Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Thoughts On Rogue One

  • So, you know: spoilers.
  • Fun fact: Peter Criss from KISS used to call his penis (a rather large one) The Spoiler, as it would “spoil” women.
  • That’s true; you can look it up.
  • So, if you’re going to see it and don’t want to know that everyone dies, stop reading ten words prior to this one.
  • It’s Star Warsy.
  • The droids are gay, and the bad guys are classically-trained white guys, and space doesn’t act the way it’s supposed to.
  • PYOO PYOO.
  • All that bullshit.
  • You wanna know what this movie is?
  • Really is, under all the zippity-zop?
  • Back to the Future II
  • When Marty and Doc are sneaking around behind the story you already know?
  • That.
  • The Disney Star Wars movies seem to be following a pattern: young Englishwoman with a strong jaw and no discernible acting ability leads a ragtag group of ethnics against white guys.
  • Here’s how white the Empire is in Rogue One: one of them is Mads Mikkelson.
  • And, you know that I love Mads Mikkelson, but he is the opposite of Fela Kuti.
  • Mads has a dopey Star Wars name I’ve already forgotten–Galaxy Humperdink or something–and he doesn’t want to build the Death Star, but the head bad guy makes him via the strategic killing of his family.
  • That seems to be the Empire’s move.
  • Looking for droids?
  • Kill the whole family.
  • Suspect a spy?
  • Kill the whole family.
  • Billingsworth showed up late to his post again?
  • Kill all the Billingsworths.
  • You get the point.
  • Anyway, his daughter avoided killing and was raised by Forest Whitaker and his sloppy eyeball.
  • He is some sort of robot-person/monk/terrorist/lunatic living on Jetti Alpha VI.
  • Then the daughter, who is now grown up because they tried making a Star Wars movie with a child as the lead and no one liked it, is a Rebel.
  • Jean Ossobucco?
  • Jibbly Omphalos?
  • Jyn Erso.
  • Ugh, I’m getting too old for this shit.
  • Jyn fucking Erso.
  • Okay, so Jyn Erso gets busted out of jail, which she is in for some reason, by Diego Luna and a robot who is not voiced by David Hyde Pierce, and they take her to Mom Mothman on Yavin IV.
  • Three guesses whether or not every establishing shot of Yavin IV features the guy in the silly helmet standing in the space-crow’s nest.
  • The Rebellion needs to find Forest Whitaker, so they send Jyn and Diego Luna and the robot; Forest Whitaker is now on the desert planet Jedward, which was wasn’t the desert planet Jackaroo from The Star Wars Awakens.
  • Forest Whitaker is there, and he has hooked a scruffy Middle Eastern guy to the Brain Bug from Starship Troopers, which drives the guy insane right up until the point where the plot needs him not to be any more.
  • This is one of those movies where the heroes keep going to places only to be told, “No, you need to go this other place.”
  • I think there’s four or five places in this film.
  • But Jedward is where these two live:
  • DONNIE MOTHERFUCKING YEN, MOTHERFUCKERS.
  • And the other guy, who is awesome and has a space machine gun strapped to him like he was Jesse Ventura in Predator, but is not Donnie Yen.
  • Donnie Yen is not a Jedi, but he does have a stick to hit people with.
  • As you might imagine, Donnie Yen is extraordinarily good at hitting people with his stick.
  • Even if said people are wearing Stormtrooper armor, which at this point must be thought to be completely useless.
  • Armor should beat stick.
  • Like I mentioned, Donnie Yen is not a Jedi, but he keeps babbling about the Force.
  • He’s mostly a blind kung fu master.
  • Which is good enough for me: a wookiee would have been nice, but a blind kung fu master babbling about the Force will entertain me.
  • The Jedward blows up; our heroes escape, but Forest Whitaker and his sloppy eyeball are killed.
  • Then they go someplace where it’s raining, and there is heavy morality, man.
  • Luckily, TIE fighters show up before anything too annoying can happen, except then the most annoying scene in any movie occurs.
  • The fucking death scene.
  • Mads Mikkelson was in the rainy place, and he dies in Jyn’s arms, and I was audibly muttering at the screen to skip past this part.
  • Wait!
  • We forgot about Grand Moff Tarkin!
  • Peter Cushing, from the original: he’s in this.
  • Well, not him.
  • A collection of 1’s and 0’s in the shape of Peter Cushing, who died decades ago, is in this: there are two CG humans in this, and both of them look almost mostly lifelike.
  • We are not out of the Uncanny Valley yet.
  • Okay, so Mads is dead and now the heroes have to go to another place, which looks quite tropical; were it not for all the thermal detonations, it would appear to be a Club Med.
  • This is where the Macguffin is kept.
  • Um, I mean “plans to the Death Star.”
  • The last act is the best one, as the director expertly bashes all the toys from your childhood together.
  • X-Wings!
  • AT-ATs! (Kinda.)
  • ANDDARTHFUCKINGVADEROMIGODVADER.
  • They got his voice wrong.
  • It was James Earl Jones, but the effect on it was off; it sounded like the voice that comes out of the helmet you buy at Target.
  • And he does some lightsaber bullshit, because God forbid you have a Star War without lightsabers.
  • They’re gonna find a way to jam those suckers into the Han Solo movie, you mark my words.
  • Again–I liked the last act–but you do have to overlook all the inherently idiotic nonsense about it that is only there because the screenwriter needed some more obstacles to throw in the way of the heroes.
  • There’s literally a chomper door.
  • Like they goofed on in Galaxy Quest.
  • But there is a great space battle commanded by a guy from Admiral Akbar’s species.
  • (Mon Calamari. I didn’t need to look that up.)
  • Disney should have ponied up for a latex mask, though: Not Akbar is utterly shit CG; there’s actually several shots in the film which were up to neither par nor snuff.
  • The battle might have the best single shot of the movie, though: the Rebel Fleet is trying to flee by making the jump into hyperspace, and as they do a Star Destroyer drops out of hyperspace right in front of them, and they all crash into it.
  • I may or may not have let out a quiet, “Duuuuuuude,” at that moment.
  • But the plans get off the planet, sent to a very familiar-looking Corellian Corvette, and a Rebel soldier in a very familiar-looking blue shirt and white helmet runs these plans to a young woman seen from the back.
  • She has a very familiar-looking white robe on.
  • And I’m sitting there going, “Don’t show her face. Don’t show her face.”
  • DAMMIT.
  • Same CG bullshit as Tarkin.
  • Imagine the very best video game cutscene from 2013.
  • There you go.
  • And then everybody dies.
  • A competent and professional handjob for your nostalgia-boner.
  • Star Wars is with us, and we are with Star Wars.
  • This is what we wanted.

