Kojiro wrote:Mad wrote:As I recall, Rey's main flaw was wanting to return to Jakku.
Her parents promised to return and she wants to be there.
Honest question: did they really? Or was that an assumption on her part? It's been a while. (And, of course, if they did, we have yet to learn if they were lying or are even still alive to return.)
That's not even a flaw, it's just common sense. If there's a flaw it's in that she's perhaps still naive enough to believe someone is coming. Unfortunately for the movie, Rey never has to come to that understanding on her own.
Yes, she has to be told by Maz (to be fair: how does Maz know? Does Maz know? Or is she just making a reasonable assumption?). Rey was never going to come to that realization on her own.
She flees Jakku under fire, not by choice. She is then captured and taken to the next set piece again, without her choice. Which is what makes it all the more perplexing for her to choose not to go back to Jakku, but instead to lead the mission to get Luke.
Why is that perplexing? It's reasonable that either she took what Maz said to heart. Or that she hopes that training with Luke will enable her to find her parents in some fashion.
but where the fuck is Leia or anyone of note in the Resistance? It's all about finding Luke- the whole damn plot- and when they find him they send someone they literally just met. It's as weird as the whole Leia hugging Rey thing- oh have you two met before? No, you're complete fucking strangers to each other. Go hug poor Chewie for fucks sake.
Yes, that's weird and I agree. You'd think Leia would want to go. Siblings, go figure.

Chewie at least went with her, as I recall.
The problem here is that they make Finn look like utterly incompetent. His one shining moment is when he doubts the FO and turns but event that is completely out of left field. After that he's a joke.
Yes, I would have preferred if his cut scene was compensated with another scene to let him shine.
He needs Poe to pilot for him, the Rey to pilot for him, then Rey to fix the Falcon,
These make sense. A stormtrooper isn't going to specialize in those things.
then Rey to save him from the tentacle monster.
Yes, this could have been redone to let Finn shine. Rey had the expertise needed to release the creature, but the exact nature of the action sequence that followed had no bearing on the plot. There was no plot reason that required Rey to be the hero there. I'm sure the scene could have been reworked to show him using his training to contain the threat.
Then he needs saving from TR-8R
That could go either way. Either Finn can somehow be superior to other stormtroopers, or we can see that these stormtroopers are proficient with melee weapons but the one using the weapon he's trained with will have the advantage over the one using an unfamiliar weapon. Considering the type of movie this is, either way works.
then again by Poe when captured.
It wasn't just him that was rescued, though, as I recall.
There's no doubt about it, Finn gets the short straw in demonstrating ability/competence.
Which is why it's a shame what could have been his biggest chance to shine was cut and that its removal wasn't compensated for elsewhere. I do hope he gets his chance more than once in the Episode 8.
Gandalf wrote:A good film will make you at least vaguely interested in the characters who are presumably in peril, or make the action itself interesting. Highlander has so-so action, but one cares because the characters are likeable to varying degrees, so you want MacLeod to kill Kurgan. On the other end of the scale, am I particularly interested in the characters in The Raid? No, but that action is worth it.
For me, Rogue One filled neither of those criteria.
And I found the action to be more than worth it. Some of the best in Star Wars. It did what the prequels forgot to do: show the flow of battle and give context for individual scenes. The OT was always better than the PT on this (the Battle of Coruscant in RotS, for example, was just a muddled mess even if it looked pretty, and even then it squandered so much time on the buzz droid shenanigans), but I think this did even better than the OT.
The characters were varying degrees of okay to great, similar to other movies with an ensemble cast. No, these characters mostly didn't have the same level of charisma as the TFA cast, but that didn't bother me. In particular, figured that a few of them were definitely going to bite it and that there was a small chance there all of them could.
Of course, liking a film is a matter of opinion and I don't expect to change yours any more than you can expect to change mine.