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Well, that could’ve gone worse!

I saw that Kong: Skull Island movie in our cheap theater a couple days ago. It was pretty entertaining! potentially better than that Peter Jackson King Kong remake if only because it’s  (NO JOKING) under two hours!

I feel like I’ve reached an age where a running time under two hours feels like a major point in a film’s favor. I remember liking the Peter Jackson King Kong film, but it’s a movie my opinion has gradually soured on over the years, especially after the Hobbit trilogy helped illustrate Jackson’s penchant for copious excess filler in his films. Not that Jackson comes anywhere near something as brainless as a M. Bay film, but I do find that too many blockbuster movies tend to put their plots on hold while they throw a bunch of CG effects at you as if you’re paying to watch pretty lights and not a compelling narrative (I acknowledge that anyone who likes the Transformers movies would probably say that’s exactly what they’re paying for).

But Skull Island is a very efficiently told story with a consistent tone that’s established in the first scene and carried through to the end. It incorporates plenty of monster movie tropes with just enough self awareness and creativity to feel neither pandering or over done. The characters all receive just enough history and personality for you to feel invested in their survival. John C. Reilly is the highlight here, but everyone’s pulling their weight to some degree. That’s not to say there aren’t plot holes, OH THERE ARE PLOT HOLES. But it’s kind of easy to forgive the film for them because it’s so earnest in the monster story it wants to tell. Honestly, Kong: Skull Island is an easy movie to recommend. I’m not sure how many people actually went to see it when it hit theaters, but if you like monster movies, or at least the idea of monster movies, you could do a lot worse than this.

The WEIRDEST part of the film is actually the knowledge that it is a sequel (well, prequel, I guess, since it’s set in 1974) to the 2014 Godzilla movie. It’s yet another CINEMATIC UNIVERSE that will eventually pit Godzilla against King Kong. The thing is that Skull Island and Godzilla 2014 in no way feel like they exist in the same universe! Still, better than this Dark Cinematic Universe that The Mummy is starting (no, I haven’t seen that, and I have no intention to do so)!

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  • Little Kingsguard

    Well *that’s* an interesting reply. Who does he not expect to come back, the Senshin soldiers or himself?

    • http://thishasbeenatest.tumblr.com Fred

      Remember, the last time we saw him he had learned that Nataku and General Demonguy were going to be hunting Yori. I think he’s going to join the Good Guys(tm)

      • AGV

        Maybe he will do the same thing that he did with Genchu

      • Jonathan B

        Nataku and General Demonguy were not going to be hunting Yori. They sent him to deal with Yori while General Demonguy stayed to join the invasion force. It is, of course, inevitable that they will encounter each other, but right now the plan is for Tadashii to deal with Yori so Nataku and friend can focus on conquering their neighbor instead.

    • clogboy

      The Senshin soldiers who do come back, will not see him coming next time.

    • Wanderer

      The odds of Tadashii either letting Yori win in their duel or committing seppuku after Tadashii refuses to carry out Hirotomo’s orders were always high, in my mind. I think they’re only growing now.

  • AGV

    Tadashi is like “Ew no thanks”

    I liked the movie, It felt like something was missing in comparision to Godzilla (could be the length), but it was thriling and we got a fair amount of monster screentime
    And I really like how they’re managing each monster so far, I can’t wait to see Rodan, Mothra and King Ghidorah

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      If length was the only thing missing from Skull Island, that’s basically a positive! Godzilla is a plodding mess of a movie with a really great monster battle at the tail end! But after Skull Island, I’m also looking forward to more films in this universe.

  • LordBolanderFace

    How would you say Skull Island compares to Godzilla 2014? As in, when the monsters start to fight, do they still cut away to what the humans are doing?

