Hello Top Men and Top Women. I’m back for another blogging. It will be the bloggingest blogging that’s ever blogged. Or it’ll be, you know, some words.

It’s the last day of my winter vacation, also known as my favorite week of the year. No office from the 23rd to the 3rd, it’s been pretty sweet.

Kayla got back from Cuba late on the 31st, so we had our family Christmas on the 1st. Once again, I got totally spoiled this year (I did some spoiling myself). New pyjamas, some Skylanders sets, some Disney Infinity 3.0 Star Wars sets, some trade paperback comics, candy and of course board games. I got Eight Epics, Love Letter Premium and Pandemic Reign of Cthulhu. Eight Epics looks like it’d play best as a solitaire game and Love Letter Premium is the same game as regular Love Letter until you have five or more players, so the opportunities to play them with other people will be limited. I’ve already had the opportunity to play Pandemic Reign of Cthulhu with a friend’s copy earlier in the week so I can say that it’s a tight game that I enjoy. The tweaks they made to the game for the theme are pretty nifty and the Cthulhu theme is much more enjoyable to me so it’s a better fit for me than regular Pandemic.

Earlier in the week, we got together at Fab’s for our Christmas amongst friends and it was a lot of fun also. Owen is getting older and he’s quite a hoot. We waited until he was in bed to exchange gifts and I got some classic board gaming swag this year. Back in the 80’s, Milton Bradley cashed in on the Pac-Man game by releasing not one but two games based on the franchise: Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. I got both! They’ll get brought out to our next retro game night for sure.

I got plenty of gaming in during the week. The friends I made at our last Criq get-together have been inviting me to game with them regularly. Our last get-together included the game of Pandemic Reign of Cthulhu I mentioned earlier, an introduction (for them) to Mice and Mystics but most of all, it was my first opportunity to bring a beast to the table: Star Wars Rebellion.

The best I can describe Rebellion the board game is a cross between the classic Rebellion computer game from 1998 and an area control game (think Risk). It’s commonly referred to as “Star Wars in a box” by reviewers as it captures so much of the Star Wars theming in its mechanisms and missions. The downside to the game is that the combat system is a bit of a slog (much like the computer game as I recall). They also don’t include enough dice to be convenient. Each player can roll a maximum of 5 red and 5 black dice. Common logic would say to include 10 of each. They include 5 of each, so simultaneous dice rolling can be a problem. Fantasy Flight Games does sell a dice pack for extra dice, but really, considering the game’s cost, I think they could have included all the dice we needed with the base game. The other warning I have to offer is that it’s a LONG game (3+ hours easy, not including set up and break down) to play. The Empire’s goal is to destroy all the troops (land and space) in the Rebel base. The Rebels just want to last until they can get their influence marker to meet the turn marker (both are starting at opposite ends and move inward) by completing objectives. The Empire is an easier faction to play as they have a decided advantage in troops and troop production. I wasn’t feeling very confident in the early game as the objectives I had to complete seemed very difficult to achieve. Still, I managed to squeak out a win thanks to a Rapid Mobilization mission that allowed me to move my base before they could destroy it. When the Empire moved in on my first base, they didn’t have very many land troops so while they cleaned house in space, my land troops were safe long enough for me to jump out of there. I chose the most remote system possible for my new base and they just couldn’t reach it in time.

That’s all for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

 

Hello top men and women. Welcome back to another blog post. Let’s get right to it shall we?

I’m writing this post on Sunday and I can hardly believe that Christmas is only a week away. I thought I was going to get a present early with the release of Rogue One, but alas, it wasn’t the gift I was looking for. What follows are my thoughts of the movie and will include spoilers, what there are of them. The movie had a foregone conclusion as the premise. I walked into the movie theater knowing that the Rebels would succeed in stealing the plans to the Death Star. How then, could the ending have been so disappointing to me? We’ll get to that.
First, I want to talk about what worked for me in the movie, namely the characters. I liked most of the main characters, the exception being Cassian Andor, the male lead (more on him in my dislikes). The movie succeeds in giving each character an interesting personality that is largely engaging.