10 Comments

  1. mrcompletely

    low energy review

    • Thoughts On The Dead

      Low energy movie.

    • Tor Haxson

      He showed lots of stamina in the queen era.

      And now?

      Perhaps he has caught pneumonia, is he fit to blog?

      disclaimer
      I did not read all of this blog post, don’t care about star wars . Not a deal breaker however, I will carry on.

  2. Rushit

    You protest too much. If was a tad better than Force Awakens in that it was geared to adults and way better than all prequels

  3. Dawn

    i am middle of the road on star wars now (though the first one, of course, ROCKED MY WORLD, only it made me super sad that it had happened “a long time ago” because i so wanted it to be something that was GOING to happen). but now — middle of the road. i see them, because my youngest likes to and i feel like i should….but this review made me laugh out loud. twice.

  4. 21st Century Dead

    CG Leia looked like a ghost and I hated it, but loved the rest of the movie. Except the truth squid monster.

    That space battle is everything I ever wanted.

    • 21st Century Dead

      What did you think of the score? This is ostensibly a music blog, right?

      A lot of people didn’t like it, but I thought it was great. Kind of like the movie itself actually: a few too many nods to the original, but overall unique and fantastic in its own right, while carrying on the legacy.

  5. Mean, Green, Devil Eating Machine

    That’s Mickey and Billy after a particularly intense “space > drums”.

  6. SmokingLeather

    I had totally forgotten about the chomper door! I actually thought Tarken was so well done that it took a double take to remember that Peter Cushing was dead. The Princess was a 2013 video game cut seen, and maybe not even the best one, but the worst thing for me was the way Vader walked. The body language was so not David Prowse. Forrest Whitaker did the Vader walk better.

    And that’s my 2 cents.

    • SmokingLeather

      Oh yeah, best StarWars movie with out the Millennium Falcon.

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