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      Well, I found Godzilla a supremely frustrating film. It kept teasing a big fight through most of its run time that it knew the audience wanted, but in the mean time, it just focused on “Mr. Military Guy”, a dude with zero personality. That basically makes all the teases of a monster battle even more infuriating because nothing else was going on in the film. On the flip side, Skull Island has an ensemble cast with a good amount of personality, so although the movie isn’t one long monster fight, the space in between monster fights is filled with engaging character stuff, which makes it an infinitely better (ie. less boring) movie than Godzilla. It’s also like half an hour shorter.

      Ask me about my opinion of Rogue One some time (it had the same director as Godzilla).

      • LordBolanderFace

        Okay, what’s your opinion on Rogue One?

        I mean, personally I enjoyed it. The main cast was kinda forgettable, but the Washdroid (that’s what I call him) was entertaining enough to keep it from actually becoming boring, and the entire last part where they were getting the plans and the battle that went along with it made the whole thing worthwhile.

        On a side note, I think the girl who played Jyn would be the perfect choice if/when they ever make a Mistborn movie to play Vin.

        • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

          I would totally agree with you on the Vin casting except whenever they get around to making a Mistborn movie, she’ll be too old (she’s basically already too old since Vin was a teenager (17?) in the first book. Granted, they’d likely age her up anyway. Dang, I want a Mistborn movie!!

          And I feel like Rogue One is a movie that’s trying super hard to give me some reason to care. Washdroid is good, but he’s not GREAT, he’s just the best character in the movie, and the only character with an actual story arc. In a lot of ways, Rogue One and Godzilla had the same structure, where they keep teasing us with that thing we really want (big scifi battle/big monster fight), but fill all the bits that aren’t those things with totally bland, forgettable characters that we’re clearly supposed to care about but do not because they have no interesting personalities or story purpose.

          In truth, it’s not that either of these films are unwatchable or anything, it’s more that I really, REALLY want my new Star Wars films to give me wonderful new memorable characters. Force Awakens has a lot of problems, but I love the new cast, they have a ton of personality. Rogue One’s cast is so flat I felt basically nothing when they were all unceremoniously wiped out. None of them even seemed too upset about it, which makes it even harder for me to feel emotional about their deaths. It also bugs me that literally everyone dies but we’re still given the sweeping end credits music and we’re supposed to feel good because we know it’s leading right into a great film that is not this one, very similar to the ending of Revenge of the Sith. (Man, Star Wars prequels love to remind us how much better the original films were!)

          But I realize that a lot of my complaints are stuff the general movie going audience doesn’t care about or may outright disagree with because it sounds boring.

          • LordBolanderFace

            Nah man, I totally get it. Ask me what I think about Maleficent sometime. Heck, that discussion we had about Kubo and the Two Strings tells me we’re on the same page for a lot of this stuff.

            As for Vin… well, I mean, she may be older, but has that ever stopped Hollywood from casting adults as teenagers before? Personally, I think she’s such a good fit that they could tell us she was 16 and I’d just nod my head because she’s so perfect in every other way.

            And word on the grapevine is that Sanderson sold the rights to make not just a Mistborn movie, but a Stormlight Archive movie too back in October. So… I dunno. He’s sold off the rights before and nothing happened, so maybe something will come of it this time, maybe not.

          • LordBolanderFace

            Also, for the record, I would much rather have a Mistborn TV series. Cramming everything into a single movie just doesn’t cut it for me anymore!

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            This is the golden age of television, for sure! If they crammed it all into three movies, they’d better get Sanderson as a co-writer or story consultant, cause I wouldn’t trust most anyone else to condense the books into a movie format. Granted, I’m sure it could be done competently if you accept that characters and plot points will be changed/merged. I don’t need a 1/1 retelling of a book in my movie, that rarely ever works, but I’ll gladly take a movie that gets the essence of the book right, even if it greatly simplifies the plot to avoid bogging the characters down in endless exposition.

            Also, CG de-aging actors is now a thing (The Mummy, GotG2, PotC 5). So I guess I can still be pro-Felicity Jones as Vin.

          • LordBolanderFace

            Also, on a COMPLETELY unrelated note, have you heard about the SNES Classic? I’m sure you’ve got a few things to say about that.

