Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

It's Scarif, I'm pretty sure. The beach planet.

edited 14th Oct '16 11:00:13 AM by higherbrainpattern

How does one have an entire planet be a beach? Everything can be land, or everything can be water, but not everything can be a boundary between land and water.

edited 14th Oct '16 11:16:10 AM by Catbert

It's probably like a sort of tropical planet.

It's a planet of nothing but narrow sandbars.

Scarif's new for this movie, though, so the fact that it's the planet from the trailers with the beaches is about all you *could* say about it, at this point.

Main character's father was captured and forced to help build the Death Star. Main character was also captured and held hostage for her father's good behavoir. Main character was rescued by the Rebellian. They send her in to get the Death Star plans from father. Father makes sure she learns about the flaw that he intentionally built into the Death Star.

edited 14th Oct '16 12:57:24 PM by Catbert

About as much as I'm expecting from this movie.

I also expect that everyone will die to get the plans to Leia in a glorious last stand so the plans will be the only MacGuffin instead of having people with actual knowledge of the weakness.

Just having the plans to something doesn't mean you know its weakness. It theoretically would require a team of engineers weeks of studying something that massive to find a flaw, but of course they weren't looking for flaws so much as critical strike points, reducing their research to certain major systems. The actual weakness in the Death Star was a precision explosive drop dealing severe and unexpected internal damage, likely something with less protection and fail safes because you have kilometers of armor and other infrastructure protecting it. And the only reason even that was a weakness was because fighters could slip underneath the point defenses on the outside and the shielding protecting it overtop. Those details are something often missed in criticizing the design of the Death Star. It's kind of like criticizing a car design because a phosphorous bullet has a chance of igniting the fuel.

All that said, I will be extremely disappointed if Rogue One makes reference to the actual weakness of the Death Star. It's unnecessary and irrelevant to their specific mission, and would be meaningless fanservice.

I'm hoping we see Darth Vader actually go forth and unleash his full capabilities as a combatant at the end, after being used sparingly in the rest of the film.

"My lord, please take at least a few troo-"

"That will be unnecessary Director"

<slaughter ensues>

Hopefully Vader's kickass will be in line with shear power in the force and such though. But yes he needs to kick ass somewhere.

I'm not expecting everyone on the strike team to die. 2 or 3 probably will, with Saw Gerrera and Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna's character) are the most likely individuals.

Jyn Erso probably has the best chance of making it out of the movie alive. Though "alive" might mean "alive inside an Imperial Prison with no hope of rescue in the foreseeable future".

I kinda expect Chirrut Imwe to sacrifice himself against Vader.

I am not normally one for grimdark but really to make the Empire truly feared and such I think they all really need to die or else it ruins a lot of the Empire's and Vader's threat going into ANH.

It's kinda the way these type of war movies need to end, the empire is unstoppable and all die in their path with one Hope Spot in the plans escaping to Leia with Vader following hot on her heels.

If they don't though it is going to hurt the movie a lot and hurt ANH.

edited 15th Oct '16 9:46:20 AM by Memers

Everyone in Rebels needs to die too. It's hard to take the Empire seriously otherwise.

I think the same effect could be achieved by the surviving members of the strike force being captured with no obvious hope of rescue or escape. Or alternatively they get stranded somewhere with no means of contacting the Rebel Alliance or anyone at all.

For the sake of continuity the only thing that really needs to happen is the strike force can't end the movie with a copy of the Death Star's plans, and the Empire has to be absolutely certain of this fact.

Killing off the entire cast to me would feel grimdark for the sake of being grimdark. Which would mean I would watch the movie once and then never again, even if I enjoyed it in the moment.

edited 15th Oct '16 11:10:12 AM by Falrinn

I hope most of them die but at least one of the non-white characters survives.

Well it's basically Doomed by Canon any way you look at it. But death in a blaze of glory would be preferred to torture and very probable execution by the Empire or being kept in prison facing execution on the Death Star only to die at your ally's hands as those are really the only two options that make sense given the canon. And they can't be on Leia's ship as well since it was just a transmission.

And plenty of war movies end with nearly everyone or literally everyone dead, I don't want to name names but some of the biggest are that. It very much fits with the tone and canon of the mission too as it is a suicide mission against the full might of the empire set well before The Rebellion could even dream of doing such a thing. It's a miracle that they succeed, it's unbelievable if they come out alive.

edited 15th Oct '16 11:40:45 AM by Memers

Star Wars has never been a series that kills off a lot of headline protagonists. Throughout the entire OT Obi-Wan Kenobi is literally the only major character to die at the hands of the Empire. The PT was a lot more bloody in this context, but even Revenge of the Sith only really killed off characters who were explicitly Doomed by Canon.

Overall I think there are a hundred different ways to establish the Empire as a credible threat and that the transmission of the Death Star plans is the last really hope of the Rebel Alliance. Killing off everyone on the strike force just feels uncreative and would permanently close off any chance of using the characters ever again.

...or more plausibly, result in some future writer coming up with a convoluted reason why a popular Rogue One character didn't really die. Which is not a road I want them to do down very often, so it's better to just have them captured and/or stranded so they can be brought back into the story in a much more natural manner.

That feels...uncharacteristically dark of you.

@Wackd: The Rebel Alliance has a lot of various Rebel cells that stay separate and don't really interact with each other unless it's really crucial, and the entire Rebel Fleet doesn't really assemble together all at once until Return of the Jedi, so no, nobody on Rebels needs to die just yet.

edited 15th Oct '16 11:50:33 AM by higherbrainpattern

2 of the main characters in Rebels are Jedi, so they're probably fucked. Hell, one's already been blinded.

One of those two characters is probably not gonna stay a Jedi forever though.

IIRC they have said the movie will be darker and more gritty than any other Star Wars work ever and they are already basically Doomed by Canon as well.

This is the movie to really push Imperal power and threat and avoid Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy and A-Team Firing as this is the first time The Rebellion has actually gone face to face with the full Empire instead of operating in cells, they need to pay for it and pay big, it needs to be a miracle that they accomplish the mission. Which leads into the other miracle when Luke succeeds in hitting the weakness, a mission that only had 4 survivors.

edited 15th Oct '16 12:05:24 PM by Memers

But where are the Bothans?

Bothans were the second Death Star and that was when the Empire WANTED them to get the plans, here they most certainly do not want to give up those plans in any way.