. . . RO

What's wrong with:

STAR WARS

Rogue One

The question, "What's wrong?" from the title of these articles is implied.  The answer in this case, with Rogue One the subject matter . . . not much.

8 total defects- Low (3), Medium (2), High (2), Severe (1). That's it.

     Damn, that was a good movie. If you can remove the nostalgia, the heartwarming-familiar-comfortability factors, the first glimpsed spark of a revolutionary story playing out among the stars, which form our child-like approval of the original trilogy, especially from Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (ESB), an argument can be made that Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie.  Though Return of the King, (the third, and least, of The Lord of the Rings movies) won an academy award for best picture, Rogue One is better.

Here is why:

1)  Chris Wietz, Tony Gilroy, John Knoll, Gary Whitta and Gareth Edwards!!!  Bravo!
         writer             writer           story              story                      director

     Conversations with meaning, intensity, action, self-awareness, story development, character development with motivations, conflicted emotions, transformations.  Wow.
       PS- hell, conversations with inflection.

Low

2) That said, there are things I don't get. Krennic and some fancy Stormtroopers land the shuttle 500 yards from the Erso home. Not sure why. Sure, Galen Erso is the architect of the most dangerous weapon in the universe, so maybe Krennic fears Erso could have wired a boobie trap; a brief line from Krennic could have anticipated this defect: "Galen, what a warm welcome. We're expected? We walked all this way to spare my shuttle damage by your hand; we know it wouldn't have been the first time, don't we?"

N/A- not applicable to Rogue One

3) So, Krennic tells Erso: you're a "hard man to find Galen." No doubt that is true. What I doubt is that both Luke and Leia would have been as hard to find. Darth Vader didn't know there were two children, which you would think could double his chances of finding one of them. What is interesting is how Krennic can be punished for the trouble Erso could cause while employed by the empire and yet, Vader hasn't been able to find his heirs for 20-30 years and we could assume Vader and the Emperor would have been aware Vader's offspring would be even more dangerous. This probably comes down to talent versus trouble. Krennic isn't ruthlessly talented, like Vader is. Since Vader can force choke his enemies and Krennic just looks presentable in off-white clothing, Vader gets to keep his job and Krennic loses his, not to mention his life.

Medium

4) Since Krennic knew there was a child hiding away, he dispatches those fancy Stormtroopers to "look" for him, or her. The Stormtroopers are seen walking into a cave turning half way around and leaving. They looked for a threat to them less diligently than my daughters look for their easter baskets, that have reduced coloring and additive-sensitive jelly beans and ever decreasing amounts of chocolate, and this is before I invoke the dad tax (i.e. where I eat some of their chocolate because I am a paternal war-lord).

True, we can't add twenty minutes to the movie showing villains looking under bed sheets and opening closet doors, but I sense the Stormtroopers, like so many of their predecessors and, more so, their peers (as we'll find out in the next movie), didn't/can't do their jobs. In defense of those Stormtroopers, caves are a very predictable place for people to hide, so, why bother looking right? No style points for Jyn. And since the whole series of stories is set a long time ago in a galaxy far away, The Godfather Part II hadn't been filmed, so the assembled Star Wars denizens didn't have the luxury of art imitating life courtesy of the scenes where a ten year old boy escapes so he can one day exact his revenge against an Italian Don who deprived this young boy of his father. In short, not looking hard enough to find a child you acknowledge is enough of a threat to start looking for in the first place, and is a risk threatening your success is a problem. In software development, the whole reason you do quality assurance is to avoid risk.

5) The writers, story folks and director did an excellent job of introducing the characters. I always compare movies like Rogue One to The Wizard of Oz. There is a magnetic situation, or character, that requires other/secondary characters to be introduced in such a way that makes the story compelling. Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion on the way to Oz. C-3PO and R2-D2 pick up Luke, Obi-Wan, Han Solo, Chewbacca and Princess Leia. In RO it is Cassian, K2-SO, Jyn, Bodhi, Chirrut and Baze. See The Fellowship of the Ring for another good example.

