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NOT A REVIEW: ROGUE ONE - A STAR WARS STORY

15/12/2016

30 Comments

 
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This isn't a review. I don't do reviews of films. Look up above this bit: the title actually says specifically that this isn't a review. I mean, I wrote Pudsey The Dog: The Movie. What the hell do I know about what makes a good film? 

So no. Not a review.

​However, I know whether or not I enjoy something, so it is my thoughts on Rogue One, as a massive Star Wars fan. In part I'm writing this because I'm trying to process and acknowledge my disappointment, and not spend days trying to convince myself that it was the best thing ever - like I did with The Phantom Menace. Before, y'know, finally admitting to myself that it was terrible and weird, like everyone else did.

Rogue One isn't terrible. It's a servicable action movie, which is painted with big, broad, Star Wars-y brush strokes, many of which put a big, broad smile on my face.

So... why am I disappointed? What's going on? Follow me as I try to find out.

Beware: Here be a few spoilers!
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HYPE-SPACE
My other half reminded me that this time last year the run-up to The Force Awaken had put me in a terrible mood.

After the Prequels, I wanted - needed - to love a Star Wars movie again, and there was so much riding on it for me. I was tense, anxious, worried... Frankly, I went into that film looking as if I'd ingested a cup of wasps.

And I came out beaming.

I honestly loved The Force Awakens, and I so wanted to love Rogue One. Instead, I just sort of, kind of, liked it. It's a decent, competent, action movie. Hence: disappointment.


Look, I know I bought too much into the hype.

Well... not so much the hype from Disney and Lucasfilm, but all the hype from people who went to the premiere last week. The Kevin Smiths and Wil Wheatons who said it was the best Star Wars since Empire or the original. They should've kept their stupid mouths shut, and downplayed expectations for the rest of us.

I get that they must've been caught up in the excitement of a big movie premiere. I should've known better than to listen to them. But I also bought into this week's reviews - almost all of which were unanimously positive.

Including the one from middle-aged Pete "A Shame For Everyone Involved" Bradshaw in The Guardian - and he'd previously had a great time tearing into the low-budget children's film Pudsey The Dog: The Movie for his shits and giggles. I'd imagine the dopamine rush he got from that review gave him an enormous erection. Well, as enormous as you can manage anyway, with an underfed micropenis.

TEMPER TANTRUM
Foolishly, I didn't even manage to temper my excitement with a bad mood this time around. There was no Cup-a-Wasp. I so need to love Star Wars that even before a film comes out I'm grasping for the hope that I'll love it. So, part of my disappointment here is my own fault - my own inability to reign in my expections after 40 years of loving the franchise - barring a decade where I felt confused by the prequels. The Force Awakens got me all giddy.

I know Episode VII has come in for a bit of a backlash of late, for being too slavish a recreation of the original template, but for me it got so much right. Importantly, it got the feel right. It was a reminder of the thing the world fell in love with back in 1977.

Most importantly, though, it got the characters right. From the off I loved BB-8, Poe Dameron and Finn, and was intrigued by Kylo Ren. Rey I still haven't much warmed to - but she's still more likeable than almost anyone in Rogue One.

And that - I think - is at the heart of my issue with it.

WHAT ARE THE REASONS PLZ?
There are myriad reasons why Star Wars became so loved. The mythos, the universe, the special effects and action. In Rogue One, all of these are present and correct in often unexpected and beautiful ways. It looks like Star Wars, it feels like Star Wars - and the final 45 minutes are as Star Wars-y as anything that has ever been put on screen before. If not more so.

The action in the movie is fantastic, and so true to the originals in its clarity. There's not much which happens that feels truly original, but it does feel truly authentic (at least in the action). Even the Star Destroyers - though CGI creations - look as if they've been built from old model kit parts.

But the characters... ugh. I liked K2-SO - the reprogrammed Imperial droid, who was commendably sarcastic. I liked the two Asian Guardians of the Whills guys. Everyone else was just a cipher, sketched in, there to service the plot. Rebel spy Cassian Andor - who seemed so likeable and Han Solo-ish in the trailers and pre-release interviews - just mopes around frowning. 

COMING OUT
When I came out, I realised that none of the characters - until Jyn Erso saves a young girl about halfway through the movie (by which time it's too late) - have a "Save the cat" moment.

You know: a scene where one of the protagonists - even if they're playing someone who is fundamentally unlikable, or makes bad decisions - does something selfless (such as, y'know, saving a cat). It's formulaic and manipulative, but virtually every movie has them, and movies have them because they work.