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            Ha, well, I probably won’t get one, because I’d rather play a SNES game on a portable device at this point. It’s certainly more appealing to me than the NES mini, and if I were going buy one I’d strongly consider getting an imported European version because the Super Famicon is way cooler looking than the American Super Nintendo. And I’m pleased that Starfox 2 is getting a release.

            Truth is I never owned a SNES, my parents wouldn’t get me a game console because they thought it would affect my school work (didn’t stop me from playing PC games, though). They did eventually get me an N64, at which point my school work was affected, thanks Ocarina of Time and Rogue Squadron. So most of my Nintendo nostalgia revolves around that console, although my friends did have NES and SNES consoles, so even though I didn’t own one, I did play most of the big SNES games, except for the RPGs. I did play Chrono Trigger on a ROM, and started Final Fantasy 3/6, but the ROM corrupted and I lost my progress. I think going back to that game would be the most tempting reason to get a mini SNES for me, but, it’d be more enjoyable to play on my 3DS, I think. And there are so many great new games coming out all the time, I have a hard time justifying going back to the old stuff outside of watching impressive speedruns on youtube (except Super Metroid, which I will always make time to replay)!

          • LordBolanderFace

            I passed on the NES Classic because I never had one growing up, so the nostalgia factor wasn’t enough to attract me. But the SNES was my first ever console, even if my grandma bought it for me after the 64 had already been released. I’m a little disappointed it only has the first Donkey Kong Country game on it, since I liked the second and third better, and where the flipping meatballs is Chrono Trigger? Other than that, looks like an awesome lineup and I I fully intend to buy one should one be easily available.

          • clogboy

            I could only fault Rogue One for two things. The first is that I didn’t regret that all these characters are sacrificial (they only exist in this movie), and the other one is pandering. Tarkin and Leia could’ve been re-imaged by talented but unknown actors. Instead, they gave us CGI. It had a boatload of everything we like about Star Wars, and they condensed it into this overly sweet cup cake. It has all the clichés, highlights and elements we consider staple in the SW universe, and we saw Darth Vader in his prime, kicking good old fashioned butt.

            It almost makes up for the fact that story wise, it is a boring movie, and that literally all the exciting stuff from the trailer just isn’t there. I enjoyed it on the big screen, but wouldn’t pay money to stream it legally (and if you stream, I recommend paying for a trustworthy service).

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            I’ve still only seen Rogue One once, so I wonder what my opinion of it would be on a second viewing. My initial reaction was “wow, how did they manage to give me so many things I wanted while still leaving me feeling completely empty inside?”. Unfortunately, the incredible trailers for the movie set up an entirely different film (with an entirely different, much better soundtrack). We’re lead to believe it will be a movie about assembling a crack team of experts to infiltrate the empire, where they will be forced to make difficult decisions that conflict with the morality of the characters, and maybe exploring the idea of dark side vs light side outside of the context of Jedi. Instead, we get a story about a bunch of people who just kind of fall in together haphazardly, get ordered around a bunch, and then finally decide to infiltrate a base in a super non-interesting way, at which point everything devolves into a big, cool battle sequence where no one in the more interesting space battle part of it is a character of consequence, even though one of the Rogue One team is a pilot of some sort.

            Half of the stuff shot for the trailers was done with no intention of being put in the film. It’s extraordinarily frustrating to know that the director thought of all these cool, story telling visual shots, asked for them to be in the trailers, and then totally didn’t use them in the movie. What the hell? That should’ve sent off warning signals in his brain that maybe there was a more powerful story to tell here. It’s infuriating because there’s so much lost potential going on in the movie. Since I’m praising Skull Island, a movie that is far from high art, it clearly doesn’t take THAT MUCH to make me enjoy a film. All I need is some decent characterization so I give a damn about a film’s cast, that’s literally almost ALL I NEED! When a film as big as Rogue One fails to deliver on something that simple, I get pretty frustrated! (A coherent plot and decent editing are also a big plus)