6) Tarkin looks much younger than he did in the original that is set the day of, or the day after, the events shown in Rogue One. I didn't actually know this was a computer generated person while watching the movie. I'm pretty dim, and also, nice job creative group. I watched the bonus features. The amount of time and money spent to get things like Tarkin, and a youthful Carrie Fischer, remotely close to the originals might be mindful of watching brain surgery, if I knew anything about either brain surgery, or the painstaking technical expertise required to bring two old dead people to life.

7) Those writing scripts and directing in a vacuum, or a silo, should take a look at the script for RO. The humor is understated, sparse, effective and natural, not forced, elaborate and Vaudevillian. Nice job K-2SO; magnificent, superb, exemplary (see #1 above)- there aren't enough superlatives for how well those people nailed the script.

8) Most any argument not featuring lunatics, morons or children is complicated. I love how RO was able to show us that there are competing viewpoints. That Cassian's views aren't Jyn's, Chirrut Imwe (blind guy/Donnie Yen) or Saw Gerrera's brings an adultness to this movie, both in intention and execution. One scene, showing all of the different leaders voicing their opinions about whether to go to war against the republic, is better done than anything in the cavernous senate of the prequel movies, with one exception, the fight between the Emperor and Yoda. Loyalties, laws, villains and heroes are far more complicated than we are led to believe by 90% of the big budget Hollywood movies, including any of Rogue One's 7 predecessors.

Here the dialogue is better, the conflict is portrayed with much better aptitude, and so the audience is more invested. The urgency is real, and the ability of the writers, story people and director to bring that urgency to life, makes it even easier, sadly, to see the flaws of the inferior movies.

9) "placed a weakness." Brilliant. This solves the major hole of the minor hole that seemed to be left so conveniently exposed. It was awfully convenient for there to be this one small weakness so that a battle station that large could be destroyed so cleanly.

Low
10) Ahhh, I don't know about being able to communicate at light speed. If you're going the speed of light, wouldn't the ability to communicate because the speed of sound travels quite a bit slower, suffer a major hit? Cassian and whatever general he's conversing with, would be unintelligible. Maybe I'm writing out of school, but the speed of light is over 300 million meters per second faster than the speed of sound. Sure, someone will think, "so, you're willing to take for granted that solid objects can move at the speed of light, but that they can't speak while doing so." Touché. And the answer to that . . . is yes, yes I am.

Low

11) Only one man- Galen Erso knows about the flaw he's implanted. I would imagine that Krennic, Tarkin, Vader, Emperor, etc. would have been keeping pretty good tabs on a space station meant to keep the power on the side of the Empire. And we know that the funding of the Empire isn't without limits- they could have paid a couple of scientists enough money to look over Erso's shoulder. Remember when the Emperor cut costs by shutting down the robot soldiers he used as pawns in episodes 1-3? Do we think that only one man (Erso) would be able to keep such a big secret with only friendly scientists who all agreed with him on his team? We can tell the Empire powers that be don't trust Erso. I've worked on a lot of teams, and usually there is at least one blowhard, malcontent, slacker or a-hole ruining the vibe or the project team's progress because they're difficult; in this case, one of those overpaid spies meant to watch Erso, is that person. I know it is just a two+ hour movie so they can't show G. Erso hiding his secret flaw under bed sheets and behind closet doors. It is because the creatives who worked on this movie did so many things well that this is only a low, and I imagine that if questioned under oath, they would have a legitimate justification.

12) We go to so many planets in RO to see the anxiety, the impact of the Empire on the rest of the known universe- Jedha, Eadu, Lah'mu, Scarif, Yavin 4. Somehow, Naboo, Coruscant, Geonosis, and Kamino aren't in the same league. Granted, we see a universe at war in RO rather than outlets as stages for skirmishes. Let's see what Edwards, the writers and those in charge of the story for RO could do for the events as portrayed in the prequels.

13) Fairly subtle looks from a blind man, contemplating the intentions, demeanor, words and actions of Cassian. Chirrut, nor his buddy, Baze Malbus, would ever have been allowed to notice any of that in the prequels.

