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By Jacqueline Coley
This past weekend we saw about 30 minutes of Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and to put it simply this ain’t your Daddy’s Star Wars.
The footage from Rogue One started with the first 15 minutes of the film, followed by few 2-3 minutes clips from the first half, and ending with an extended trailer sizzle reel. It is not enough to judge how good the film will be, but I can tell you – without question – this is not like any Star Wars story we have ever seen. If you’re worried about spoilers, let me just say, I did get some details about the film, but I don’t KNOW anything. We reviewed an extended trailer, and though I can now make assumptions on a few plot points, I learned nothing that couldn’t garner from the current marketing of Rogue One. So here is what we saw:
The shift from the previous Star Wars films starts with the crawl – or in this case – the lack of crawl. The film begins with “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….,” then we jump to a cold open. We are on a young Jyn Erso’s home world where Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) dressed all in white and shoulder to shoulder with black storm troopers – in direct contrast to the Darth Vader entrance of A New Hope – lands in an open field. Krennic is sinister yet charismatic during his interrogation of Jyn’s father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen). Ben Mendelsohn’s performance here is very reminiscent of Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds instantly terrifying and disarming. The Ersos, it seems, have been preparing for Krennic’s eventual discovery of their hiding place. Like this, immediately after her mother sends Jyn off with words of love and wisdom, she provokes Krennic. The skirmish results in Jyn’s escape, her mother’s death, and her father’s apprehension. Later we meet, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) who rescues Jyn and says, “We have a long ride ahead of us.” Then there is a beat, and “BAM,” the Rogue One title card fills the screen as the main theme plays.
In the next scene, we meet Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), an intelligence officer for the Rebel Alliance. Cassian’s interaction with a wounded agent shows that even though he is one of the “good” guys he has no problem making a wrong decision to achieve the ultimate goal. The Rebels we learn want to know how to defeat the Death Star. To do this, they need Galen Erso’s plans. To get to Galen Erso, they need a defector named Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). When we spoke with Riz following Rogue One press conference, he mentioned how his character is not terribly smart and never intended to be caught up in a war. – “He’s just trying to survive.”
(Jiang Wen)
Ph: Film Frame
©Lucasfilm LFL
It becomes apparent that the Rebels need Jyn to get to Gerrera, who can then help them get to Galen, and ultimately destroy the Death Star. During the rebels rescue of Jyn’s, is where we first meet K-2SO (voiced and played by Alan Tudyk), who even the most casual fans will be talking about long after the credits roll. During Jyn’s rescue, she’s catapulted to the ground by K-2SO, and he cheekily says “Congratulations, you’ve been saved.” This moment pretty well sums up the character, funny, brutally honest, and lethal. ” During this same action piece, we also meet Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) a blind warrior who is also Force sensitive. He describes as a “Guardian of the Whills. Though his character is still a mystery, even in the footage we saw, one thing is for sure is Donnie Yen is going to be bad-ass – Darth Maul style bad-ass.
I did see some other things that I would say are a bit spoilerier, so I will not discuss those here. The biggest thing I walked away with is that this is a huge departure from the previous films. Rogue One strikes me as Apocalypse Now meets Mission Impossible with a little Argo on the side. Only seeing 28 minutes of a 130-minute film isn’t enough to judge it, but is sufficient to get the flavor. The flavor is new, dark and gritty and I can’t wait to have more.
Rogue One is in theaters December 16th.
The post Rogue One strikes me as Apocalypse Now meets Mission Impossible appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
By Jacqueline Coley
This past weekend we saw about 30 minutes of Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and to put it simply this ain’t your Daddy’s Star Wars.
The footage from Rogue One started with the first 15 minutes of the film, followed by few 2-3 minutes clips from the first half, and ending with an extended trailer sizzle reel. It is not enough to judge how good the film will be, but I can tell you – without question – this is not like any Star Wars story we have ever seen. If you’re worried about spoilers, let me just say, I did get some details about the film, but I don’t KNOW anything. We reviewed an extended trailer, and though I can now make assumptions on a few plot points, I learned nothing that couldn’t garner from the current marketing of Rogue One. So here is what we saw:
The shift from the previous Star Wars films starts with the crawl – or in this case – the lack of crawl. The film begins with “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….,” then we jump to a cold open. We are on a young Jyn Erso’s home world where Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) dressed all in white and shoulder to shoulder with black storm troopers – in direct contrast to the Darth Vader entrance of A New Hope – lands in an open field. Krennic is sinister yet charismatic during his interrogation of Jyn’s father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen). Ben Mendelsohn’s performance here is very reminiscent of Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds instantly terrifying and disarming. The Ersos, it seems, have been preparing for Krennic’s eventual discovery of their hiding place. Like this, immediately after her mother sends Jyn off with words of love and wisdom, she provokes Krennic. The skirmish results in Jyn’s escape, her mother’s death, and her father’s apprehension. Later we meet, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) who rescues Jyn and says, “We have a long ride ahead of us.” Then there is a beat, and “BAM,” the Rogue One title card fills the screen as the main theme plays.