          • clogboy

            I believe someone called Rogue One a fanboy’s wet dream. I agree it could’ve been more interesting, instead the takeaway was that the exhaust port vulnerability was intentional.
            The good character development imo is that the main character is distrusted because her father works for the Empire, and she gets abused for an assassination mission. She has no reason whatsoever to believe in the Light Side or the rebellion until the Empire shot her father. And then she leads an all-out attack based on information that only she knows, backed by nobody, and even discouraged by everybody, but ultimately necessary and pivotal. There was never a struggle, we’ve already seen that tragedy unfold with Anakin. Here there was only the pull of the light side to do the right thing. And that could have been a strong story about a disciple to the Light Side. But indeed, they forgot to make us care.
            But let us be honest. The first trilogy might have had strong character development. The prequel was a bit worse, but at the least it added to a staple of clichés. Most of the story happens between the lines anyway (I only realized years later that Palpatine stole Padme’s life force to bring Anakin back to life, and more relevant plot points are not always made abundantly obvious – I’m uncertain whether that makes for good or bad writing). It’s all about light sabers, strong female leads, space ships, space wizards, space scoundrels, bad CG/puppet characters and light sabers (yes I know I said that twice). It’s what you should expect, in spite of everything the trailer says. Especially now that it’s Disney.

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            “I believe someone called Rogue One a fanboy’s wet dream.”

            When I ranted about Rogue One after I saw it, I called it a great Star Wars fan film, just not a great film. It’s got all the surface level Star Wars stuff if nothing else.

            “She has no reason whatsoever to believe in the Light Side or the rebellion until the Empire shot her father.”

            Except Jyn’s father wasn’t shot by the Empire, he was killed by an X-Wing doing an attack run, making her sudden love for the Rebellion even more perplexing.

            “The prequel was a bit worse, but at the least it added to a staple of clichés.”

            A bit worse?? Literally every action every character takes in each prequel film makes no sense in the context of their situation! Gods, I’d go into specifics, but it’s just easier to watch the Red Letter Media reviews.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI&list=PL5919C8DE6F720A2D

            “It’s all about light sabers, strong female leads, space ships, space wizards, space scoundrels, bad CG/puppet characters and light sabers (yes I know I said that twice). It’s what you should expect, in spite of everything the trailer says. Especially now that it’s Disney.”

            Yeah, I can’t disagree. I’m not even opposed to that list. But I’ll still complain on this site if a movie doesn’t appeal to me! I’ll just be ranting it up here in my safe space. (Also, lightsaber is one word in Star Wars canon)

          • clogboy

            OK Jyn’s father’s death was an oversight on my part. For the rest I can be pretty forgiving, if a movie succeeds in what it’s trying to be, and if it appeals to me. That’s all I can judge it by due to my lack of expertise as a writer. That’s also why I use euphemisms like ‘a bit worse’ and not ‘a huge shameful waste of time, money and talent’.
            I remember it now, and if the death of Jyn’s father serves as any motivation, it’s that his sacrifice should not be in vain or summin summin’ or whatever. Like I said, story was never its strong point IMO, and a lot could be read between the lines, arguably due to bad writing and flat acting.
            But that’s just my opinion. :)

          • Jonathan B

            Replying down at this level but actually including some stuff from further up the chain. SPOILERS naturally on the whole thread here. :)

            Personally, I wouldn’t go so far as to call the main cast flat, but I would definitely go as far as underdeveloped. I definitely agree that Washdroid was the only one who got a full
            story arc. For me, the most interesting character was the blind man. Yeah, he certainly reflected a lot of movie cliches, but the interactions between him and his fellow guard were enjoyable, and I liked seeing one of the films start exploring the force outside of the Jedi/Sith division. The “extended universe” certainly did, and I gather the newer animated series might have done as well (haven’t seen it yet), but in terms of the primary movie stream, it was interesting seeing a force-sensitive character in the mix who was not Jedi or Sith and how he interacted with the force.

