Star Wars Rogue One Insta-reaction

SPOILERS, obviously. Lots and lots of spoilers. SPOILERS. I just saw the movie and I have to get the words out before they EAT ME.

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SPOILERS, dammit.

• Right, yes, so I loved it. Almost wholly. It felt like PROPER STAR WARS and also GOOD STAR WARS and it gave me feelings of YAY and FLAIL and OMG.
• The start, the very start was quite great and beautiful, and then it went a bit confused? Maybe? A bit. It was like every other scene introducing a new planet and some new people and, hmm, well, it did not seem THE SMOOTHEST.
• That said it wasn’t AWFUL or anything, but then it started to pick up again as it stopped needing to introduce stuff and started DOING THINGS.
• My alternative title for this movie is Director Krennic’s Bad Day at the Office.
• Okay, I have one major complaint and that is this: not enough women. Not NEARLY enough. It was a bit ridiculous frankly and casting should be ashamed of themselves. I was getting more and more flipping annoyed during the final battle as it was dude after dude and then a few minutes in FINALLY we get a WOMAN PILOT, and then it turns out there are two, maybe three, so that was okay, but EVERYTHING ELSE. DEAR GOD. All the Imperials are male. The engineers are all male (hey, IMDB says one’s Richard Franklin? Is that right? (Doctor Who thing, if you’re reading this w/o a worrying knowledge of classic Who)). Everyone on Jyn’s team who isn’t Jyn is male. All the people who turn up for the final mission who stand behind Cassian are male. The only scene where I see a decent number of women on screen is in the Yavin 4 conference room when they’re having that big discussion. And a whole three women get to speak during that scene and there are some in the background. Yes, it’s MILES better than original Star Wars, but it’s bad. And disappointing. And I was expecting better.
• I mean REALLY. There are so many bit parts in this movie and every sodding one a dude apart from Jyn’s mother and Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s Senator, and two/three pilots.
• MOVING ON, Felicity Jones was AMAZING and I loved her and her character and everything about her. Jyn Erso is the most complex and flawed hero Star Wars has had on the big screen. Magnificent.
• But just cause you do an AMAZING job with your lead, who happens to be a woman, doesn’t mean you can ignore women EVERYWHERE ELSE. (It really is QUITE ANNOYING.)
• Though I suppose I’ll take the small bits of progress where I can – thirty years ago Cassian and Erso’s roles would have been swapped, and Cassian toned down but they’d still be the “fiesty love interest” while the dude was the star and hero of the show.
• Well done on them not having a love interest, that was a bit great.
• EVERYONE DIED OMG. Like, I thought this was going to happen after one of the trailers, which basically said to me EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE. But I was talked down. And then it started happening and I was OH GOD. MAYBE ONE WILL LIVE. BUT NO. It’s a big death hero tragedy.
• Not a fridging, dear god I will burst a vein if someone calls a the main character dying heroically at the completion of their hero arc a fridging.
• I REALLY WANTED HER TO LIVE THOUGH. I don’t care this is the better narrative choice or we’d be wondering where the Rogue One team was all Star Wars trilogy I LOVED JYN.
• Director Krennic’s cloak deserves a credit of its own.
• All the space battles were AMAZING. I may have cried. Blame the dudes ramming their wee corvette into a star destroyer. And also having a Mon Calamari in charge.
• I really think this is the most frightening the Empire have ever seemed. Maybe it’s the real world peaking in, maybe it’s just this movie goes to such lengths to show the constant, pounding brutality of the Imperials, and the tiny fragile thread of hope that keeps the rebellion going. Maybe it’s just cause EVERYONE DIES.
• Right, so, as you might know, Peter Cushing my favourite male actor. Also, I was not spoiled at all for this movie beyond watching the trailers. So. Yeah. And on the one hand I feel like I should diss it, and how dare you etc, but that would be A LIE, my actual reaction was OMGOMG GRAND MOFF TARKIN PETER CUSHING HOW THE FUCK DID THEY DO THAT???!!! :D:D:D It is a BIT weird. I mean, it’s clearly NOT Peter Cushing (though Guy Henry, who many British people will know from Holby City does a smashing job) but also is UNCANNILY LIKE PETER CUSHING. And possibly it’s less jarring to people who maybe aren’t quite so familiar with Cushing’s face and performances and mannerisms? But it was also AMAZING. And it made me terribly happy.
• Guilty confession: despite my loathing for the prequels, I still felt a little bit of joy at seeing Bail Organa. And the looks between him and Mon Mothma were STUNNING. And just seeing him there on Yavin 4 before he pops off to die on Alderaan, aargh! Feelings! Even though it reminds me of The Bloody Prequels.
• Yavin 4!! :D:D Oh, I bloody love everything on the base, everything about the way it looked, love it EVEN MORE as I have, um, player housing on Yavin 4 in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
• MON MOTHMA.
• I got a wee kick at the RT-DT and C3PO cameo, and thought Vader’s first scene was fun if kind of superfluous, while his second scene aka SITH RAMPAGE, was AWESOME and really quite perfect and terrifying and brutal. And that final getaway of the battle plans, from transmission to OMG IS THAT LEIA?! YES IT IS!!! and her saying “hope” made me giddy with how beautiful it all was. I thought we might get a glance at Leia, not an actual look at her actual face as she actually spoke. WITCHERY.
• K2-S0 was a worthy addition to the roister of Star Wars droids. He looked very proper and real too. In fact, everything did, it had weight! Sturdieness! And grime. Which is what I like to see in Star Wars.
• No, I think it was a perfectly fine idea that the convenient vent in A New Hope turned out to have been a deliberate design flaw.
• Another neat cameo: Evazan and Ponda Baba (I had to look up their names – not that much of a Star Wars nerd) on Jedha, telling Jyn to watch herself like when they tried to start a fight in Mos Eisley, and there’s a comm at one point that mentions General Syndulla – which I ASSUME is a reference to the Rebels cartoon and Hera Syndulla is hanging out somewhere on Yavin 4.
• I REALLY CAN’T BELIEVE THEY ALL DIED.  DAMMIT. And yet it was done in such a way that it didn’t glory in the grimness of it all, it didn’t make you miserable, and sad and pummel you with the awful. And that’s quite a magic thing. They all died, yes, but they died for a cause that they believed in, and to save the galaxy from a bunch of fascists.
• I really want to go watch A New Hope now with this whole new mantle of meaning attached to it.
• But, gosh, yes, that was indeed Splendid Star Wars. Well done!