In this month's podcast for patreon subscribers I review Rogue One: A Star Wars Cash-In. The film is a spy movie/war movie about the rebellion stealing the plans for the Death Star and has a much darker tone and grittier visuals than most Star Wars films. The problems arise mostly in the lack of characterisation, which the producers tried to compensate for by jamming in as many visual references to the existing films as they could. I dwell on the lack of creativity and even basic storytelling skill in modern Hollywood blockbusters, before offering two ideas for Star Wars storylines that would be more engaging and less reliant on showing us things we recognise because we've seen them before.(Read more...)
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