            When I ponder on it, I don’t exactly wish that he was in the film more as it stands. I think, for the storyline it did follow, there’s just about the right amount of him in the film. The movie does a better job of establishing those two guys, the droid, and the pilot than it does most anyone else. If they had put more overall content into the story, though, I could have done with more of those two guys in that larger context.

            I feel like the ending actually, while containing some of the coolest scenes, had some of the weakest parts of the film in terms of the way it chose to wrap things up on several levels.

            One of those was actually killing everyone off. Washdroid’s death was great, as was the Director’s. I definitely do think Jyn and Ursa dying from the Death Star attack was the right call, but the way it was handled was wrong. The whole nuclear sunset thing was a bit of an incongruous note. I know what they were trying for, but it didn’t work for me because they hadn’t established the characters’ relationship enough to make it poignant and they didn’t really explain how they had time to get to that point either. It ended up feeling less like a sacrifice than if they’d died coming down the tower or something. But I also think it would have been better if the pilot and a couple of generic soldiers had pulled the blind man’s companion onto a transport of some sort and raced away to outside the blast radius, unable to get close enough to the tower to try to rescue Jyn and Ursa. It would have added a little more potential emotion, and the blind man’s companion was actually a good potential carry-over character, because he wasn’t so important as to require explanation as to why he wasn’t in the original films, but his arc of taking up the blind man’s mantle could have been played out in additional films or left to be expanded on in other media later. Similarly, the pilot did actually have some interesting growth starting, which could have been continued later if desired without leading to a “why wasn’t he a main character in the originals” problem. And we still had a few generic rebels alive in the doorway when the blind man’s companion finished taking out the Director’s guards, so there was someone right there if they wanted to try to drag him off and get him into a bacta tank later.

            And while the Vader ending sequence was undeniably one of the coolest sequences in the film, I actually think it was a bad choice to tie things so closely to Leia’s vessel. For one, railroading the storyline to end at one very particular moment in time like that limited some of the options. It also did what people wondered if it would do, make the whole “many Bothans” line false, because we now have a complete story of the acquisition of the death star plans that doesn’t involve Bothans anywhere. If it were a little less tightly tied, there could have been room for them. But the biggest issue is, I think, that Leia’s presence there doesn’t make much sense. Why would a diplomatic cruiser be inside a rebel flagship’s bay the entire fight? It makes her “this is a diplomatic ship” defense much more hollow when Vader has litterally SEEN the plans carried onto her cruiser by rebel soldiers while it’s in the belly of the rebel flagship of all things. It would have been much better if some other ship had been the getaway vessel, and had been pursued to the point of its path crossing with Leia’s ship. You could then have Leia’s ship fleeing from that rendezvous as Vader’s ship arrives, ending it with the iconic moment of Vader in pursuit of Leia without tying it together quite so tightly. There’s a few different places you could insert Bothans into that sequence, including perhaps even replacing the generic NPCs of the Rogue One team with a Bothan intelligence unit that volunteered to go with her because their intelligence led them to believe what the main council was unwilling to believe.

            I still enjoyed the movie on first viewing. Actually, the only things that really stood out to me on that first viewing were the weird beach ending and Leia’s ship being where it shouldn’t be. The rest is more a result of pondering and reading this thread. I’ve got it on DVD, and I’d now classify it as one of those movies I probably wouldn’t watch all the way through from start to finish except to introduce someone else, but could certainly see myself re-watching the highlight real, so to speak, with scene-finding features.

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            Jonathan B, you may not know this but you’re actually making my day because I LOVE talking about Star Wars!

            The Bothans line is from Return of the Jedi. Many Bothans gave their lives to get information on the second Death Star, not the first. The only information we have about how the plans for the first DS were got was from the original film’s opening title crawl, which specifically says that “Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon”. I find this interesting, because the events of Rogue One don’t quite match up, as the battle at the end of R1 wasn’t really a victory against the Empire, other than that the plans were stolen. But the opening crawl says the Rebels won a victory AND the plans were stolen, not that the plans themselves were the victory. (granted, there are multiple examples of the opening crawls not quite matching the actual plots of the films, but if you’re making a prequel movie, why not try and get it as canonically accurate to the information given in the original movie as you can?)

