ROGUE ONE
Non-spoilery version: I saw the movie in 2D VOSTFR. I enjoyed it greatly.
Anything else I have to says goes under a cut.
I'm going to be up-front: literally ever since the first trailer for Rogue One dropped, I'd been hoping everyone would die. I've been in the mood for Heroic SacrificeTM for a good long while now (see also: my current obsession with the Paris Commune*).
*I haven't been mentionning it on here, I don't think, but pretty much everyone RL has had to suffer through "I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND YOU THAT THE PARIS COMMUNE WAS A THING and now let me tell you about Louise Michel", (sometimes with optional "it wasnt even the first time Paris declared independance from France"). I wonder why the idea of a Paris that's a socialist utopia is particularly seductive these days.
So I was very satisfied that they all died. It was exactly what I wanted. I didn't want any of them to survive. That sounds callous, but the heart wants what it wants and sometimes what the heart wants is to be broken in a gazillion pieces shining bright with hope.
I didn't want anyone to survive, but if anyone had to survive, I wanted it to be all of them. This was very much an all or nothing proposition for me. Idk, I've always felt it was sadder for these kinds of suicide missions to have a single, lone survivor and a single death would have felt gratuitous. But here everybody died, yay!
Also, it was good that for once the suicide mission lived (deathed?) up to its name and that all the talk about dying for the cause wasn't just empty words.
Also also, I loved how it was focused on the downtrodden and the forgotten, the sort of people the history books don't mention, except maybe as a footnote. These people aren't any sort of Chosen Ones, except that they have chosen to make a stand, to say that some things are worth dying to stop, that the cost of freedom is high, but it's a price they're willing to pay.
Even after the main crew dies, the information gets passed from Rebel to anonymous Rebel, in a mad, desperate scramble. Because this is less a movie about people than it is a movie about a cause.
(I walked out wanting a vid of this movie to Fall Out Boy's Sugar, We're Going Down -- "We're going down, down in an earlier round / And, sugar, we're going down swinging".)
BUT ASIDE FROM THE ALL THE DYING HOW WAS IT?
It's visually gorgeous! From Scarif, planet of gorgeous beaches, to Vader's palace of Gothitude to Jedha's Holy City, I don't think there's a single location I wouldn't visit. Even the destructive power of the Death Star was awesome, in the sense of "deserving of awe" (and whichever of the characters said it was beautiful was right).
I had ZERO ISSUES keeping track of who was who! I'm not great at faces -- for example, I can't tell DiCaprio and Hardy apart in the trailer for The Revenant -- so the more distinctive a character design people have, the better I can follow along. This is also helped by everyone not being white dudes.
This movie has: Robot, Glasses, Goatee, Blind, Warrior, Villain in White and Jyn. (Honourable mention: MON MOTHMA , who I like a whole lot.)
CAN I SAY THAT I LOVE JYN SO MUCH. SO MUCH. She's so brave and harsh and full of hope and anger.
I love that her dad called her "nebula" in the subtitles -- I prefer this to the "stardust" of the English, because nebulae are vast and contain multitudes. Stars are forged in nebulae. Stardust is what remains of a dead star. Jyn didn't just die, she was a furnace from which hope was forged. I loved her speech about how "Rebellions are built on hope" (and in the trailers "This is a Rebellion, isn't it? I rebel.")
My favourite scene of her is when she dies, watching the blast come ever closer, eyes wide open and full of hope. I feel like the symbolism of Jyn waiting for her death head-on while Cassian turned his back on it really got to me.
K2 was so hilarious, omg. And the bravest toaster.
Blind dude and his warior were totally 100% married. Look. The second of them to die specifically dies looking into the other's eyes -- that's at least as romantic as Jyn and Cassian embracing.
Speaking of which, I appreciated that there was no kissing. I can now totally "No hetero" the Jyn/Cassian relationship to anyone who "no homo"s the Baze/Chirrut one. They died embracing each other? They didn't want to die alone! What, if you knew you were going to be blown up from orbit you'd only hug whoever you were with if you were a couple? That sounds fake, but okay.
Bodhi! Trying so hard to do the right thing. If he had survived, I think I would have been okay with it? Idk. (But seriously that scene with the tentacle monster went on for ages and ages, what the hell.)
Miscellaneous:
** I heard a call for a "General Syndulla" over the intercomm! Hera <3 She lives!
Shipping wise, I don't have anything I notp so everything's good! I hope there are fics. I'm a bit disappointed that there wasn't more Jyn/Mon interaction, but I'll deal.
And if you're wondering whether I'm going to write fic for it in the style of a Norse saga (like I did for The Force Awakens)? The answer is yes. I might need to see it again first, but it's happening.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/164496.html and has
comments over there.
Anything else I have to says goes under a cut.
I'm going to be up-front: literally ever since the first trailer for Rogue One dropped, I'd been hoping everyone would die. I've been in the mood for Heroic SacrificeTM for a good long while now (see also: my current obsession with the Paris Commune*).
