Uploaded December 2016 | Updated September 2026, 4 hours ago

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Can this "stand-alone" Star Wars film hold it's own?

A few stray thoughts that aren't in the video:
◦ I loved that Baze flipped Chirrut's mantra order. It was a cool turn of affection, but also infusing new ownership.
◦ In general I'm very curious what the third act of the film originally was before all the reshoots. There's all that footage from trailers, like Jyn about to face off against a TIE Fighter, her running on the beach with the drive, etc. I did enjoy the revised third act a lot; the action and pacing was exception. Some of the hang ups though almost felt like video game mission complications.
◦ Once the shields were down to send the blueprints on Scarif, why couldn't they have just stolen a ship and gotten off the planet before the blast? Like I definitely feel that it's better if they all die (and necessary based on what we hear in A New Hope), but they made it down to the beach... couldn't they have found something - oh, right, it was for that shot of them hugging and being engulfed... okay. That said, I did love that we didn't get a full-blown romance between them.
◦ Going off of my final point - throughout the film there was the assumption that viewers knew who characters were and didn't even bother to dignify saying their names. Like, did they even address Bail Organa or we just jumped into a scene with him talking?
◦ In A New Hope, doesn't Vader say the plans were intercepted? In this they're outright stolen. That's a pretty large twist of definitions. Also Vader saw the ship take off, so Leia claiming to be on a diplomatic mission, even after the jump to light speed - wait, so was the plan always to hand them off to her? Why put her in the war zone? Also if her goal was to just get the plans back to the rebels, why would they jump to light speed but not go to Yavin IV, and then give them to - ugh, you know what, nevermind. There are plot issues especially when you think on them, but I still had fun.

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