Severe

14) the cast- a white woman, 2 Latin men, 2 Chinese men, Mon Mothma/another white woman. Galen and Krennic, Tarkin = all white men, a black man (Saw Gerrera), a couple more white generals on the Republic side and Admiral Raddus, an Admiral Ackbar stand in/Mon Calamari.  So, one alien in a position of power in the whole film. What is this, Major League Baseball before Jackie Robinson? It took baseball roughly 100 years to integrate black players into the sport at a professional level. We're 41 years into Star Wars and there are precious few aliens representing all of the identified and prospective planets in the Star Wars universe. Pretty short-sighted.

There are aliens fighting with the Rebellion, but have these people never heard of the Intergalactic Rooney Rule? (Note: the Rooney Rule is an NFL Affirmative Action-like mandate that requires franchises to at least interview prospective minority coaches and general managers). Both the rebels and the empire are species racists (speecists). Finding a species minority fighting on the side of the Empire is more rare than Rian Johnson, the writer and director of TLJ, admitting he made any mistakes.

I remember an interview shortly before George W. Bush's 2nd term was coming to a close. The interviewer asked if there were any mistakes he made during his presidency. Ol' G.W. couldn't come up with one. Boy are we in for a treat, when Johnson doubles down on the obvious mistakes of his last offering when he gets three times the chances in an upcoming trilogy where he has creative control. Oh boy. I've already found 7 defects and I haven't even started looking at his requirements, that is, if he even comes up with requirements. Requirements are prescriptions for key pieces of functionality that a software development team is directed to successfully deliver to the business people who are paying for them. Requirements identify where a text box should display and where a drop down selection field should appear.

Note: I read that Abrams admitted he made at least one mistake when he didn't think to have Leia (wife, or lover) and Chewbacca (best friend) console each also after Han's death in TFA; the former, Leia, bypassed the latter, Chewie so that we see two human's grieve (Leia and Rey), rather than including a Wookie/alien in the commiseration; what's the problem, did Chewie not show enough despair with his groan as the door on Hoth seemed to seal Han's fate?  This admission leaves me somewhat hopeful, with Abrams at the helm for episode IX.

15) Jedha, home of the Jedi- the same crystals that power lightsabers, beget the destruction caused by the Death Star. This is the kind of juxtaposition, the kind of irony that is always a good component of successful movies.

16) An enemy (G. Erso) who Krennic was looking for for a long time, lies inert on a platform. Do you go back and finish him or get to the safety of your bitchin' ride? Maybe you don't make it off if you elect to do the former. I can see this either way.

17) Vader! Just the right amount.

18) References are made to "the Jedi", the Clone Wars and Princess Leia. So, it is possible to tie events and people from all sets of movies together in an artistic and meaningful way. This is similar to Yoda and the original recording of Princess Leia's plea for Obi-Wan making appearances in TLJ. I don't think that paying homage to other movies should be an exception, or a rule, unless you're going to do right by it.

19) The predictable line, this time about to be spoken by a droid: "I've got a bad feeling . . ." is interrupted. They even got that right, which shows a self-awareness missing from the two completed new trilogy movies.

20) And here, good guys die.

21) I think it is important to leave that line by itself. In defense of the creative types leading the trilogy movies, it is easier to kill off all of the main characters when you know there aren't two more movies in the planning stages. Yes, theoretically, there would be planning, where the writers and directors speak to each other about which ways the events might take the characters, which characters die, which ones have meaningful back stories, which ones have actual back stories, which directors know what a back story is, which actors can act, which ones aren't aliens, which ones are ulta-multicultural, etc. RO has a different feel. Instead of Rogue ONE, it is very much the ROGUE one. It being to this point the only stand-alone, it is Rogue in that way, and its merits may well keep it so, if it is compared to most of the completed movies to date.