*I haven't been mentionning it on here, I don't think, but pretty much everyone RL has had to suffer through "I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND YOU THAT THE PARIS COMMUNE WAS A THING and now let me tell you about Louise Michel", (sometimes with optional "it wasnt even the first time Paris declared independance from France"). I wonder why the idea of a Paris that's a socialist utopia is particularly seductive these days.
So I was very satisfied that they all died. It was exactly what I wanted. I didn't want any of them to survive. That sounds callous, but the heart wants what it wants and sometimes what the heart wants is to be broken in a gazillion pieces shining bright with hope.
I didn't want anyone to survive, but if anyone had to survive, I wanted it to be all of them. This was very much an all or nothing proposition for me. Idk, I've always felt it was sadder for these kinds of suicide missions to have a single, lone survivor and a single death would have felt gratuitous. But here everybody died, yay!
Also, it was good that for once the suicide mission lived (deathed?) up to its name and that all the talk about dying for the cause wasn't just empty words.
Also also, I loved how it was focused on the downtrodden and the forgotten, the sort of people the history books don't mention, except maybe as a footnote. These people aren't any sort of Chosen Ones, except that they have chosen to make a stand, to say that some things are worth dying to stop, that the cost of freedom is high, but it's a price they're willing to pay.
Even after the main crew dies, the information gets passed from Rebel to anonymous Rebel, in a mad, desperate scramble. Because this is less a movie about people than it is a movie about a cause.
(I walked out wanting a vid of this movie to Fall Out Boy's Sugar, We're Going Down -- "We're going down, down in an earlier round / And, sugar, we're going down swinging".)
BUT ASIDE FROM THE ALL THE DYING HOW WAS IT?
It's visually gorgeous! From Scarif, planet of gorgeous beaches, to Vader's palace of Gothitude to Jedha's Holy City, I don't think there's a single location I wouldn't visit. Even the destructive power of the Death Star was awesome, in the sense of "deserving of awe" (and whichever of the characters said it was beautiful was right).
I had ZERO ISSUES keeping track of who was who! I'm not great at faces -- for example, I can't tell DiCaprio and Hardy apart in the trailer for The Revenant -- so the more distinctive a character design people have, the better I can follow along. This is also helped by everyone not being white dudes.
This movie has: Robot, Glasses, Goatee, Blind, Warrior, Villain in White and Jyn. (Honourable mention: MON MOTHMA , who I like a whole lot.)
CAN I SAY THAT I LOVE JYN SO MUCH. SO MUCH. She's so brave and harsh and full of hope and anger.
I love that her dad called her "nebula" in the subtitles -- I prefer this to the "stardust" of the English, because nebulae are vast and contain multitudes. Stars are forged in nebulae. Stardust is what remains of a dead star. Jyn didn't just die, she was a furnace from which hope was forged. I loved her speech about how "Rebellions are built on hope" (and in the trailers "This is a Rebellion, isn't it? I rebel.")
My favourite scene of her is when she dies, watching the blast come ever closer, eyes wide open and full of hope. I feel like the symbolism of Jyn waiting for her death head-on while Cassian turned his back on it really got to me.
K2 was so hilarious, omg. And the bravest toaster.
Blind dude and his warior were totally 100% married. Look. The second of them to die specifically dies looking into the other's eyes -- that's at least as romantic as Jyn and Cassian embracing.
Speaking of which, I appreciated that there was no kissing. I can now totally "No hetero" the Jyn/Cassian relationship to anyone who "no homo"s the Baze/Chirrut one. They died embracing each other? They didn't want to die alone! What, if you knew you were going to be blown up from orbit you'd only hug whoever you were with if you were a couple? That sounds fake, but okay.
Bodhi! Trying so hard to do the right thing. If he had survived, I think I would have been okay with it? Idk. (But seriously that scene with the tentacle monster went on for ages and ages, what the hell.)
Miscellaneous:
- Did not expect it to be set SO CLOSE to A New Hope.
- CGI Tarkin worked for me in a way CGI Leia didn't -- I suspected because Tarkin has always felt a little creepily otherworldly to me.
- There was fortunately very little Mikkelsen (I dislike both his face and acting).
- Jyn's mom didn't have to be fridged like that.
- Did it seriously take Vader twenty years to come up with that pun?
- Wow, those hard drives are OLDSCHOOL.
- There were so little women, though. I counted Jyn, Lyra, Mon, Leia, the woman in gold in the Resistance base, the fighter pilot and the troop transport pilot, both in the Battle of Scarif. And that's it**. That's not enough, especially when three are unnamed.
- I liked the tie-ins to the cartoons, both Clone Wars (Saw!) and Rebels**.
** I heard a call for a "General Syndulla" over the intercomm! Hera <3 She lives!
Shipping wise, I don't have anything I notp so everything's good! I hope there are fics. I'm a bit disappointed that there wasn't more Jyn/Mon interaction, but I'll deal.
And if you're wondering whether I'm going to write fic for it in the style of a Norse saga (like I did for The Force Awakens)? The answer is yes. I might need to see it again first, but it's happening.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/164496.html and has
comments over there.