In The Force Awakens, you care about Poe when he saves BB-8 from the First Order. You care about Finn when he decides not to shoot the villagers. And Rey when she saves BB-8 from the Teedo scavenger. Almost all of them, within their first couple of scenes, have done something selfless.

From that point onwards you're with them. You like them. And... they're funny. Poe and Finn and Rey and BB-8 all crack jokes, or have a bit of attitude. And they like each other: characters are defined by their relationships to one another: it tells the audience what to think and feel about them.

There's none of this in the first half of Rogue One, and despite a ton of eye candy - like, a ton - I actually felt myself getting a bit bored. That didn't even happen with the Prequels (albeit only in the same way as you'd struggle to get bored if you were locked in a dumpster with a lunatic, a box of matches, and a load of Roman candles).
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NO MOMENTS
In Rogue One, none of the characters have a moment where I fell in love with them, and barring the odd line from K2, Chirrut, and Baze, there's virtually no humour.

​They don't even seem to like one another, so there's no warmth either. Jyn loves her dad, but that relationship is so sketched in that it barely registers.

Consequently, when the action is happening during the final battle - as stunning as it is - I found it hard to be invested in it. Even when the characters meet their inevitable fates - and Jyn and Cassian suddenly seem to care for one another, out of nowhere - it just washed over me. 

The strongest, most memorable, character in this movie is far and away Darth Vader, who appears twice. They're fantastic appearances - managing to somehow put extra flesh on his rotted bones - but made me wonder why he wasn't in it throughout.

The argument went that they didn't want him to overshadow the movie... but more of his shadow would've certainly helped. Having him rasping down the characters' necks would've added more of a sense of jeopardy. 

Ironically, here I am wanting more Darth Vader, when perhaps my biggest problem with the whole thing is regarding the other returning characters.

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OFF THE CLOTH MOFF
You see, Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia are both in this movie, played by CGI freaks.

They look as much like Peter Cushing and a young Carrie Fisher as Kevin Spacey looked like Kevin Spacey in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (at least Spacey was interacting with other CGI characters).

Leia just has one tiny moment right at the end, but why go the route of making her a distracting, CGI, puppet, leaving that as the final image for the audience?

The technology must surely exist to be able to cut her out of Star Wars and drop her into a new scene? I mean, they blended old and new in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 years ago, on a TV budget. You wouldn't even have needed to give her any dialogue. That way at least I wouldn't have been distracted by her weird, CGI teeth.

Tarkin is a much bigger problem, because he's actually a pretty significant character in Rogue One.

He has dialogue scenes, but he just doesn't look real. He's completely distracting every time he's on screen, and it's only going to look worse as this movie ages. If they'd just recast him - as they did some of the Rebel top brass, and as they did at the arse-end of Revenge of the Sith - it would've worked far better.

I'd have accepted a living, breathing, human being, who wasn't the late Peter Cushing, more than I would this soulless, wax-eyed, golem.​ He looks like he's stepped in from The Polar Express, or that horrible CGI version of A Christmas Carol. Chilling, for all the wrong reasons.

Fair play for trying to bridge the Uncanny Valley, but the rocket sled - once again - fell out of the sky halfway across.

Alternatively: just not have him at all! Write a script which doesn't rely on doing things which aren't yet able to be done! I work in kids' TV, where most shows have a budget of about sixty quid. I write within the limitations of that budget all the time. And you know what? It forces me to focus on character.

For me, while this movie dovetails beautifully with the original Star Wars, the Tarkin and Leia resurrections feel like a transgression, the way the additions in the Star Wars Special Editions did. Perhaps more so, because at least then I felt it was George Lucas's right as the series' creator - however wrong-headed the decision - to overload Tatooine with farting Jawas and slapstick droids trying to put hydrospanners up one another's metal bums.

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JUST A MOVIE
Ok. I know. It's just a movie. But to me, to others like me, Star Wars is more than that. I can't help it.

It was as much a part of my childhood - my entire life - as my own family. I mean, there's love there for it from me. Genuine love. It is one of the fundamental building blocks of who I am.

So when it lets me down, it lets me down more than it otherwise would.

It might be that you're less of a fan than I am, and consequently you won't have as much of an issue with it as I did, and think I'm a bit mad. Or maybe the Star Wars-y-ness of it will go straight over your head and you'll just think it's a mediocre action movie.

