Rogue One

[Sky]

Could we just link to youtube and not mashable?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5qguZw3RzY

 

[Merusk]

Desplat is out as composer, Giaachino is in after the reshoots.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-rogue-one-replaces-929387

Not sure how I feel about this. Worrisome that such a big change happens so late in the game. Scores take about two months to compose, so this is true crunch time.

That said I don't really recall Desplat doing anything truly iconic. Could be that's because I haven't seen the majority of the films he's scored. Could be that he's a background composer and you need a different personality for what they're trying to produce. Giacchino has done enough action/ fantasy work that it's a good choice, but it could also indicate a huge shift in the film. From gritty to more lighthearted action, which would be a mistake.

[Comstar]

They probably used the new composer's music when editing, told the old guy to  "make it sound like that", and ended up just using the same guy.

Expect completely forgettable music if that is the case. Ie- try and think of a single piece of music from any DC movie.

[Ragnoros]

What Comstar is talking about. (In general, not just Star Wars)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs

[Venkman]

Yea. Saw that the other day and it makes some really good points. Tech is very useful. But it lets people with limited imaginations get what they think they want only through copying something they liked previously. This piece could be rewritten to describe consumer electronics, video games, TV shows, etc.

I will say the music from Thor 1 stuck with me (the tranformation phase at the end), as did that Captain America 1 track they showed too in this video.

But yea other than that, I would hope that Disney's expertise in making memorable songs may start to integrate with the Marvel studio stuff soon.

And on Star Wars, it would be nice to hear more than just variations of the main theme and imperial march. I thought the Clone Wars more militarized main theme was a good derivation. But there needs to be more than just two quintessential Star Wars songs (there's a bunch of others like cantina band, the love music, and the original Ewok celebration, but those were all single-movie tracks, not ones that appeared in all of them).

[Mac]

They're just using the old themes to trigger the Star Wars in your brain. The rest can be utterly forgettable, no one will care so why spend any money on it.

[Khaldun]

I listen A LOT to soundtracks and basically I feel like Zimmer and Djawadi are the only ones who write kind of memorable soundtracks now. The Marvel movies are a great case of this--they have had almost universally bland, functional soundtracks that you struggle to remember any part of later on. Two Steps From Hell's work is more memorable without being in any actual movie than the vast majority of scores for action, SF, superhero, etc. films. I don't know if that's just being cheap or if strong scores are just that hard to come by now.

[Surlyboi]

I dunno. I'm a big fan of Giacchino.

[Lakov_Sanite]

There is talk of Williams bowing out/passing the torch to Giacchino for ep8-9 so if that's the case they may have just decided to not have a third composer for this one movie.

[DevilsAdvocate25]

Yea. Saw that the other day and it makes some really good points. Tech is very useful. But it lets people with limited imaginations get what they think they want only through copying something they liked previously. This piece could be rewritten to describe consumer electronics, video games, TV shows, etc.

I will say the music from Thor 1 stuck with me (the tranformation phase at the end), as did that Captain America 1 track they showed too in this video.

But yea other than that, I would hope that Disney's expertise in making memorable songs may start to integrate with the Marvel studio stuff soon.

And on Star Wars, it would be nice to hear more than just variations of the main theme and imperial march. I thought the Clone Wars more militarized main theme was a good derivation. But there needs to be more than just two quintessential Star Wars songs (there's a bunch of others like cantina band, the love music, and the original Ewok celebration, but those were all single-movie tracks, not ones that appeared in all of them).

How could you forget Duel of the Fates!

[Merusk]

Rey's Theme has some great memorable moments, as well.

Most of Star Wars does, but the reason you keep hearing the same tunes is because Williams conceived of it as a Peter and the Wolf type of piece. Each character has their own theme and each type of action. That's going to limit the iconic pieces, because you're going to hear the main character theme, (Bwah bwah, baaa, ba da daaa da) over and over and over.