            And I totally agree with you about Leia and her ship. Having her and Vader be at the battle makes the opening to A New Hope real awkward and makes Leia a really terrible, bold faced liar, instead of a competent political spy trying to maintain her cover. It’s also awkward that Vader goes from being a psychopath murder machine at the end of R1 to a more calculating bad guy in A New Hope. He doesn’t walk out into a corridor with just a lightsaber in the original film, he sends his troopers out first and then enter the hall after the fighting is over because walking into a gun fight with a sword is INSANE. But that was when he wasn’t the end all-be all of bad guys, but just one of potentially many bad guys in the universe (you know, back when Star Wars felt like it had infinite possibilities).

            Also Chirrut Immwe was CRIMINALLY under used in R1! He didn’t even contribute to the plot in any major way. The most important thing he did in the entire movie was walk across an open field and flip a switch, and then get shot. Considering he’s introduced by single handedly taking out a whole squad of Stormtroopers, it’s pretty pathetic how the movie basically forgets about him afterwards. He never even has a good ‘wise old man’ conversation with Jyn or Cassian where he helps them reveal something about themselves, it’s a huge bummer.

            None of the main characters ever really share a human conversation, they literally are too busy running from one plot point to the next. Compare that to how much the cast in Force Awakens and the original trilogy banter and argue and show affection for one another because they are human beings who like each other. Obviously this is all subjective, but that kind of character interaction really makes a movie for me. I wanted that incredibly emotional character journey for Jyn Erso that the Rogue One trailers heavily hint at. It’s so disheartening to learn that never even existed outside of a few promo shots.

          • Jonathan B

            You’re very right about the Bothans, and now that you said that, I remember someone pointing that out before and I’d forgotten it again. 😀 I’m going to totally blame the internet for that. 😉

            On Immwe, I definitely agree there was more that could have been done with him, though I would also add not to forget the subtle things. One of the things I did like with him was the way he kept showing subtle things that quietly reflected the force sensitivity. Like him being the one to recognize that Cassian was going to kill. Him sensing Jyn in a crowd in the first place, because of the necklace. And the scene where he tests the wind and then shoots the tie fighter so that it takes out the turret is really cool. He didn’t waste movements much, waited for the moment, and then acted. Which said a lot about his relationship with the force without really talking, and I liked that about the character. It made him a good contrast with his friend, and I actually thought they did a lot with the two of them without actually focusing on them. He always seemed to be patiently waiting for the next moment that action was required.

            I can definitely understand that in terms of the character interaction. I think that was a major place that the movie suffered from the knowledge that the characters were throwaways. The secondary characters got developed while the primary characters were tied too tightly to their plot mechanisms. It kind of feels like, when you look at what they did do with the secondary characters, that they felt constrained with the primary characters by the need to make sure they hit all the parts of the storyboard. And I think at least a part of that constraint was caused by tying the final moment of the film too closely to the starting moment of the old films, making the clock a very heavy presence throughout where they had to hit all the right ticks to get everything to tie into a neat package. There’s a lot more creative freedom when you’re not trying to tie two things together down to mere minutes apart.

            That’s another reason personally that I think having it be Leia’s ship leaving the cruiser was a bad idea, because it left them no wiggle room on the plot. They had to make everything happen in the relatively short length of time it takes a hyperspace-capable universe to get from one event to the next. When your story absolutely has to hit a series of specific beats, the characters can become servants of the timeline instead of the story developing from the characters.

