Rogue One

We didn't go to a midnight showing of the latest "Star Wars" film. In all honestly, I don't think that's all that surprising - I've actually only ever gone to three midnight showings: "Attack of the Clones", "Spider-Man" (actually, an advanced preview a week before the official release of this one), and "The Force Awakens". So it's not as if there's a long-standing tradition of my attending such showings.

But the consequence of not going to a midnight showing was that I actually didn't see the new "Star Wars" film for ages after it came out - Saturday to be precise. Which means I didn't even see it before it came out in America! Oh, the humanity!

Anyway, LC and I saw "Rogue One" on Saturday, in a 3D showing in a regular cinema. (I'm kinda hoping to find time to go see it again at the Vue, where they have the 70mm projectors - it was filmed in Ultra-Panavision, so I'm interested to see how that changes the viewing experience.)

It was worth the wait. I very much enjoyed "Rogue One", more indeed than I did "The Force Awakens". This was largely because it was something new - TFA felt very much like "Star Wars' Greatest Hits", which is all well and good, but is really less good than just watching, well, "Star Wars". Conversely, "Rogue One" was a very different type of a film - sort of "The Dirty Dozen" in space. Which is cool.

And, actually, I think that's all I'm going to say about that. Except to note a certain ambivalence surrounding two particular characters, who didn't quite fit right - every time those two were on the screen I was jarred out of the film by wondering "how did they do that?" (And, actually, there were another two that had that effect, though in their cases I knew exactly how it was done, and that also was a bit jarring!)

But, basically, I'm happy with that. It does seem that Disney is a good home for my favourite films...

#69: "The Ultimate Helm", by Russ T. Howard
#70: "The Salmon of Doubt", by Douglas Adams