Williams stuck with this even into in The Force Awakens. People criticize it as "memberberries" but it was very much intentional. Han and Leia recall both Leia's theme from EP IV, Han and the Princess from EP V. Because that's the intent. The chracters are on screen so you get Leia's flute and Han's French Horn doing the same riff as when Han's frozen. That's THEIR theme.

I think this is part of the reason people complain about modern soundtracks not being memorable. There's no repetition of themes. Each scene nowadays must have its own unique music, you never hear the same thing twice. As a result you're not going to remember it unless you've watched the movie or one scene several times.

Badelt's Pirates of the Caribbean is one of the last soundtracks I can recall coming up with a distinct theme for a character. Ironically it became Jack's theme but was originally titled "Will and Elizabeth." (The end theme, "He's a Pirate" was referring to Will, not Jack.) Jack's original theme was playing when his boat came into the harbor and sank.

Ed: Oh! Also, something I realized this weekend as I dropped in the movies for another watch. Modern films do NOT let the music become a character. The Lord of the Rings did to an extent, but everything has to be so frenzied, bombastic and busy that you can't even hear the music 90% of the time.

Sit down and watch 20-30 minutes in the middle of ANH or Empire in the next week. The movies all breathe quite often and music fills that space, adding its own character to the story. There's spaces where characters don't talk for a good 30s to a minute. Now find that same time in The Avengers or any of the Marvel movies. You can't.

[Khaldun]

New trailer.

Maybe slightly spoilery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9abcLLQpI

[calapine]

I like the contemptuous look of the officer who is played by Malcom's dad.

And the slight overacting by (probably) Tarkin was nice as well.

[Khaldun]

I think the dude in the white suit is the Big Bad of the movie--Director Orson Krennic, basically the supervisor of the Death Star construction project.

[calapine]

Ahh. I see. Thank you.

I thught we are dealing with two different persons in the trailer, but looking at in zoomed in it seems you are right:

[Merusk]

I think the dude in the white suit is the Big Bad of the movie--Director Orson Krennic, basically the supervisor of the Death Star construction project.

You're correct on both counts.

Info about Krennic says he's wary of Palpatine and Vader while also trying to figure out what's up with their silly Religion. Which probably explains, in part, the toppled Jedi statue in the trailer and why Krennic is located on that particular planet while overseeing the Death Star.

[eldaec]

Enjoyed that trailer less because dialog choices were so very bad.

[Mac]

In other Star Wars news: they are casting Donald Glover as Lando in the new Han Solo movie.

[eldaec]

Reviews broadly say "Pretty good, probably a bit better than tFA, at least has a new story, even if an unnecessarily preachy and not as interesting as it could be story. Good cast mediocre script. Film is darker than other star wars offerings, but sadly this has mostly been achieved by the lighting director, not the screenwriter. Also things go pew pew and there are xwings."

[Soln]

Good enough then.  Roger!

[HaemishM]

So basically what anyone who doesn't hate Star Wars and has half a brain should expect? OK THEN.

[Khaldun]

The reviewer in the New Yorker has apparently gone insane, judging from his strongly negative review of Rogue One: "There’s none of the Shakespearean space politics, enticingly florid dialogue, or experiential thrills of the best of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” entries (“Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”)."

[Shannow]

Was it in green type? 

[Ruvaldt]

Did you read the full review?  I did, and my only explanation for it is that he had a seizure and scrawled off the review in a fugue state.

Here is another quote:

The director of “Rogue One,” Gareth Edwards, has stepped into a mythopoetic stew so half-baked and overcooked, a morass of pre-instantly overanalyzed implications of such shuddering impact to the series’ fundamentalists, that he lumbers through, seemingly stunned or constrained or cautious to the vanishing point of passivity, and lets neither the characters nor the formidable cast of actors nor even the special effects, of which he has previously proved himself to be a master, come anywhere close to life.

And another...

