills of the best of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” entries (“Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”).

Yeah, he wrote a piece on that last year in the wave of prequel revisionism:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-the-seven-star-wars-films-reveal-about-george-lucas