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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Discussion Thread

Ventus

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  • The female better not be a Mary Sue garbage character. ffs write some believable characters.
  • Not sure what there is to write. Is this going by the pre-established canon or is Disney retconning again?
 

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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Not sure what there is to write. Is this going by the pre-established canon or is Disney retconning again?
Idk about retconning, but it definitely looks like it's going to be headcanon. From what I'm gathering it's probably going to be about the attempt to get the Secret Plans exploiting the Death Star's weakness from Episode IV?
 

Emma

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It is a retcon of a preexisting canon. The story depicted here is playing out more or less similarly to Dark Forces. The characters are very obviously based on them, and bare an incredibly astounding physical resemblance to them, but have been renamed. Jyn Erso was originally Jan Ors. This isn't a feminizing of the plot either. In the original version of the Death Star Plan Heist, depicted in Star Wars : Dark Forces, Jan Ors was the leader of the operation. Though since it was a game, she took a back seat role in actually performing it with Kyle Katarn having most of the action. They haven't named his counterpart (rogue-ish guy with the beard), who looks almost identical to his EU appearance, but it's safe to say he won't be called Kyle Katarn like his Pre-Disney EU counterpart though it looks like they flipped their roles. In the game, Kyle was a former Imperial, turned criminal that was recruited in an joined with a veteran Rebel agent, Jan. Looks like this time it's the other way around. But the Jan-counterpart still seems to be taking charge. Interesting casting choice for Mon Mothma. In the original game she was the person giving Jan orders so it was crucial to include her. It's the same actress that played her in Revenge of the Sith (though most of her dialogue scenes were deleted), Genevieve O'Reilly . And since it's been 11 years, the actress has aged enough to plausibly pass for her older character originally played by Caroline Blakiston. O'Reilly was chosen for the Sith role in the first place because of how much she resembled Blakiston.

I am rather disappointed that they renamed the characters. Though I suppose it was to be expected since they renamed Jacen and Jaina to Ben and Rey in The Force Awakens, though their characters were extremely similar and did some of the same things. But I do like the characterizations this time. They are similar to the originals but a little more realistic and gritty, which is true to the original intent in the original Dark Forces game. Still it's interesting in that the second Disney Star Wars film is an adaptation of a video game.A loose adaptation, but an adaptation nonetheless. Best to not spread that though. Video game adaptations tend to be more harshly criticized regardless of how good or bad they actually are.
 
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Looks good, hopefully Donnie Yen has a big part. They need more bad ass main characters on the good guys.
 

Emma

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Just for comparison, here's the characters Jan and Kyle how they appeared in the original live action cinematics for the Dark Forces games:
2eee88g.jpg
Here's how they appeared in the sequel game Jedi Outcast:
Kyle-and-Jan-1024x768.jpg
And here are their counterparts in the Rogue One film:
rogueone1280bjpg-67c4b3_1280w.jpg
Visually they are extremely similar. Although Jan was Asian in the original live action cinematic and vaguely Asian in the later game models while the new counterpart is distinctly not Asian. So there might be some race-lift outrage if it becomes more apparent that this is a Dark Forces adaptation.
 

Emma

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I just hope this female lead isn't a mary sue like Rey.

She is an expy for Jaina, who in the EU was the ace pilot of her generation, the most gifted pilot of either the Solo or Skywalker kids. Jaina was always depicted as naturally gifted pilot, even for a jedi, much like her grandfather, Anakin, and was the best pilot in the family since him. And Jaina was always better with the Falcon than Han was. This was because the Falcon liked her more. The Falcon had three AIs that fought each other all the time, hence the malfunctions, but they liked Jaina enough to cooperate with her.

A lot of Rey's unusual abilities really come from the traits of her EU counterpart that made it into this version. In the EU, some of it was natural talent, some was years of training, and some was a bit of both. They probably would have been better off just keeping the original character rather than having one with a completely different backstory yet still inexplicably has the exact same skills and talents.

I don't know if we have to worry about that one here. In Dark Forces, Jan was infiltrating the the Imperials and she got caught. Once again, just like in Force Awakens, plot points from the source material are being directly used. The charges we heard being leveled to Not-Jan in the trailer sound a lot like a blown cover. So she's obviously going to be experienced in her trade and her skills would be justified. And this time around Not-Kyle looks like he's a veteran rebel agent so his combat skills would be explained too.
 

Azure Sage

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This looks totally awesome and a story about how they stole the death star plans that lead to the beginning scene of episode IV would be such a great movie to hold us over for episode VIII and I can't wait for it!

also: Rey, a mary sue? Did we watch the same movie? Characters with multiple moments of weakness/weaknesses in general don't get to be called that. Rey is amazing but she, like Finn, isn't a perfect character and that makes her more amazing.
 
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This looks totally awesome and a story about how they stole the death star plans that lead to the beginning scene of episode IV would be such a great movie to hold us over for episode VIII and I can't wait for it!

also: Rey, a mary sue? Did we watch the same movie? Characters with multiple moments of weakness/weaknesses in general don't get to be called that. Rey is amazing but she, like Finn, isn't a perfect character and that makes her more amazing.
we certainly did watch a different movie. If you didn't question how she did some of that stuff you are REALLY playing along.

Don't get me wrong, I love her, but they needed to tone it down a notch since they didn't offer valid reasons for her ability in this movie.
 

Terminus

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Yes, a person who spent their life fending for themselves and scrounging shipwrecks would have no idea how to handle themselves in a flight or fix a ship or know how to fly that's so unbelievable.

Also, yes, Force Ex Machina. It always has been a completely silly plot justification but the point for *****ing about it passed in the Seventies, bud.
 

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