Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: Rogue One may have been blockbusters in the moneymaking sense but they were, rightly, critiqued either for plot holes or leaving too much on the table with their characters. Yet if you were wondering why The Force Awakens just ... worked, where Rogue One didn't, here is an excellent deconstruction by YouTube’s Lessons from the Screenplay, which highlights the storytelling flaws in both films and why Rogue One's were worse.
It's not because of period, setting, action or casting. Rogue One got all of that right, in spades, especially in the visual support of all four. It's simply that Rogue One forgets a fundamental obligation of storytelling, whether that's Smokey and the Bandit or My Dinner With André: The main characters must act, they must not be acted upon. In every scene. Every time.
As recycled as The Force Awakens' story was, Rey was relatable through the hard work and the trudgery of the film's first quarter. It builds to her critical judgment not to sell BB-8. Her character is not without flaws — did you miss or forget that she feels some need to return to Jakku? The "lie the character believes" is weak and inconsequential in Rey’s case. But overall, viewers warm to her story because they see Rey making choices and imposing her will, or reconciling it with larger forces.
Rogue One worked it backward. Almost nothing in the first half to two-thirds of the film carried any consequence — consequence that could change the emergence of the final battle, or the Death Star's means of shaping it. Lessons from the Screenplay points out that we don't see Jyn, or her compatriots, making any meaningful choices until the final assault on Scarif. While noble, their sacrifice ends up robbed of the meaning the filmmakers intended because of the casual and inconsequential nature of events leading to it.
This video is excellent advice for anyone who fancies themself a screenwriter. And, frankly, all of us feel that license, whether we enjoy prestige television or consume video games or play FIFA 17 and invent our superstars' backstories on the fly in the morning shower (raises hand). A diamond-hard focus on character action, however, is what separates a real screenplay from fan fiction.
The main characters must act. They make the choices that move the story, no one else. They pay freight for those choices. That's why something so familiar as The Force Awakens was still a critical success, where something as new as Rogue One landed with a thud.
Comments
Utter rubbish, Rogue One was fantastic. Force Awakens was a terrible let down.. why would I want to see a poor copy of a New Hope?
By gauze on 04.30.17 4:41pm
I wouldn’t want to see that. Frankly, that’s not what they made, despite your opinion. Interesting take. Nearly everyone disagrees with you (reviews, rotten tomatoes, box office, etc.), but to each their own.
I thought Rogue One was good, but Force Awakens is clearly the better film.
By BadFlounder on 04.30.17 5:37pm
The reviews may disagree that it was poor, but even the positive reviews for TFA tend to acknowledge that it’s largely a retread of New Hope. They just think it was a good retread.
By christopher.becker.359 on 04.30.17 6:26pm
I’m actually with Gauze on this one. Rogue One was a much better film (although the first 30 minutes feel sloppy). Force Awakens plays it far too safe which was understandable for a reboot to such a massive franchise but I’m looking forward to The Last Jedi if only because of Rian Johnson.
By EddieRiggs on 04.30.17 9:40pm
I wouldn’t say that Force Awakens was a terrible let down, but I do agree with gauze that Rogue One was a better, more interesting movie than Force Awakens was.
Many people, fans and critics alike, agree that it felt too much like the original film. Rogue One on the other hand was as a fresh take on the franchise that played out more like those old school "band of heroes" war movies which was an interesting spin that worked well for the first "not part of the main series" film.
By nathanielklee on 05.01.17 1:19am
Rogue One only works if you’re already a Star Wars fan. If that thing was the first Star Wars film you ever saw, it would make absolutely no sense at all. The characters are all bland. Nothing is explained. The one character who’s actually conflicted (Galen Erso) spends most of the movie off screen.
In TFA, you can relate to Finn, Poe, and Rey. And even if you didn’t know who Han Solo was going in, what happens to him in that film is going to move you on an emotional level. Rogue One never makes you feel anything. It’s just got some cool action scenes and that’s it.
By RunTMCz on 05.01.17 10:08am
The industry said the same negative things about the original movie before it even got off the ground. It showed in less than 40 theaters as a result – but, it was funny, captivating, inspiring, and it captured the imagination, which is invaluable for a sci-fi franchise. Rogue One captured the imagination as well, it was funny, captivating, inspiring, and it showed us a new, darker aspect of the Star Wars universe, while providing us with several complete character arcs, and restoring faith to the force. Tall order, but they nailed it. Long live the new creative team behind Star Wars.
By transceiver on 05.01.17 7:31pm
The only thing R1 had going for it was cool action scenes. All the flash masked the fact that the main character had any agency in the first act and people died left and right without any context.
By RunTMCz on 05.02.17 8:06am
Cassian Andor is conflicted, and in much less ham fisted way than Kylo Ren.
By Chinofjim on 05.02.17 4:14pm
You saw a different movie than me. You saw someone who tried her whole life to stay under the radar and not do anything like pick a side motivate herself to find her lost father, and then make his death mean something. You saw Cassian get orders to betray Jyn, and the trouble he has following through with it. You see Baze and Chirrut, lose their temple and holy city- unmoored, they trust in the Force.
I like TFA. It was fun, introduced new characters, etc. It was a good Star Wars film. Rogue One was an excellent movie overall. The clip above is nitpicking for nitpickings worth.
By nim411 on 05.03.17 1:39pm
The Force Awakens was a great movie but it was also a rehash of A New Hope. It followed the exact same plot.
By Burning_Cactus on 05.01.17 8:34am
No, Rogue One was clearly the better film.
By bdawk4ever on 05.01.17 10:32am
Yes, gauze! Agree. I did a double take because I thought they had written the article title wrong!
