Spoiler discussion of Rogue One

Rogue One also poses a moral dilemma, though it's handled on the sidelines.

Galen Erso wants to keep his family safe, and to prevent the Empire from gaining a terrible weapon. He's not really successful in the former, and fails in the latter although he makes the weapon vulnerable to any attack (and the Emperor keeps building them, showing he's an idiot at heart).

He might have committed suicide after the Empire took him. But what would happen then? Would the Death Star be finished, without the small but crucial flaw? For near-certain, no one would have alerted the Alliance to the upcoming terror weapon, or the need to steal the plans for it.

What we see is a good man in an impossible moral situation making the best decisions he can, amid a lot of uncertainty and real-world messiness. This is not something we usually see in Star Wars, or for that matter in other science fiction movies or shows. There was a bit of this on Babylon 5, though it was too tied to backstory elements.

In fact, Ep. V, often hailed as the best SW movie (and I'd put Rogue One above it easily), misses an opportunity. Remember Vader, after his astonishing plot-twist revelation, tells Luke something like "together we can end this destructive conflict and rule the galaxy as father and son"? Ok, so granted Luke was injured, disarmed and as nearly helpless as we've ever seen him, but it's something that should have tempted him.

No, running the Empire as built by Palpatine isn't something a proper Hollywood hero does (unless he turns to the bad guys' side in a plot twist). But a kinder, gentler Empire rid of Palpatine's influence and tempered by a Jedi like Luke is something different. But this requires a degree of real-world moral messiness absent from the Star Wars universe, except in Rogue One.

Come to think of it Galen's dilemma could make for a more interesting, and more realistic, ethical problem than contrived situations like the "trolley problem."

I wonder what our resident priest thinks about this, if he has seen the movie.

ON less serious matters, the buzz on the web is that not one scene from the trailers made it on to the movie...

I don't know if this is true, as I saw only a couple of trailers. But I recall seeing the blind monk kick ass in one, and that was in the movie.

I also recall a TIE fighter rising up to the catwalk where Jyn is in a trailer, and that wasn't in the movie.

Quote: Nareed

ON less serious matters, the buzz on the web is that not one scene from the trailers made it on to the movie...

I don't know if this is true, as I saw only a couple of trailers. But I recall seeing the blind monk kick ass in one, and that was in the movie.

I also recall a TIE fighter rising up to the catwalk where Jyn is in a trailer, and that wasn't in the movie.

This movie was heavily affected by reshoots. It appears that they changed the entire 3rd act. (There are scenes in the trailers of Jyn running on the beach toward the fighting with the Death Star plans in her hand. In the movie, those plans never make it off that tower.)

Someone made a handy video of all the shots from the trailers that weren't in the final movie:



(Note that many of these scenes are in the movie, but these shots aren't.)

Quote: ams288

This movie was heavily affected by reshoots. It appears that they changed the entire 3rd act.

Whatever works. The end product was great.

But I wonder if the Blu Ray will have deleted shots instead of deleted scenes?

Quote:

Someone made a handy video of all the shots from the trailers that weren't in the final movie:

Thanks!

Quote: Nareed

But I wonder if the Blu Ray will have deleted shots instead of deleted scenes?

Doubtful. When a movie is majorly reshot, they rarely put the original stuff on the DVD.

For example, most of the stuff at Maz's castle in Episode VII was reshot. They didn't include the original version of that scene on the DVD.

Deleted scenes are the point of getting the DVD these days.

What I'd like to read is the draft script for the shoot.

I read an amusing article highlighting the "archaeology" seen on Rogue One. It mentioned in an early draft of the script Jyn's mother was supposed to be a Jedi.

I'm glad they dropped that. I can barely buy the notion that Kenobi and Luke could live unmolested out in the open in Tatooine (sure, Ben Kenobi who wears Jedi robes must be a completely different person than Obi Wan Kenobi, right?), I mean after the Emperor and Vader had hunted down and killed all the Jedi. I can buy the idea of Yoda surviving unmolested in an inhospitable and, apparently, uninhabited world. I wouldn't have bought the idea of the wife of a former Imperial scientists being one, and having gone undetected and left alone for years.

Also, I liked that there were no Jedi or Sith active in the movie. Sure, we see Vader talking to Krenic, and at the end when he boards a Rebel ship, but he wasn't a factor at all. The scene with Krenic would have worked as well suing a hologram (better, if the hologram Vader also chokes him).

Earlier films tend to revolve about the fortunes of the Jedi. It's good to see one that's not.