UKH

It's definitely the best of the newer films of the franchise, but how does it compare to Empire Strikes Back?

I think it might be a better film of the two in many respects; It's more engaging emotionally; it's more contemporary in its themes (unsurprising as ESB was released 40 years ago!) with references to the Middle East, although perhaps the cinematography and imagination aren't quite as on point? I suspect it may not age as well as Empire Strikes Back due to its reliance on CGI which seems to improve year in, year out.

Or is the above akin to comparing a postage stamp with a lobster?

It was on ITV last night

I thought I was a lone voice on this. If it's not better than Empire, then it's equal.

No

Yes

This is shaping up to be quite a divisive question - now that the whole left/right, in/out questions have been settled.

Yes

Having not watched any of them for a while, I'm in the middle of chronologically rewatching the whole lot, just in time for episode IX to hit the cinema. I was really struck by how good Rogue One was. I'd easily put it alongside ESB as the best two - not sure which I would pick as the winner!

I'm also impressed with how much richer a film it makes ANH seem.  The background to why Leia is so desperate to keep the plans from Vader, and why the Death Star is such a big deal, made it a much better film to me. 

I also found RotS to be pretty good - the prequels get heavily panned but for me RotS was easily as good as ANH or RotJ.  And after RotS, the Obi-wan/Vader duel is really quite disappointing... 

No, but it is better than the Attack of the Clones.........

For me, the Empire Strikes Back is the beast of the lot. I enjoyed The Force Awakens, didn't like the next one (Can't even remember it's name) Looking forward the the next/last one. 

All of the characters in Rogue One are flawed in some way, even the rebels and there are no cutesy aliens (a bonus). It's slick and sophisticated. I'm wondering if a preference for Empire could be clouded by the sentimentality of childhood memories, of which I'm mercifully free?

Slightly less crap.

CB

And in spite of knowing where it is in canon it still surprises. 

I'm contemporary with everything from the start ('77) and sometimes watch 4 - 6 and try to ensure I don't go down the old fart 'back in my day' route. I honestly feel Rogue One stands head and shoulders amongst them. 

Anyway, as a 51 year old I'm getting very giddy for Saturday afternoon to come! 

Although Admiral Raddus appeared to have the head of a trout which was annoying as I had to work extra hard to suspend disbelief during the battle of Yavin.

Solo - anyone ??

One of the greatest lines in ANY film was delivered in ESB. Don't think R1 will ever be remembered in the same vane.

Go on...

Oh, come-on!!

youtube.com/watch?v=_lOT2p_FCvA&

Normally go with my 27 year old Daughter, but we've had a bit of a fall out

Can't keep up here. 

OK original trilogy, episodes iv, v and 6.

Then the virtually unwatchable episodes I, II and iii.

But bring me up to speed on later efforts, and in particular how spin offs relate to them.

Please

I think Rogue One is supposed to be a 'stand alone' effort but it's my understanding that it fits in between iii and iv?

^This.

Once Vader has done his thing at the end of RO he pursues the ship with Leia on board, which takes you directly to 4.

Well hopefully the answer to that will come in the next film! 

ESB. Perhaps its nostalgia but the first films contained novel, memorable and imaginative parts, eg ice planet, snow walkers, giant worm in asteroid belt,  and with good CGI.   Later films seem to be less cowboys and indians in space and just forgettable, repetitive, overlong, superhero-type action movies. Maybe its just me....

it's the only one of the new ones I'd watch again.   And I think had more drama in the dialogue than any of the originals which I think are grossly over rated (together with the other new films).

I have to say I was blown away when I saw the first film - but it was all by the special effects and space battles.  TBH once the novelty wore away I found them awful - the only decent actor was Alec Guinness

the battles are all rubbish as the stormtroopers are less competent than Hollywood German soldiers.

It's a shame no one technical realised how the Rebel radio chatter was done in the original Star Wars.  The single-sideband effect during the dogfights/death star attack were an authentic touch that the technicians in Rogue One could have used to good effect - the frequency shift distortion does add combat-drama

I vote no.  Empire Strikes Back is still the best Star Wars film.

Speaking of CGI I thought it was just rude to force poor old Peter Cushing to reprise the role of Grand Moff Tarkin even though he'd been dead for some years already.  (And the CGI was almost, but not quite, good enough to make it completely convincing.)