I dunno. I honestly don't. I'm too close to it, too invested in it. I take no pleasure in expressing my disappointment. As I said above: I need to love Star Wars movies. And with The Force Awakens, I had my love rekindled. It was like going back to the location of a first date with somebody you've been with for a long time.

LIKED A LOT OF WHAT?
For all this rant... I also liked a lot in this movie, and I'm seeing it again next week. This time at an IMAX. Maybe now I've got this off my chest I'll feel better about it.

I mean, it looks great, the action is great, I like what it adds to the Star Wars mythos. It just lacked an emotional core for me. Actually... no. What it really lacked was a sense of fun. It was just so damn dour. I was hoping some of that freewheeling lunacy, that the Marvel movies have perfected, would make its way to LucasFilm... and here I am ranting about it again.

WHY CAN'T I STOP?!?!?

Marvel knows how to make you care about its characters, knows how to give you a good time, and it knows how to throw stuff on screen which you've never seen before: look at Ant Man and Doctor Strange. Rogue One feels too slavishly wedded to recreating the world of the original Star Wars movies instead of giving us brand new visuals that we've never seen on screen.

We were promised that Rogue One would be something very different from the other Star Wars movies, but it isn't really. It's very Star Wars. And maybe it would've been better if they'd had the courage to be more bold with it, and really go all-out to give it a different tone and look. Instead what they've done is offer up Star Wars, but without the bonkers playfulness. 

Also: please... can this be the last Star Wars lead for a while who isn't a posh, white, brunette English girl who sadly isn't a brilliant, inherently charismatic actress?

Or if you do cast another one, at least give them something more to do than being a) An orphan, and b) Good at hitting people with sticks. That's not the same thing as characterisation.

++ LETTERS ++ LETTERS ++ LETTERS ++
​

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STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - EXCLUSIVE SCRIPT EXTRACT!
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THE MAN'S DADDY - Hilarious Star Wars Comedy Jokes
30 Comments
Kara Van Park
15/12/2016 04:00:13 pm

Eretion?

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Fozzie
15/12/2016 04:11:21 pm

A fair reation to a film and series that for me i feel has nothing left to tell,i thought force awakens nothing more than a rehash and this one told a story,my imagination told me 39 years ago....

And yes no doubt i told expanded universe blah blah but for me if it didnt happen in the 6 origibal filns i dont really care too much.

And as for Kevin Smith i stopped listening to his unbiased reviews years ago

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Sad Darren
15/12/2016 04:26:11 pm

I dunno man, 'they didn't do anything new' isn't a very focussed complaint, it seems like a vague sense of disappointment that could stem from any amount of sources. I hate to say it Biffster but maybe you are just a 'grown-up' now and as such have 'grown-out' of blockbusters?

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Mr Biffo
15/12/2016 04:33:16 pm

That is a silly assertion given that I love a blockbuster.

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Mr Biffo
15/12/2016 06:30:43 pm

And listed several thousand words worth of sources as to where my disappointment stems from...

Paulvw
15/12/2016 05:26:48 pm

Yeah I feel the same about Tarkin and Leia, particularly Leia seeing as they cut in Red Leader who has a bigger role than Leia.

Overall though I enjoyed it. The change of mood made it feel a bit distinct from the main series. Although the dialogue was clunky and the characters a bit lacking I found myself a bit sad when the inevitable happens. The 2 wills characters were great and added a bit of heart. Ks20 is right up there. And ...where can I get a hammerhead corvette!

For me niggles aside, I'm not blown away like I was with VII and the overblown praise never struck me as going to come true 'as good as ESB' err no. I was pretty happy last night having watched it and been thinking about it a lot today and I think it's a grower.

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CdrJameson
19/12/2016 08:13:57 pm

> Where can I get a hammerhead corvette!

Homeworld: Cataclysm - http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Ramming_Frigate

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combat_honey
15/12/2016 05:27:53 pm

Sorry to hear you weren't that keen, Biffo. I had high expectations for TFA and felt it delivered, but my expectations for this one are low simply because I find it hard to be invested in a film where we know exactly what happened after it and before it in the SW timeline. So hopefully that means I'll be pleasantly surprised. Also, I watched The Phantom Menace a week ago, so hopefully still having a comparatively awful SW film fresh in my mind will help too...

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Paul
15/12/2016 05:42:27 pm

I get what you mean about Tarkin and Leia. I’ve not seen this film yet, but I can just imagine the oddness of it all. The mixing of CGI humans and live footage is something that is very hard to achieve. You are literally plonking a lump of chalk next to a lump of cheese and hopping that none can tell the difference.