K-2S0 is by far my favorite. He speaks his mind and doesn’t care about the consequences. He’s also fallible without coming off as buffoonish. Right now, it’s a toss-up between K-2S0 and Chopper (from Rebels) as to who my favorite droid is.

Chirrut and Baze are a duo, so I’ll address them together. They are balance and counterbalance. Chirrut shows us a different approach to the Force. He believes in the Force in spiritual way, but isn’t a Jedi, Sith or whatever you would call a male Nightsister. I would argue that he doesn’t use the Force but actually lets the Force use him. Baze doesn’t seem to believe in the Force, but he believes in Chirrut and sees himself as Chirrut’s protector.

Jyn is the leader of the group because she has to be. I like her, but I don’t fully buy her if that makes sense. She’s hardened by her past but has a good core. Her change of heart comes a little too fast for my taste, but I accept it.

Orson Krennic is the villain of the piece and I’m glad they decided to portray him as one. There’s no attempt made to portray him as someone to root for. He’s driven and will do what he has to do to succeed and has no remorse for those actions.

Other than the characters, the visuals are amazing. The special effects are top notch (with one notable exception which I will get to). The locales feel different from those we’ve seen before in Star Wars movies. The action scenes are well staged though overly-long for me. This is a recurring complaint for me. I like action scenes, but they always seem to overstay their welcome with me. A good action scene should leave you wanting more, not keep coming at you until you wish they were over.
The mixed bag of the movie are all the Star Wars references in the movie. I can’t call them Easter Eggs because that would imply that they were hidden nods for the hardcore fans. These are way more overt.

Some of them, are really cool, like the inclusion of Red and Gold Leader from A New Hope as fighter pilots during the battle on Skarif. I especially like that the Ghost (from Rebels) is included as a ship in the Rebel fleet). The inclusion of Vader’s fortress is cool though it feels tacked on for the sake of a cool visual.
Other nods are puzzling, like the need to show Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba on Jedha. It’s cool until you remember, they’re supposed to be on Tatooine and when the spaceport is blown up by the Death Star, you wonder how they could have escaped the destruction. I guess they were just on their way off the moon when we run into them (maybe that’s made clear in the dialogue, but I didn’t quite catch what Evazan was saying in French).

Most puzzling is the handling of Grand Moff Tarkin. It’s clear that Krennic was created as a character because they couldn’t use Tarkin as the main villain without casting someone else in the role. Peter Cushing passed away years ago and would have looked way older than he does in A New Hope anyway. So it followed that we wouldn’t see Tarkin at all, or at most, maybe a glimpse of him. But no, he’s actually an important character in the movie. They used existing footage of Peter Cushing as Tarkin from A New Hope to create a CG model of his head to paste on someone else’s body. And this is the less-than-stellar effects work I was talking about earlier. It’s impressive, but off just enough to feel creepy. I’ll be curious to see the movie in English to hear Tarkin’s voice. I assume they got the voice actor who portrayed Tarkin in the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series as that guy does a really good Cushing impression.

And this discussion of Tarkin leads into what bothers me the most about the movie. The wholesale rewriting of Star Wars lore. Now, this may brand me as a hypocrite since I’ve gone on record as saying I don’t mind Lucasfilm’s decision to brand the Extended Universe material as an alternate Legends timeline. I don’t mind that because there’s nothing that keeps me from enjoying those materials as stand-alones. However, I don’t like when things depicted in the movies is at odds with what we know from the other movies. It was bad enough that George Lucas couldn’t be bothered to make sure everything fit together logically, but he was the creator of the universe and could do what he wanted. When other filmmakers get invited to play in the sandbox, I hold them to a higher standard.

Rogue One depicts Krennic as the spearhead of the Death Star project and Tarkin appropriates the project away from him when it comes to fruition. This, despite us seeing Tarkin overseeing the Death Star’s construction at the end of Episode III.