Rude also to the perfectly good actor (I forget his name) whose face they removed.  Just recast the role properly and be done with it - if a film is any good at all it's really not asking too much of the audience to suspend their disbelief enough to accept a new actor in a familiar role.  And anyway it's much less of a leap than believing that the whiny and annoying Anakin Skywalker in the prequels was going to grow up to have the body of David Prowse and the voice of James Earl Jones.

Rogue One was a great film. Imagine if the whole nonilogy was remade to that standard. Lucas has already messed with the first 3, so they're not even inviolate. Otherwise I'd say leave the first 3, then the prequel trilogy could do with fixing - they're a mix of now awful CGI and ham acting (is  Liam Leeson good in any film?)

The first 2 of the last trilogy are not awful, but made at the same time as Rogue One they feel a little short. Shame really as the Star Trek reboots were handled well.

Back to your original question. ESB is better than Rogue One, by gnat's crotchet.

I worry that SW9 will disappoint, like how Babylon 5 ended after they cut it to 4 seasons and then reversed the decision too late so the arc ended messily in 4 and then had an appendix bolted on.

I love both of them but Rogue One just about shades it.

Rogue One differs from all the others as it's a war film set in space. All the others are basically space westerns. It definitely benefits from not having any jedi magic save the day as well.

Not good. Hope you can get it sorted. 

It’s very good but muddled hence a low 7/10 from me. Why? Because the bulk of the first 60% of the film throws all these captions at you about where in the galaxy this scene is taking place, but there’s little context to it.

That robot was annoying

Where it is strong is that basically the final forty minutes is one massive action climax and it is really well done. 

It is also the first major live action feature film in the canon to truly have a female lead (Daisy Ridley’s Rey has never been a lead, she is part of an equivalent small ensemble), I was really surprised that this was not commented on more 

Also Felicity Jones is the first major female character in the live action canon to be allowed to have noticeable breasts 

How many times have you seen Revenge of the Sith, when did you last see it, and how old were you when you first saw it?

I recall thinking at the time that aside from Hayden’s acting and the disappointment of the massively hyped General Grievous, it was pretty good and only suffered from not being brilliant enough to compensate for Attack of the Clones. 

I recently tried to watch it again and failed to get to the end. The lava duel is good and Lucas was clearly listening to feedback hence very little Jar Jar. But it has awful pacing and the effects are terrible. 

I now think Attack of the Clones, despite the crap duel between Yoda and Dooku, and lots of Hayden, is better than RotS and The Phantom Menace. The entire sequence with Obi Wan going to the clone factory planet is brilliant

It was a good film and it had a great cast of interesting characters...who all died needlessly. I would rather RO had been the start of the new trilogy than the bland crap we seem to be continuing with. I would put it equal with RotJ, good but not great.

Return of the Jedi is rightly panned for the Ewoks who genuinely were introduced just for sake of selling toys (and the point made in Kevin Smith’s Clerks, plus the physics of what would happen to Endor when the second Death Star blows up). However this obscures the fact that the first 30 minutes (the rescue of Han from Jabba’s Palace and the sand barge and Sarlac pit) are an example of near perfection in action cinema 

Kudos to Riz Ahmed too. I've yet to see a bad film with him in it.

Leia in Jabba's palace, surely?!

Have you seen Venom? 

I think noticeable gold bikini thing but breasts actually flattened and hidden (in the film, not the promo photo shoots) 

No, I assume it's not great?

I saw it twice at the cinema and gave it 6/10 first time then upgraded to 8/10.

That monorail heist was awesome, and the film actually had character development and plot “twists” 

Distracted by Paul Bettany slowly turning into Sting, and that AWFUL Phoebe Waller-Bridge robot 

I've been considering this for a while.  I think almost but not quite.  Why the rest of the new ones could not have been made to the same standard confuses me, but hey at least they are better than the I, II & III.

Correct. I’ve seen it twice . I can see what it was going for but sadly it failed. Riz comes out of it ok though (actually all the actors are fine, they are not the problem)

Riz is also in “Jason Bourne”, yes? I really liked that film 

And Nightcrawler and Ill Manors - both seminal!