Problem with this is that in franchises where 3 to 4 to 7 movies were made, it is almost always the first that is groundbreaking, inventive, fresh and different. It gains the benefit, like a revolution, of sneaking up on people, shocking them into a level of awareness of possibilities, and unlike a revolution, an appreciation, depending on what side you're on, that its sequels/counter-revolutions can't reach. That is why it has been so disappointing to see The Phantom Menace and The Force Awakens fail on so many levels. The promise of a new way of looking at things became, in the case of TPM, too much politicizing, a weak script and horrible directing, and in The Force Awakens, the wholesale theft of Star Wars' whole story.

22) When the rebel ships start flying over the palm trees and beaches of Skariff, my friends in the theater and my son and I, all start looking at each other, with smiles and nonverbals where we're telling each other, "hell, yes! They're doing it." They got it right. Because of what had already taken place in the movie, and the promise of things to come, they have done a great job of converting a well written script and a tremendous story onto film.

23) K-2SO: "Your behavior, Jyn Erso, is continually unexpected." That is a complement. In fairness and worthy of commendation, it could have been said of Anakin Skywalker, or Padme, Han Solo, Princess Leia or R2-D2, or Kylo Ren. The writers, directors, story people and other creative people can deliver an unpredictable masterpiece, and Rogue One is proof of that.

High

24) Admiral Raddus, another rare example of an alien in a position of leadership. Defect level of high, not because they have an alien in a leadership position, but because the aliens in positions of power across all of the Star Wars films have few peers with comparable DNA (i.e. alien DNA). This exception points out the faults with the general rule, to which all of the creatives seem oblivious.

25) Chirrut Imwe's (blind Donnie Yen), brave and deliberate march through bullets to help free up the method that will enable the transfer of plans of the Death Star flaw, reminds me of the scene from Dances with Wolves where an unarmed Costner rides with arms flung back, christ-like, begging to be put out of his misery. The motivations are different, the risks are certainly different, as Chirrut was more valuable to the effort alive, and Costner really had no motive other than to die, but the willingness to sacrifice their lives is the same.

Medium

26) It doesn't occur to Darth Vader, who eliminates 15-20 rebels in the hall of a Star Destroyer, to use the force to spirit away a small disk from the hands of mortals playing the most famous fictional version of a relay race we've seen on film. Considering how full of vengeance he was just shown to be, I'm surprised.

27) RO is a war movie. So, when all of the main characters are dead at the end of it, in order to deliver the stolen plans for a planet killer to those who can prevent the Death Star from performing its designed purpose, I'm pleased that the toll paid is the ultimate sacrifice for all of them. The first time we watch Saving Private Ryan we don't know all the names of the 8 men dispatched to the fields, farmhouses and villages of France to find the last of four brothers fighting in WWII. We don't know the tens and hundreds of thousands and millions of names of men and women who sacrificed their lives to take hills, to capture forts, overrun trenches and bunkers, stop tanks, sink ships and outmaneuver enemy fighter pilots spanning a couple hundred years of American history. They were unselfish, brave, anonymous soldiers who died for their time, and for those who would come after them.

Bonus Features

High

Doug Chiang, an artist and film designer on RO, stated that John Knoll, the writer/story resource who
came up with the idea of RO, told him to come up with 2 aliens to include in the small band of rebels
that would steal the Death Star plans. 2 Latino and 2 Chinese men, 1 robot and one English woman. 
No aliens.

Someone speaks these words- "diverse group of characters" in reference to the small brand of rebels.
Again, 5 human beings and 1 robot, in a world so supremely populated with freaks, is another miss.
I begin to wonder if the creatives are politicians, who minored in film, who keep repeating the same
things to themselves with the idea they're practicing stomaching the delusion they'll eventually try to
feed to other people. Mr. Abrams and Mr. Johnson- take note.

All of the characters die. That was worthy of repetition if only because then Jyn and Cassian's love,
isn't a subplot featured in the sequel.  Very, very few movies in the history of film avoid touching upon
the idea that two characters are in love, whether that is unrequited, forbidden, realized, animal magnetism,
seeking, desperate, or fulfilling love. Tiresome. Other than two people holding each other about to be
annihilated, there isn't the hint of a love story. The movie is the better for it.