By suaviant on 04.30.17 5:41pm
after all the flak of I-III, I completely understand why Abrams played it safe with VII.
for those of you who don’t like where the story is going, stop watching. otherwise just click on the link Owen provided and write a better screenplay.
By Suriya K.P. on 04.30.17 6:00pm
People should click on the link anyway – Lessons from the Screenplay is excellent. Even if you disagree with this particular video.
By BrightBlueJacket on 05.01.17 1:25am
Do you really believe that people need to be able to do something in order to critique it? I don’t see film critics directing their own movies, or art critics being great painters. Ebert was not an academy award winning producer and yet was one of the most widely respected critics.
By owarren on 05.01.17 5:27am
"Stop watching it / I’d like to see you do it better" is almost literally the dumbest thing you can say in this situation. It’s an argument that’s been repeated damn near verbatim for CENTURIES and has been proven on to be so fundamentally false that I’m amazed you actually had the gall to say it with complete sincerity and entirely lacking in even a modicum of self-awareness regarding how memetically cliche it is.
We waited over a decade, sat through years of marketing hype being shoved down our throats, and paid good money to see the next entry in a venerable franchise in which we hold a high level of emotional investment. As consumers, we have every right to feel like we didn’t get our money’s worth, and to express that opinion freely.
And we very well COULD have enough skill to make a better movie, but you completely ignore the fact that making a movie requires insurmountable resources, logistics, and legal backing. This makes it impossible for us to meet your demand that we "do it better", even if it doesn’t at all reflect on our skill. And it certainly doesn’t fucking disqualify us from making a valid value judgment on the movie’s quality.
By TheAntiFanboy on 05.01.17 7:28am
A familiar story told well is superior to a "new" story told poorly.
Whatever you like about Rogue One, you’re entitled to like it. But empirically speaking, they botch the whole first act of that movie. This video is absolutely correct; you can feel the story in TFA moving forward, at least in part, thanks to actions we see Rey make, and, in turn, we get to know her well as a character. In RO, things just kind of happen for a while, and Jyn happens to be there. We meet some characters we don’t care about, dodge all attempts to really get to know them at all, and then apathetically watch them die one-by-one. There’s nothing to get invested in.
By No Capes on 04.30.17 6:10pm
There is plenty to get invested in. These people who have fought and lost and lost and lost, and in the end lose their lives but WIN. The first act was setting up all of that. They botched nothing.
They both were good films, in any case.
By bdawk4ever on 05.01.17 10:34am
The first act in R1 is horrible. Saw’s character blinks in and out with no build up or explanation. We get precious little interaction between Galen and Jynn. The mother is superfluous. All of Jynn’s training is summaried through ham-handed exposition. Everything is rushed and under-developed.
Contrast that with ANH. We get to see how powerful the Empire is and how weak the rebellion is right away. Then we get to spend a good amount of time getting to know Luke and his hopes, desires, disappointments, and loss. With Jynn, all this is done so fast the audience never has time to emotionally connect to the character. We just go through a big flashforward and are told to feel sad for her.
By RunTMCz on 05.01.17 12:37pm
If you don’t feel sad for orphans / kids separated from their parents, you have trouble with empathy, not the rest of us.
By nim411 on 05.03.17 1:42pm
Couldn’t agree with you more.
By wolfhammerr on 04.30.17 6:22pm
Is this sarcasm? I can’t tell. TFA excelled and R1 struggled for exactly the reasons mentioned in the video.
By AJBats on 04.30.17 6:53pm
It’s not a poor copy of a New Hope and if you believe it’s just that, you missed a lot.
And rogue one was terrible.
By Xaelias on 04.30.17 8:06pm
Both movie have some comparable faults, particularly in the plot department: Both are predictable (Everything about Rogue one is predicted from the start, hell I even knew what the Darth Vader scene would look like before even seeing it, although this is one of the rare scene in the movie where predicting it didn’t make it less awesome), although maybe TFA is worse in that regard because it copies too many elements from the previous movies but that’s the only thing R1 has one TFA.
Predicting stuff isn’t a problem in itself if the execution is awesome. But in every other aspect, TFA is better:
the rhythm, TFA only has one mistake in that regard and it’s the tentacle monster scene which should have been replaced by a bonding scene between Han and the kids, particularly Rey. It should also have taken some time to establish a bond between the audience and the planet that gets destroyed, this is a case where they should have copied the original trilogy more cause Alderaan destruction actually had an emotional impact in ANH thanks to both Leia’s torture and surrender and the way it’s presented once Luke & co arrive there.
But R1’s rhythm is a mess the whole way through, it is riddled with useless action scenes or useless action additions which wastes time and prevents the last problem on this list to be fixed.
The winks to the audience are surprisingly less on the nose in TFA which is weird. R1 is the movie who shouldn’t have been worried to pander and yet it did even more.
But the character development which is R1’s biggest failure: I can’t name a single thing they did right with character arcs. The best characters are the one whose character arcs happened before the movie, like the pilot or Chirrut because every single arc withing the film is butchered. Special points to Guerrera and his "Nah, nice of you to invite me but I’m cool, I’ll just die here". Seriously, they killed two father figures instead of using them to actually build a proper arc for its heroin (which is one of the most mishandled character of the bunch probably tied with Cassian who started out promising until they did nothing interesting with the themes that were introduced with him).
That’s the main reason I’m so indifferent to R1. I couldn’t be made to care about any of its character. I love light movies like TFA, I also love darker tale and can be crushed by them and enjoy it. But you can’t have it both way, you can’t make a hollywoodian action-fest with no character moments and also make it a dark tale with stakes. You can’t introduce interesting thematics and then not say anything about them ever again cause you "don’t have time" that’s even worse than not introducing them at all. R1 simply did not work at any level.
By Arkayjiya on 04.30.17 9:52pm