Rubber Dinghy Rapids bro 

Solo was dreadfully disappointing. The best review I saw said that new Solo is so bad it ruins the old Han Solo character too.

It was such a great opportunity to make something cool, like a Firefly set in the Star Wars universe. 

It feels like they've fixed it with The Mandalorian though, I'm enjoying its world very much. 

Whatever else Riz Ahmed has done, he is outstanding in The Night Of.

Probably three or four times, a week ago, late twenties.

I'm a sucker for the big story arc, and I think I preferred RotS to AotC because I struggled slightly to believe in Padme falling for Anakin in the former, but I found Anakin's fall to the dark side in the latter really interesting.  And the creation story for Vader - the mask fitting from his PoV and the 'bwee' of the life support system kicking in - was handled absolutely perfectly.

I don't think there's a lot of ground between the two films, and I'd put them both a fair way above TPM.

youtube.com/watch?v=to2SMng4u1k&

Thank me later

That's... better!  How the hell was that made? 

I do find this troublesome problem through the whole nonology - the lightsaber fights are so much more impressive in the prequels.  I can justify Vader being a bit crap in ESB, and being beaten by a kid who's had next to no training at all RotJ, by telling myself he's so slowed down by the damage he sustained at the end of RotS.  But that duel in ANH is simply dire, and in fact the sequence at the end of RO makes ANH Vader seem even more out of place.

Watching TFA tonight - interested to see how the duels in that compare.

A great deal of work (live action and cgi) by a very talented amateur studio!

There has been a lot of discussion about this very thing over the years within the SW fandom from a lore point of view. In the end, a lot of the reason for this is simple, the technology at the time of filming was the major limitation. Much of the reason for why the original Vader vs Obi Wan duel being so underwhelming was due to the fact that they were using lightsabers that were made from powdered glass, and therefore extremely fragile. Because of this they were told to never touch them together (they employed screen flashes every time they were supposed to have clashed sabers to obscure this fact). This also limited them in their movements. From what I remember, they took inspiration from seven samurai for this duel, making it a more 'realistic' and low key affair than the mental acrobatic lightshows we are now used to.

Having said this, for it's not like the prequel duels were all amazing either. Sure we have the duel of fates in TPM and the Obi Wan vs Anakin/Vader in RotS, but we also have the awful Sidious vs Windu fight. That fight, on paper, could have been the most explosive and impressive of any of them given the respective skills of the combatants. I love it despite myself though, watching Ian McDiarmid camp it up with those faces is still an absolute joy.

Thanks Jamie, all good points and in fact pretty much the reason that I was looking forward to revisiting it recently, yet it simply didn't do anything for me, unfortunately. 

I have a really basic question about the Vader / Obi-Wan duel at the end of A New Hope. 
I am going to look really stupid asking this about such a well known film....but what is the whole deal with Obi-Wan being like a ghost?

Was the best duel the Anakin / Asajj Ventress one in the first 2D Clone Wars animation by Genddy Tartakovsky? I seem to recall a whole 10 minute episode was simply a dialogue-free relentless duel!

perhaps an homage to the German "Stalingrad"?

Needless loss of everyone, in conflict beyond any imaginable scale for an individual involved

not Jane Fonda's Barbarella then?

Has that been ret-conned into the Star Wars universe?!

perhaps it should be

There were breasts in sci-fi way before Barbarella though!

Worst duel was probably Count Dooku vs Yoda. Aging actor vs bouncy Brer Rabbit. Took a group of kids to see it and even they thought it was hilarious.

It was really really hyped, everyone was excited that Yoda would be seen doing something more than just sitting around with a puppeteer's hand up his bum. They teased it in the trailers, showing him start to activate a light-sabre.

And then.....yes, as you described. I thought "Sonic the Hedgehog has leaked into this film". 

Christopher Lee is a fine and legendary actor but saddled with a name like Count Dooku, the dialogue he was given, and that desert mobility hover-scooter upon which he looked bloody ridiculous, even he could not bring dignity to it. 

But I don't want gritty realistic Star Wars, I want "pyeow-pyeow! King Arthur in Space! Star Wars.

Thanking you now!

I stumbled across this discussion which is a bit scattered but worth at least skim reading, regarding the skills of Stormtroopers.

Some interesting points

https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/e9qb6f/star_wars_stormtrooper...