This last part should feel like the scene from My Cousin Vinny, where Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei)
is explaining to Vinny LaGuardia (Joe Pesci) about a little baby dear's prospective reaction to the coat
Vinny is wearing when he shoots the doe in the head:

I watched bonus vignettes where actors spoke about the grueling, but rewarding physical demands of
filming the movie; how excited actors were to be working on a Star Wars film; how enthralled the creative
group was to have a hand in shaping the events of the story; how thrilled the set designers, prop design,
costume and makeup people were about the perfect details of aging clothing, stucco walls in a battle-worn
city; how all that work . . . BAM!!! doesn't mean SHIT if the writer, director, and creative story development
team don't have a god-damned idea about how to logically AND emotionally treat the subject matter, nor
how to show a diverse set of characters dealing with tragic events in productive or nihilistic, rewarding
and mythical ways.

I have to imagine that all the supporting staff, hair, makeup, set design, actors, artists, may have worked
just as hard on the prequel movies, and the sequel trilogy movies, and there efforts are in vain because the
more noticeable parts (the script, direction, story and acting) screwed up the audience's overall appreciation.

So, I gotta ask ya, (channeling Miss Vito) if you're sittin' there ready to appreciate all of that hard work,
would you care what the self-important, oblivious, over-confident creative types who can't admit their
mistakes are wearin'!?

. . . ROTS

What's wrong with:

STAR WARS

Revenge of the Sith

Low, Medium, High, Severe, Critical defects mentioned as before.

Defect breakdown:  Critical (3), Severe (2), High (2), Medium (4), Low (3)

There is a decrease in the total number of defects: TPM (33), AOTC (18) and ROTS (14). However, the number of Critical defects is about the same. That may be because my expectations are coming into play.  I expect the movies to be better, and they are, but I’m probably judging them based on their potential best version of themselves (like a dog show or a gymnastics routine) rather than comparing them against each other as one would the combatants in a singing competition, or trying to decide which four teams make it into the college football playoffs.

Note: I have not idea what is happening with the formatting.  I write in word and copy and paste into blogger.  Amateurish- sure, but I can only focus on doing QA on Star Wars movies, unreasonable formatting rules that make no sense- I can't deal with that right now.

Low

1) Obi-Wan (again):  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”  Again?  I forget where it was in the movie- either while he and Anakin were recklessly flying amid hundreds of other fighter planes, cruising in between dozens of other destroyers, all with dozens of cannons of their own, or when they were about to fight Dooku for a second time, an encounter he either knew was in the offing, or deeply suspected.  Hopefully, an enhanced force sensation isn’t merely akin to déjà vu.

Medium (this will be escalated to a high eventually)

2) Speaking of the odds.  Two small ships amid all that chaos mentioned in #1 above?  I picture what happens inside the autoimmune system of a person suffering from Leukemia.  Eventually that red blood cell is going to be earmarked for destruction.  Or, I think of my dad’s theory on the mileage of a car- the more inclement weather you’re driving in, the more miles you put on a vehicle, the more likely it is that things are eventually going to go horribly wrong. Horribly wrong means that a major character's entire ship explodes, not that his astromech droid is shot in the head.

Movies like Taken, with Liam Neeson, who did not play a Jedi (at least not in that movie), nor a super hero, nor a cyborg made of liquid metal, a zombie, an alien prescribed with a bullet immunity, a devil from a transcendental locale, etc. would receive a Critical defect for this.  I’m unwilling to suspend my disbelief while watching a human being suffer relatively few injuries given the total number of times he puts himself at risk.  Jedi are special, lucky, fortunate, destined to prevail, that is why this is only a medium.

Wouldn’t just one bullet, (outside of Order 66) among the thousands fired in the prequels alone, have hit a Jedi in the side, in the hand, in the knee? If anyone points out that some Jedi die on Geonosis or Luke is shot in the hand on Jabba's skiff . . . you are the worst kind of Star Wars apologists, in that, you exist.