            I remember many years ago, I used to play on a text-based RPG MUSH. They were effectively collaborative novels, really. One of the worst experiences I ever had in those games was playing with one particular GM, because at some point in the narrative he tended to pre-write the ending. I don’t know where in the process he did it, I just know that at some point it was already written as to how he thought the story should end, and if you came up with something for your character to do that he hadn’t though about and which would make the ending not play out as he’d written it, he’d brutally crush your characters’ efforts in one way or another to force things to line up with the ending he’d written. One of his best friends was a player in that one, and the way he tried to force her into what HE thought her character should do created a rift that destroyed their friendship and grew to affect a good 30 or more players because all sorts of ongoing stories were tied to both of them in some way and the GM carried over his animosity from that scene into other scenes, further compounded by a long-running plot where he and another GM were managing different parts of it and when the two parts intersected this GM took away things the other GM had approved, to the point that the head admin ended up stepping in with a hammer to try to stop the problems. I kinda burned out on the game after that, because I ended up as the “good listener” who got to hear all the complaints from a dozen or more friends who were involved including a couple of the GMs, and also ended up being the guy who had to pull the head GM aside when he was in his hard case ban hammer mode and lay out a complete story of six months or so of events to him to show that the understanding he had gotten from his GMs was only pieces of the whole story. It did get sorted out in the end, but the stress level was exhausting and burned me out on the game. To bring that back on topic: none of his endings were bad. But his endings were HIS story, not the story coming from the characters themselves, and he tried to force our story to match his. And I think Rogue One suffers some from trying too closely to force Jyn and Cassian’s story to match with the opening of the originals instead of letting it develop more from the characters.

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            That was certainly a long winded explanation! But I couldn’t agree with you more, Rogue One definitely tried too hard to flow right into A New Hope and results in a sloppy and truncated resolution for its main characters.

            And I could honestly potentially even forgive it for that if the characters just had more banter with each other and felt more real and human. The part where Jyn is struggling to hold back tears while the hologram of her dad says he loves her feels completely hollow to me because at no point up to then did we ever get the sense that she shared a tight emotional bond with her dad, she hadn’t seen him since she was ten! If anything, her reuniting with Saw Gerrera should’ve carried more emotional impact, but saw doesn’t even seem to care much and then randomly chooses to stay on the planet and die before we ever really learn anything about him and his motivations. It’s just a bunch of sloppy writing, is what it is! SUCH FRUSTRATION!

          • Jonathan B

            I can generate quite a number of words when I set my mind to it 😀

            I do agree, there were hints of the bond between her and her father in a few dialog bits, but they started the story so close to the action that we only barely got introduced to the family before they were split up. There are definitely times there’s value to telling a backstory through action, but you can go too far with that just as much as you can go too far with exposition.

            It feels weird to say it, but where the prequels spent entirely too much time on politics, this movie could have used a little more of it. Not long-winded speeches but a touch of connect the dots for individuals and positions they held.

            I did think, though brief, the scene where Cassian met the informant was actually decently well done. The little cameo of the two desperate characters in it was nice. And it moved the plot along while telling us a little bit about Cassian in his actions and expressions.

          • Thomas

            “I’ve still only seen Rogue One once, so I wonder what my opinion of it would be on a second viewing.”

            FYI to any interested, Rogue One is now streamable on Netflix. So if you already have Netflix streaming, it’s there for viewing at no extra charge.

  • Hfar

    4th and 5th panel: Mustache vs Beard, fight!

    Well if you’re going to have a cinematic universe with monsters it might as well be giant monsters, no?

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      Can’t argue with that logic.

    • Xinef

      Is there such a thing as “the law of inverse facial hair” where the thinner the mustache, the sharper the blade?

  • Xinef

    So… he’s like “I could kill you all right now, but I don’t want to take fun away from Nataku and Honouko”

    Yeah… that’s totally what he means.

  • clogboy

    I have a feeling ‘Forest’ will be enough… If he knows about the ninja clan, and if he has a clue what’s in Yori’s best interest. (What are they gonna do, again?)

  • Sunwu

    These men died for their Daimyo Send Flowers to their Geishas and Sempais

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