I will give the writers credit that the explanation of the flaw in the Death Star’s design as being intentional on the part of Jyn’s father, rather than an oversight on the part of incomptent engineers is pretty clever. However, it is a little at odds with what we see in A New Hope. Jyn’s father outright tells her in his message to her what the weakness is and she relays it to the Rebel leaders. Why then does Leia tell Han that she hopes a weakness can be found? And in Dodonna’s briefing prior to the Battle of Yavin, he says that an analysis of the plans demonstrated the weakness…as though it were his discovery. They both KNEW what the weakness was. (Fine, they needed to find out how to exploit the weakness but I still call foul).

I get the feeling that Vader’s part in the movie was going to be very small. However, when everybody got excited at the thought of seeing him, I think they decided to expand his role, leading to the cheesy sequence of Vader tearing his way through the narrow corridor of the Rebel ship to try to get the plans back. The sequence looks off as though it were hastily shot to be added to the movie at the last second. And where is this Vader in the original trilogy? Why would this Vader ever need stormtroopers to do his work for him when the Devastator boarded the Tantive IV a few hours later at the beginning of A New Hope? This Vader should have torn Obi-Wan apart without any effort a couple of days later on the Death Star. No, the Vader we see in A New Hope (and the rest of the original trilogy) is a Sith Lord who has learned that less is more. The Vader we see in Rogue One is fanboy overindulgence.

And finally, we get to the biggest sin that Rogue One commits. It places Princess Leia and the Tantive IV at the Battle of Skarif. At the tail end of the cheesy Vader battle sequence, a  Corellian Corvette rockets away just milliseconds before Vader can board her. That corvette, we discover is the Tantive IV and Princess Leia is aboard. Relying on the same technology used to get Tarkin into the movie, A CG-rendering of Princess Leia explains to us that the data plans mean hope for the galaxy. Let’s ignore the fact that her appearance actually drew laughter from the audience for how bad it looked. The simple truth is Princess Leia can’t be at Skarif. It removes all plausible deniability she has of being a member of the Rebellion. Vader SEES her ship blast away from Skarif. How stupid is it for her to then try to pretend she’s on a diplomatic mission when her ship is captured? I can’t believe the writers didn’t think of this.

And it’s so easy to correct. The Rebels destroy the shield allowing them to transmit the plans. Leia’s ship is waiting in the nearest system for the transmission. That system is under Imperial interdiction. The Devastator tries to stop them, but the Tantive IV escapes into hyperspace to head to Tatooine. The Devastator manages to follow them and we head into the opening of A New Hope.

Now, granted, these are the rantings of a fan who has spent a lifetime obsessing over a movie franchise. I seem to be in the minority given the positive word of mouth I’ve been hearing. But on that same note, I also feel like I’m in the minority in that I like The Force Awakens, obvious reappropriations of story and all. The Force Awakens benefits of being a continuation of the story with no need to tie into anything. Rogue One, like the prequels that came before it, has to tie in to the stories that follow. And like the prequels, I mostly like the story that Rogue One was telling. The execution of that storytelling, especially in those last five minutes, just left me feeling cold and kept me from loving what was otherwise a pretty good movie.

Oh, before I forget. Cassian Andor. I said I didn’t like the character. I guess I got a different idea of who the character would be from the trailer. In watching the movie, I was stunned to see how unlikable he is in the first part of the movie. Then he hears Jyn’s speech and just turns on a dime and decides to be a hero. It’s a problem with the whole Rebel Alliance actually. They’re supposed to be the good guys, only they aren’t until they are. The Alliance is completely against going to Skarif. Rogue One goes against orders and goes anyway and then the Alliance commits everything to the battle. It does explain why Yavin is extremely undermanned in A New Hope, I guess.

Okay, I could go on talking about the things I liked and didn’t like about the movie for hours, but I’m going to end things here. Until next time, have a good seven and we’ll do this all again, only without as much movie criticism, next Monday. Carja V.