Critical (cumulative error)

3) After surviving the dangerous flight to the ship where Palpatine is being held “prisoner” and plowing through 50-60 droids that never should have been mass-produced, like the DVDs of any Adam Sandler movie after Happy Gilmore, Kenobi and Skywalker fight Dooku for maybe four minutes.  Four minutes!  Four? Maybe. 

240 seconds of antagonism from a character who was formidable in your last movie, but is completely expendable in this one.  Who does this?  Again, you barely used Grievous, Maul was on screen for fewer than 20 minutes, Boba Fett had no more than three lines in two original trilogy movies.  And yet, and yet, you let midgets in bear costumes . . . . ggggahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

Low

4) Anakin is poised to cut off Dooku’s head and is urged to do so by Palpatine, to the apparent shock of Dooku, and without Anakin recognizing Dooku’s crestfallen reaction.

At this point, my expectations of the creator of the franchise, for the nuance of recognizable non-verbal communication, is almost non-existent.  I gave this a low because I’ve been beaten down by how simplistic the franchise’s creator has made many of these characters.

5) I’ll give a pass to Anakin’s crash landing of the large ship that needed only a token bath while entering the planet’s atmosphere.  I’m not an engineer, astronomer or scientist, so I don’t really know how those particular metal panels entering a planet’s atmosphere would be treated by the compressed planet air, depending on its denseness, blah, blah, blah.

N/A  (I’m watching this as an issue, rather than as a defect- for now)

      6) Anakin doesn’t know Padme is pregnant; she isn’t showing enough when they’re reunited after the abbreviated Dooku duel.  If she had a significant bump, he would have physically felt it so we know she couldn’t have been far along.  And apparently, it never occurred to Lucas, or other convincing creative-types, to provide a Jedi with an ability to sense the possibility that he impregnated his wife.  This comment itself is just foreshadowing.  The viewer has no idea how long it has been since they had last seen each other.

tracking

      7) It appears to be later that same night and Padme is wearing something sexy.  She can’t be more than 3-4 months pregnant.  My wife is an obstetrics nurse with 15 years of experience, so I asked her.  And I’ve fathered three children.  To use a line my dad had used liberally: “I can’t make this shit up.”

      8) The Skywalkers talk about the dream Anakin had about Padme and its similarity with those he had about his mother.  A necessary scene to aid in the motivation and insecurity of the Darth-to-be.

      9) Likewise, good discussion between Kenobi and Skywalker about the chancellor’s move to power.  Necessary. Would have been more necessary in the second installment of the prequel, but better late than never.

10) I had noted, and will again, about how none of the Jedi are active keepers of the peace.  They sit around and pontificate.  They could be more active and still fail the republic, and if their activity and failure were filmed, and someone else wrote the dialogue and the treatment, it would have improved the movie.  And I want to reiterate, by not wasting all that time on the first movie, as already detailed, there would have been time for it.  It isn’t like Lucas didn’t know he was making three movies.  I want to give a shout out (“is it legal”) to Lucas for coming up with the “genius” idea of sending Yoda to Kashyyyk to aid the Wookies.  Also wise to add Chewbacca to the mix.  We saw a much younger Boba Fett in AOTC and a much younger Greedo in TPM, that establish who each of those minor characters are when they are young.  Cancel that, Greedo’s scene with young Anakin was prominently removed from the finished product because someone who turns into a bounty hunter and another who turns into a Sith lord, has no place in a 140 minute movie about pod-racing and politics, and doesn’t reveal any character traits, per the franchise creator.  My bad.

      11) Obi-Wan informs Anakin the Jedi council wants him to report on the chancellor’s dealings.  Again, should have happened a movie earlier, or not at all, since the Jedi should have taken a more active role in the politics, should have realized they needed to be more active, yeah, ahh, ahem, jeez.

      12) “It’s very dangerous to put them together.”  I don’t even remember whether this was Obi-Wan or Windu who came to this realization, in reference to having Anakin spy on Palpatine.  But, in Kenobi/Windu’s defense, it isn’t like there’s a precedent in putting Anakin in a situation where he is alone together with someone he shouldn’t be.  Or is there?

