Movies

Rogue One was absolute shit due to the troubled production and two disparate creative voices. It's not just a bad Star Wars movie, it's a bad movie entirely.

Problem #1 was they didn't start with a script, they started with a supercut of scenes from other movies so they could determine how long each scene should be before writing it.

https://kottke.org/17/01/rogue-ones-unique-storyboard-remixed-from-100s-of-films

"Then I used dialogue from other movies to give you a sense of how long it would take in other films for someone to be interrogated. So for instance, when Jyn gets interrogated at the beginning of the film by the Rebel council, I used the scene where Ripley gets interrogated in ‘Aliens’.

So you get an idea of what movies usually do."

But the script didn't matter because Gareth Edwards would shoot a bunch of stuff off script every day. He called it "Indie Hour" and it generated a bunch of footage that looked good, but was incomprehensible and unusable. They put a bunch of it in the trailers which ended up confusing everyone because it wasn't ever intended to be in the movie.

https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/this-is-why-one-of-rogue-ones-most-iconic-shots-wasnt-in-the-finished-movie/

"“It was just a way for the crew of understanding, for now, we’re just going to do loads of random shit,” Edwards said. “Don’t try to ask, we can’t explain.

“It would just be things I thought were a beautiful moment or ‘This is a great idea’ and a lot of the stuff in the [first] trailer ended up through that process.”"

So, no surprise, wasting production time and money got him fired and they brought in Tony Gilroy to save the film... Who says:

"I’ve never been interested in Star Wars, ever. So I had no reverence for it whatsoever. I was unafraid about that,” said Gilroy. “And they were in such a swamp … they were in so much terrible, terrible trouble that all you could do was improve their position.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/star-wars-rogue-one-writer-tony-gilroy-opens-up-reshoots-1100060/

So you get conflicting scenes where Andor cold-bloodedly murders an informant as an introduction to his character (Gilroy), vs. a conflicted Andor, sent to assassinate a legitimate military target, but when the time comes he gets super sweaty and... oh... just... can... not... pull... that... trigger! (Edwards).

So which is it? Murderer of innocent informants or PTSD conflicted soldier who can't do his one job?

Speaking of "one job", let's talk about the Vader hallway fight (Gilroy). Vader force grabs every one and every thing in that hallway except the ONE THING he's there for, the Death Star Plans. Those have plot armor, they HAVE to get away. So why be so stupid as to put Vader in the same hallway? Empire's Vader would have simply gone "Oh, don't mind if I do!" (YOINK!)

But, again, Gilroy was never a fan of Star Wars... so we get Vader watching the plans sail away on the Blockade Runner... which directly conflicts with the classic opening of Star Wars where he states that transmissions were beamed to the ship by rebel spies... No, according to Rogue One, he personally WITNESSED that shit.

Gilroy's position of derision for Star Wars is the polar opposite of someone like Dave Filoni or Jon Favreau and he told his Andor crew to not have reverence for the property either:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/andor-creator-tony-gilroy-views-on-star-wars-1235226261/

So, no, not watching Andor. I'm sure it's a fantastic commentary on space fascism, but it's not Star Wars. If you want to make or watch a WWII movie, go do that, but don't hijack another property to do it.