You are right about the whole Deep Space Nine episode. They nailed it - the retrofitting of characters from the DS9 series into footage featuring Shatner et al was done so well, I was questioning my memory when I first saw it. I had to seek out Trouble With Tribbles to see what they replaced. There must surely have been enough Cushing and Fisher footage from the first Star Wars film to utilise.

I can’t help thinking that the afore mentioned episode of DS9 is the one causing headaches when it comes to any plans to re-master the series in HD. It was a very effects laden episode (just by the very nature of what they did), and would probably be the most costly one to remaster.

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John Johnson
15/12/2016 06:08:53 pm

The problem is that this is quite a small story to tell. Find out about the plans, steal the plans. For all the idea that this movie is a 'standalone', it must make absolutely no sense to newcomers. Marvel movies stand on their own but progress an overall story. This really doesn't.

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Reactotron
15/12/2016 06:16:49 pm

This is so close to my reaction it's mildly freaking me out. From the despair and relief of Force Awakens to seeing Rogue One again in spite of myself, and all the missing or misfired character beats in between.

Perhaps worth noting that on the intense fan forums - where even the furthest penumbra of the Star Wars universe are minutely pored over - this film is considered a triumph, and a redemption from the cosy formula of The Force Awakens. I suspect a couple of things are reinforcing this: a validation of an investment in the broader, more complex universe that was only really present in Empire until now, not to mention all of their hard learned trivia which was nodded at throughout. And, at a guess, those commenters are in that magic age teen-twenties of breaking free of their family cocoon but before having families of their own. This demographic famously likes their stories 'darker', and Rogue One was certainly that.

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combat_honey
15/12/2016 07:37:46 pm

Oh god, the fans who clamour for 'dark' Star Wars are the worst. I remember when Disney bought the franchise and they were up in arms that SW would be 'disnefied', as though it weren't already incredibly tonally similar to Disney stuff.

I guess wanting to be seen as 'mature' prevents them from loving SW for what it is - a fairy tale, fantasy romance - so they instead misremember it as this grim, gritty, serious sci-fi war film series or something.

As such, I've been slightly put off by the idea that Rogue One is supposedly 'darker'. One reviewer even said that they would recommend not taking children along, and I don't think that's ideal for a series of what are essentially children's films.

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Bananasthemonkey
15/12/2016 07:39:06 pm

I'm really struggling with this revival stuff. Without the rose tinted spectacles of being 8, the three originals seem alright In a nostalgic kind of way but also kind of lame. The prequels were fundamentally unwatchable. The recent one I couldn't get - the story literally made no sense to me beyond a stuttering series of snapshots of cosy Star Wars imagery and without some kind of massive Kim Jong il style willing suspension of disbelief the characters were ludicrous and as shallow as graphene. I have come to realise that I actually hate Star Wars, though I didn't used to. SHRIEK! No master not the punishment pants! Pity poor Bananas!

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BrickMan?
16/12/2016 02:03:51 am

Personally, I liked the weirdness of the prequels. Sure they had many, many problems, but at least they had new things and characters named things like "Elan Sleazebaggano". For me Star Wars should be a bit weird and offputting. Remember the first time you saw Jabba The Hutt? That dude was whack! I feel like these new movies are too safe and not weird enough. I hope for a future spin off set ten thousand years before the original movie and the main character is a crab with metal pinchers.

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RichardM
16/12/2016 08:10:22 am

Crab Nicholson Extreme Sleepover: A Star Wars Story?

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Adam
16/12/2016 09:41:38 am

What baffles me more than anything in why the people involved in making the film couldn't see that Tarkin/Leia looked like shit and just decided not to bother. I loved the film generally, but that final shot of Leia is the worst final shot in any film I can remember.

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John
16/12/2016 11:00:52 am

Yeah, that is weird - I mean, someone has sat there and made those characters. Did they think 'that's the best we can do - it'll have to do!' or were they so caught up in it that it was more 'wow, this is cutting edge stuff, so everyone else will love it!'. Just odd to let those bits make it into the final film.

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Glyn
16/12/2016 09:10:13 pm

It's weird that some people don't like the cgi characters when everyone I saw it with, and myself, were saying how good they were.

I wonder if it's because effects are so good now we tend to look for flaws.

Plippyploppcheesenose
16/12/2016 10:02:38 am

At least they didn't burn a cat. Or save a cat and then burn it.