Note: This was 6 items in a row (7-12) I’ve listed that aren’t necessarily defects.  If they were, they couldn’t be anything less than High because of not having it occur to a council filled with capable, experienced, instinctive and premonition-laden super heroes, for all intents and purposes.

Retest

      13) The camera angles and the clothing make the job of the viewer more difficult in attempting to determine how pregnant Padme is.  Trust me, this is pretty important or I wouldn’t keep watching it.  Plus, Natalie Portman isn’t unattractive.  Continuing to put her in clothing that makes her look good, and not pregnant . . . I’m not complaining.

      14) Great Dialogue!  Anakin and Palpatine in the booth at the play talking about all who gain power are afraid to lose it and the tragedy of Darth Plagueis who could create life and keep those he cared for from dying.  This was delivered with quality!  If I was currently writing episode nine, it would occur to me, with all that Star Wars DNA coursing through my veins, to have Palpatine be the apprentice to Snoke, to have Palpatine be the Sith who stole Plagueis’ power and “killed” him.

High
15) Not one of the thousands of soldiers on the planet where Grievous is hiding, makes sure a Jedi Knight gets back into his ship and flies away? Not one.  How conveeeeenient (have I used a Church Lady reference in one of these WWW yet?)  So, not only can the enemy not hit anything (other than Luke’s mechanical hand on Jabba’s skiff) with all those laser blasts spread across so many movies, but not one of them can watch an enemy get in his friggin ship.  I’m incredulous.  Also, Kenobi can’t turn invisible, and while he’s got the agility of a Jedi, he’s not getting 100 yards away from his ship, concealing his physical presence, without one of Grievous’ soldiers noticing.  If he assumes they aren’t watching . . . Again, Kenobi would come off as a better hero if the villains weren’t made so, in the words of my son, so “thick”.  Thick means, slow, obtuse and stupid.

     If only Rian Johnson had come up with the idea for a Jedi to be able to force ghost project three Star Wars movies sooner.  We would have seen a multi-generational creative hand-off from one person who started to eff with our movies to another one.  I want to be clear, force ghost- brilliant idea; I’ve already enumerated Johnson’s not brilliant ones in the critique of The Last Jedi.

High
16) Obi-Wan arrives by himself and starts fighting a very qualified opponent (Grievous) amid said opponent’s, reported, posse of thousands with no back up until after the fight is well under way.  Again, never mind the odds.  Sure, I believe Grievous made it clear, no random laser blast should be fired at Kenobi, that Grievous would take care of the Jedi scum himself.  But it isn’t like the enemy would hit anything if they fired at the hero ten thousand times- so it doesn't matter what Grievous might have told them.

Severe (because these types of mistakes have started to add up)

       17)   Grievous, a character who can capably wield four lightsabers at a time, is only allowed to do so for less than a minute of screen time.  Here, you have a villain capable of making Kenobi look like a better hero, and you wasted the opportunity.  Really, there are no jobs for a guy like me at ILM, the Skywalker ranch, or Disney Star Wars?  I added a ScrumMaster certification to the cadre of other roles I am already performing.  Maybe I could go in and do some light dusting and fix some of the story issues like Matt Damon effectively did when he solved a math equation on the blackboard of a college where he was polishing floors in Good Will Hunting.

       18)   Windu- “I sense a plot to destroy the Jedi.”  Why didn’t I put a severity on this defect?  What’s the point. If sense is just another word for having added up all of the obvious clues you should have been tracking for the last ten years (of actual time) and six hours (of screen time), then that is just the dim-witted use of the five senses that the overwhelming majority of the rest of the humans on this planet can lay claim to.

