AndyDursin wrote:So let's get this straight -- Disney pretends they are the bastions of diversity, and yet in the two (and barely related) STAR WARS movies they've produced, they've cast white British female leads in both of them??
"Diversity" means "no white males except in supporting roles".
This movie looks like it could be entertaining...except that Alexandre Desplat is guaranteed to suck the life out of it.
This trailer frankly looks like a typical generic British WWII indie movie, only done in Star Wars costuming.
Not really sure what the point of the whole thing is, other than to get fanboys excited about seeing the Death Star again.
I also wonder if the story actually centers around Felicity Jones, or if we're just getting backstory on one member of the team.
Either way, I'm hoping this isn't just fodder to generate another series of movies within the Star Wars template.
I'm also not certain how much story these guys can leach out of this situation.
It's true that the opening crawl of Star Wars says that this was the first victory for the Rebels against the Empire, and that the plans were stolen during the battle.
So presumably, this movie builds up to the battle and then likely shows the team getting the plans to Leia (cue the young photo dbl).
But this is all material we already essentially took as exposition.
What do we get from the Han Solo movie - the actual scene where he made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs?
I'm still excited about it. A Star Wars movie without Jedi!
The bad guy in white..he's either an Grand Admiral (like Thrawn in the books), or he is the head Imperial Spy (the guy in all white in Star Wars during the Vader/Tarkin/choking guy was a Security Bureau guy.
What amazes me is the lady playing Mon Mothma looks exactly like the original lady from Return of the Jedi!
I understand that the film takes place between Episodes III and IV, so the Death Star is a necessity. But can we PLEASE move on from the Death Star??? Lol...this is getting silly!
mkaroly wrote:I understand that the film takes place between Episodes III and IV, so the Death Star is a necessity. But can we PLEASE move on from the Death Star??? Lol...this is getting silly!
Yes! When will we get a movie about the Death Star II? I mean, all those Bothans died and I want to know how!
A disturbance in the Force....aka panicked Disney executives ordering a month of reshoots since the movie's testing poorly.
I wonder if any of these people watched Godzilla before hiring Edwards. He's not exactly great working with humans and his penchant for leisurely pacing has got to be a problem I'd imagine.
So ROGUE ONE lacks the "edge" of THE FORCE AWAKENS? Umm....what "edge" did that movie exactly have to begin with? lol
BTW this movie's writer? Chris Weitz of AMERICAN PIE, TWILIGHT and THE GOLDEN COMPASS fame. Don't worry though, George Lucas is staying far away from it!
According to Deadline:
According to sources, the first cut was lacking the edge that Force Awakens had, and the story needs to jell.
The move is happening after execs screened the film and felt it was tonally off with what a “classic” Star Wars movie should feel like. The pic has not yet been tested before audiences, but one source describes the cut as having the feel of a war movie.
The goal of the reshoots will be to lighten the mood, bring some levity into the story and restore a sense of fun to the adventure.
AndyDursin wrote:
BTW this movie's writer? Chris Weitz of AMERICAN PIE, TWILIGHT and THE GOLDEN COMPASS fame. Don't worry though, George Lucas is staying far away from it!
I suppose it's to much to hope for, but wouldn't it be nice if the filmmakers and studio also replaced Alexandre Desplat's music with a score that has concrete themes and makes bold dramatic statements, instead of the random non-melodies and repetitive, minimalist "loops", which are Desplat's trademark.
This is what happens when you put profit and release dates first, then the creative process -- like whether or not the story is worth telling -- second.
I agree about Desplat. You know his music won't be adding anything to the picture either.
This news confirms what I thought in watching the preview.
Interesting that Lucasfilm and Disney didn't understand they were making a WWII war movie in the guise of a Star Wars film.
That said, it's not unusual to see movies do some reshoots. It would be more interesting if the reshoots wound up taking up a lot of the actual running time...
4 weeks of reshoots isn't usual though. Seems like the movie is due for a pretty extensive overhaul that nobody is denying, either.
I'm still baffled by casting another young British woman as the lead when they just cast Daisy Ridley in THE FORCE AWAKENS. Very little about this movie seems to have been thought out properly, but then again, this is what happens when you come up with release dates first and stories second. The likelihood of it happening again are probably pretty high...and let's not forget this was the same project Josh Trank got fired from already.
A few other notes:
The first signs that things might be in flux for Rogue One came last month, when accidentally released pages from the official "visual story guide" to the movie were removed at the request of Disney, not only because they shouldn't have been released, but because "a lot of the information listed isn't even correct." A day later, with no comment beyond simple confirmation, Marvel canceled plans to release a Rogue One tie-in comic in October.
Separately, neither of these things are particularly noteworthy. When taken together, they suggested that certain elements of the pic have yet to be nailed down — perhaps a surprise, considering that a trailer for the movie has already been released. (Admittedly, the trailer is relatively light in terms of revelations both in terms of plot and character.)
I agree with the basic principle of your points. We're in total agreement that Lucasfilm and Disney planned out a bunch of release dates without actually having movies figured out to place on those dates. Marketing before actually having any content, which usually means you're rushing the content, and that the only reason for the movie to exist is to satisfy the marketing.
Of course, I say this as a person who has worked most of his life in television, where nearly all the airdates are pre-set before you start the season, and where you're struggling to get the installments done in time to air. And there's a big similarity between the new studio mentality of "Marvel Universe" or "DC Universe" or "Star Wars Universe" or whatever - it's a television production model, only spending a lot more money.
I also agree that the new movie is likely a bust. The trailer makes it look quite dreary and heavy - as I noted before, the atmosphere is of something of a British WWII indie movie - one of the little movies that comes out every couple of years that features a small group of Brits toiling behind enemy lines to break this code or get this other bit of intel back home - and maybe, just maybe, that will be the straw that breaks the Nazis... It's obvious that this formula was simply applied to Star Wars, and I don't know that it really makes any sense. It's also funny to me that Lucasfilm and Disney didn't get this when they saw the script, the dailies and the earlier cuts of the movie. Suddenly, as the release date and particularly all the ancillary marketing loom, they're noticing what package they actually just bought? On a corporate level, that's incompetence. Just because something has "Star Wars" in the title does not mean it will automatically be good. Or that it will make money.
All that said, I'd be curious to hear about how much of a reshoot is really happening here. I realize that the Page Six writer wants to present Disney as in a complete panic and the reshoots as something to take the entire month of July. Both ideas are possible. But I note that Lucas himself regularly did extensive reshoots on the Star Wars films, not to mention significant rebuilding of sequences by digitally splicing elements from different takes into the same shots. I also recall Peter Jackson regularly doing reshoots on the Lord of the Rings movies after the fact. Some filmmakers are known for going back in regularly, even during production - Woody Allen is well-known for budgeting carefully for this. It does sound like they're trying to change the tone of the movie from the dour indie that was promised by that trailer. And for all I know, they may be just as panicked as the guys over at WB who are realizing that their DC Universe could bankrupt their company rather than give them a windfall. We'll really just have to see what comes out to theaters in December. I'm not planning on seeing it, in any case. I already know this part of the story from having read the crawl in Star Wars, and at that time, I'll have a lot of other movies to keep track of - the usual array of awards bait that comes around in November and December. But I'll be watching to see what the reaction is, and if I can make some time, I'll be happy to watch whatever is inflicted when it hits video the following spring.