“Rogue One” isn’t so much a movie as a feature-length promotional film for itself; it’s a movie that is still waiting to be made.

Whaaaaaaaaaat

[Ironwood]

Sounds like someone with a serious axe to grind.

[Merusk]

The dude cited ATOC and ROTS as the best of the series. He's clearly unqualified to WATCH movies, much less review them.

ed: Although he's obviously learned the modern-media lesson: The accuracy of what you write matters less than the clicks it generates. A good review in the NY would have generated no clicks. This? This will generate clicks for weeks and all the juicy ad $ that goes with it. Fuck that guy I'm not reading the link but I will find a way to plagiarize the hell out of it and post it elsewhere to reduce his clickthroughs.

[Khaldun]

It's actually this guy's modus operandi. The New Yorker had a guy reviewing literature for a while who was like that too--a big driver of clicks because he said stuff that was so wildly out there that it made no sense to anyone, but was consciously intended to seem that way to drive traffic, or so most people judged.

[HaemishM]

I read excerpts of that review on Deadspin yesterday. I mean, even if I hadn't written him off as a pretentious hipster douche after using the word mythopoetic (the fuck does that even mean and who the fuck would use a word like that to describe a PEW PEW LASERS! movie?), when he claims Revenge and Attack are the best of the series, just fuck that guy. Those movies had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

[Soln]

The New Yorker is not relevant (anymore).  Star Wars is relevant.  Staff writers need to write, thus controversy. 

[IainC]

Just got back from seeing this at the pre-premiere (which is apparently a thing here in Slovakia).

I liked it a lot. I'd probably rate it as the best SW film - including Empire Strikes Back. Huge amounts of fan service but that's actually completely understandable given the plot and the position of the movie in the main series timeline.

It is very dark compared to all of the other Star Wars movies, I read somewhere that it's a war movie set in the Star Wars universe, and that pretty much sums it up. It's still Star Wars so there's no gratuitous gore but it's emotionally very bleak. Younger viewers who are expecting something more like TFA are going to be fairly heavily affected by it I think. I was honestly surprised at the ending, it must have been hard to pitch that to Disney execs.

[Torinak]

“Rogue One” isn’t so much a movie as a feature-length promotional film for itself; it’s a movie that is still waiting to be made.

Whaaaaaaaaaat

Sure, that happens all the time. You go to the movies, and there are some short trailers for upcoming films, and then there's a 2-hour trailer that's about the movie you went to see.

[Comstar]

TESB had a better tone and balance. This movie is good, but is rough and you can see and feel the edges where Disney pounded into the shape they wanted, which may or may not have better than the original vision.
 
Still pretty damm good though.

[Draegan]

Just got back from seeing this at the pre-premiere (which is apparently a thing here in Slovakia).

I liked it a lot. I'd probably rate it as the best SW film - including Empire Strikes Back. Huge amounts of fan service but that's actually completely understandable given the plot and the position of the movie in the main series timeline.

It is very dark compared to all of the other Star Wars movies, I read somewhere that it's a war movie set in the Star Wars universe, and that pretty much sums it up. It's still Star Wars so there's no gratuitous gore but it's emotionally very bleak. Younger viewers who are expecting something more like TFA are going to be fairly heavily affected by it I think. I was honestly surprised at the ending, it must have been hard to pitch that to Disney execs.

Aren't we at the point that if it's a Star Wars movie it's automatically fan service?

[IainC]

Well yes, but as the movie is basically Episode 3.999, the fan service is baked into the plot rather than being a stupid diversion (c.f. C3PO and R2D2 in the prequels).

[Riggswolfe]

The reviewer in the New Yorker has apparently gone insane, judging from his strongly negative review of Rogue One: "There’s none of the Shakespearean space politics, enticingly florid dialogue, or experiential thrills of the best of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” entries (“Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”)."

I have no idea if I'll enjoy it or not but that review seriously seems like the critic is trolling Star Wars fans, if not the public at large.