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John Matthews
16/12/2016 10:48:47 am

I deliberately didn't read this before I went to see it last night - so no colouring of expectation for me! But you've nailed it. The CGI monstrosities are close to real, but also show how far that computer animation has to go before it hits 'real' - and until you get there, they're monstrosities. And I like the idea that some sort of selflessness (or just some personality?!) is needed to make us fall for the characters. Even those with potential, like poor Jyn, are stymied by far too much awful dialogue. By the end, she seemed to be left just pouting in several scenes - and that actually seemed better than another clunking line. As if someone had stumbled upon the homily 'better to remain silent and be thought a fool...' and realised that would in fact be better. Even K2-So's best lines - which were genuinely amusing - didn't quite pop and crack off the screen.

It cut between scenes so often that I wonder whether they just had too much material and couldn't decide what to show, ending up with just a bit too much. It's close to very good, really close, I think.

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tak
16/12/2016 11:18:57 am

Haha I didn't know they were computer generating dead actors for this, that must look awful

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Clive Peppard
16/12/2016 02:14:29 pm

The DS9 Tribble episode was superb, SUPERB

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Keith
16/12/2016 03:18:43 pm

I didnt have a problem with anything, except this: Darth Vader being fat in his first scene

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Pete
16/12/2016 03:45:42 pm

I agree with many of the points biffo makes and disagree with equally as many. It did feel overly long in parts and i did find my attention wandering but found it overall A much more rewarding experience than the force awakens. The actions of the rebels in the final scene as their desire to save themselves from the unstoppable Lord Vader is overcome by their selfless need to save the Alliance sums up the entire film for me. I am man enough to admit that i shed more than one tear for the characters.

Perfect? Far from it best Star Wars film? for me yes!

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Jenuall
17/12/2016 02:57:09 am

Hmm, pinch of salt taken. Given how my view of Force Awakens seems to differ greatly from yours Mr Biffo I'm not going to let the grievances you've aired about Rogue One put me off.

I've tried looking at it from various angles but still can't understand the outpouring of affection that greeted Force Awakens on release. It's obviously far from being a terrible movie, but from my eyes, ears and brain has more than enough problems that stop it from being a great (or even good) one just the same.

That said I'm no Star Wars nut so was never going to feel some surge of nostalgia, and equally never thought the prequels were as terrible as others (though they're obviously not great movies) so was not longing for some epic recovery.

I'll give Rogue One a shot and as I'm not expecting the world from it I'm sure I'll come out smiling 😀

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Vader's Whiplash Thing
19/12/2016 01:21:45 am

I think it's a sad film for sad times - Jedha is obviously Middle Eastern flavoured and the tanks in the streets, suicide bombing and threatening indigenous are more akin to Ridley Scott doing another desert number than Star Wars.

Everybody dying made me feel psychopathic 'I quite liked them... oh well, never mind'.

Force Awakens had genuinely darker moments, though.

For the first 50mins or so I thought I was watching an over zealous work of fan fiction.

K-2SO stole the show.

MESSAGE ENDS

PS was there a planet named a bit like Obi Wan?

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CdrJameson
19/12/2016 08:23:13 pm

Another victory for knowing nothing about the film in advance!

I didn't know that Tarka or Lein were going to appear so I guess I was so surprised I didn't notice that they looked shonky (I didn't. I'll have to take your word for it).

It could have done with a bit more humour-leavening, and although K-2SO4 had the best lines I thought his voice was oddly out-of-world, more like a narrator than a character. Overall though a much better prequel for Star Wars than Episode 3 was.

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Hamptonoid
23/12/2016 08:21:55 pm

K2SO4 - nice. Will be using that!

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Waynan The Barbarian
21/12/2016 09:38:08 am

Well i've been putting off reading this until i got to watch the film myself. Now i have watched it i can only agree with you Mr B, i think you got it spot on. It was very Star Wars. In fact it was probably more Star Wars than the Force Awakens which i too enjoyed more than Rogue One, but it was missing that one thing the original films had in abundance - Heart.
I didn't care about the characters. When they were getting offed at the end, apart from K2-SO, all i could do was shrug.
I genuinely wanted Vader to slaughter every last one of them.
I would say it's worth watching just for the last scene with Vader alone! I think that's a side of Vader we've all been itching to see on screen for a very long time.

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Tom
20/1/2017 04:01:58 pm

I'm sorry that you didn't like it. For me it was a movie in service to A New Hope and it definitely succeeded in those terms and on it's own, darker merits. Mads Mikkelsen's monologue alone was Oscar-worthy for me. Utterly no chance he will be nominated, of course.

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