In the next scene, we meet Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), an intelligence officer for the Rebel Alliance. Cassian’s interaction with a wounded agent shows that even though he is one of the “good” guys he has no problem making a wrong decision to achieve the ultimate goal. The Rebels we learn want to know how to defeat the Death Star. To do this, they need Galen Erso’s plans. To get to Galen Erso, they need a defector named Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). When we spoke with Riz following Rogue One press conference, he mentioned how his character is not terribly smart and never intended to be caught up in a war. – “He’s just trying to survive.”
(Jiang Wen)
Ph: Film Frame
©Lucasfilm LFL
It becomes apparent that the Rebels need Jyn to get to Gerrera, who can then help them get to Galen, and ultimately destroy the Death Star. During the rebels rescue of Jyn’s, is where we first meet K-2SO (voiced and played by Alan Tudyk), who even the most casual fans will be talking about long after the credits roll. During Jyn’s rescue, she’s catapulted to the ground by K-2SO, and he cheekily says “Congratulations, you’ve been saved.” This moment pretty well sums up the character, funny, brutally honest, and lethal. ” During this same action piece, we also meet Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) a blind warrior who is also Force sensitive. He describes as a “Guardian of the Whills. Though his character is still a mystery, even in the footage we saw, one thing is for sure is Donnie Yen is going to be bad-ass – Darth Maul style bad-ass.
I did see some other things that I would say are a bit spoilerier, so I will not discuss those here. The biggest thing I walked away with is that this is a huge departure from the previous films. Rogue One strikes me as Apocalypse Now meets Mission Impossible with a little Argo on the side. Only seeing 28 minutes of a 130-minute film isn’t enough to judge it, but is sufficient to get the flavor. The flavor is new, dark and gritty and I can’t wait to have more.
Rogue One is in theaters December 16th.
The post Rogue One strikes me as Apocalypse Now meets Mission Impossible appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
As The Exorcist builds towards its first season finale, it finally gave us an antagonist that matters. While the show could be scary when Pazuzu possessed Casey, we had seen that story before. We […]
The post The Exorcist Now Has a Truly Scary Villain appeared first on Geek.com.
I was hoping for and expecting a lot of things from the season one finale of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency from BBC America, all of which I got, and moe. Would all of the different plot lines come together in satisfying fashion? They did. Would the absurd and complicated story somehow make complete sense by the end? It did. Might the innocent Lydia at the middle of everything be saved? She was. But what made this final episode, “Two Sane Guys Doing Normal Things,” so exceptional, and as a result the whole season as well, was something I never hoped for because I was never expecting it, and that was just how emotional it all turned out to be.
Considering the convoluted (in the best way) story about a band of men that had come into possession of a time machine/soul-swapping device, by the time all of the different aspects of the story came together–in truly impressive fashion–in that basement, we were surprisingly overcome with emotion at Todd and Dirk’s success in saving Lydia, and in her reunion with Farrah. And that was already after Bart and Ken’s touching scene when he told her he wasn’t leaving her, after she had just discovered (much to her surprise) that sometimes the universe doesn’t make sense and we can’t always know what is coming next.
And that hilarious shrug between Ken and Todd was a quiet moment of perfection.
It was easy enough to appreciate just how coherent the whole, massive plot really was from the get-go, when Bart and Ken showed up just in the nick of time, proving that everything truly is/was connected (seriously, try and make a graph of everything that took place this season–including a timeline–and see how that goes). However, the real impressive work was making that entire story resonate so much on a personal level. For all of the awful things that happened (and were/are yet to happen), there was a beauty to it that transcended the silliness of the story, as well as its darkness. We always knew that the disparate events and character would come together, but this episode didn’t work so well because it made sense; it worked because it meant something.
Part of that was due to the truth about the whole story, that the time loop itself could/can never be closed, because to close it would be to wipe out Lydia Spring’s very existence. Patrick Spring was right: it always ends this way, because it has to. To try and erase our mistakes would be to erase who we are. In this case it was literal, but it was a powerful message from a show that managed to have insightful things to say amid an entertaining and totally insane story. There are far more “serious” and boring shows on television that have tried and failed to say something half as meaningful, all while using a heavy hand, instead of the lighter-tone Dirk Gently employed. And those shows don’t even have a band of murderous bald guys with electrified crossbows.
It’s especially great that the (first) ending didn’t wrap everything up nicely, because life doesn’t work like that. Amanda didn’t forgive Todd, and Patrick Spring will always die in that hotel to save his daughter. The second “ending,” where the new idiot in charge of rounding up the subjects of Project Blackwing was out hunting Dirk and his ilk, was really more prelude to season two than a conclusion to this story, but even that led to poor Estevez’s death, adding to the uneven resolution of season one’s story. The characters barely got to enjoy a job well done before the next, connected job, showed up. That’s perfect.
There was a little lull in the middle of this eight-episode season, where character motives and histories got repeated and the furious pace came to a disappointing halt, but ultimately this first year was completely crazy, totally complicated, and wholly entertaining.
Before it started I hoped all of those things would be true, but what ultimately made it great was the unexpected part. Everything was connected, and that turned out to include connecting us to all of it personally.
What did you think of the finale? What did you think of this first season? Talk about it with us in the comments section below.
Images: BBC America