Critical

       19)  It takes Palpatine 12 seconds to take down 3 of the 4 Jedi that came to arrest him. I have so much here:

   a)    Palpatine is a great villain; he’s the devil in a space robe, but the acting, fight scene choreography is horrible.  A couple of the Jedi are in a death pose before the Emperor’s saber even penetrates them.  The Jedi and the Emperor would appear more formidable if you didn’t have 3 super heroes killed in seconds of screen time.

   b)   What is wrong with having arms and legs cut off?  These Jedi have been sitting around so long, perhaps they’re out of practice?  In all their years of fighting, or sitting around, the first time they suffer damage, it is critical damage?  Thinking outside the box happens all the time in my world; in the land of the Star Wars creative types, not as much.

   c)    four Jedi to take down a villain that was able to fool them for 10-15 years? I’d have brought eight.

   d)   Lucas overburdened these movies with politics and while Palpatine knows he’s being watched and the Jedi now know who he is, you went from 0 (not suspecting a thing about Palpatine’s plot) to 60, coming to arrest him with the threat of violence if he didn’t step down.  Wouldn’t the request to have Palpatine step down be more reasonable, if made, and refused by him, inside of the hallowed stadium of the senate?  And if not . .

   e)    Why not record the exchange of the Jedi calmly requesting the Emperor to let go of the emergency powers previously granted him, like the massacre of the younglings inside the Jedi temple was recorded.  Seriously, technology exists in this world and theirs. I continue to marvel at how child-like Lucas must have supposed his audience to be.

  20) I read some criticism about Anakin’s reaction to Windu’s threats to Palpatine.  And                  how Anakin should have done this and wouldn’t have done that, even after he had                           become Darth Vader, not just in name, but once he was locked inside his cage of a suit.                     I disagree, because we see how indecisive Anakin has been, how lost, confused, and                         angry.  He feels entitled.  He probably still sees himself as a slave and so probably fees                     inferior, and has a desire to prove himself.  It is Anakin’s unpredictability that makes it                   very difficult to complain about what he did or didn’t do, and why.  See, I can expect                         that out of a human being and a character, not out of a writer and a director.  Darth                           Vader’s rampage scene at the end of Rogue One is made possible, believable and                               awesome because of the incompleteness, insecurity, and fear of uncertainty.  Sure, the                     actor doesn’t always do the best job of bringing that across, but I’m not sure a critic                         can zero in on trying to fit Darth Vader’s motivations and reasoning into a template.

Medium

      21)  We speak infrequently in the software development world about getting the business what they must have, need and what, to them, would be nice to have.  This complaint falls into the latter grouping.  A “nice to have” is something that would save people time, a convenience, something that makes a website easier to control, gets the business some reports, gives them another method to achieve something, find more information, etc.

So, Order 66. When I was reading rough story outlines years before ROTS came out, one of the subplots was the hunting down and destroying of the Jedi.  Obi-Wan said as much in Star Wars.  That would have been wicked, or boss, or wicked-boss.  Since so many of the Jedi were already killed by Order 66, that couldn’t happen.  No research, tracking, covert operations, no intrigue, no showing off the Sith v. Jedi in ways never explored, as I’ve specified. Disappointed.  If you borrow the feel of the hunt from the 1982 Blade Runner and migrate it to Star Wars . . . I’d have rather watched that than pod-racing, hover pods in the galactic senate, Gungan city warriors and a droid army occupation.  The only occupation the droid army is qualified for is a thumb war with C-3PO to see who can act as the pimp for Rosie the cleaning lady robot from the Jetsons.

      22)  When Padme is leaving to go after Anakin- “3PO will look after me.”  My dog, before we owned him, did a better job of looking after me.

Defect severity coming shortly

      23)   Padme’s pregnancy is more noticeable than it has been the whole film, because of the clothes she’s wearing.  It isn’t because she’s that much further along.  Lucas was incapable of telling a story except by taking 2-3 day snippets out of the lives of the characters and laying all his cards on the table.  Maybe, maybe 2 weeks passes between the events following Palpatine’s rescue and the Obi-Wan v. Anakin battle on the hell planet. But that expansive passage of time would have been something Lucas has never been able to capture realistically in five other attempts. I can't buy it here either.

Medium

       24)  Plenty of physics issues on the duel between Mr. Kenobi and Mr. Skywalker.  Anakin           standing on a hunk of metal that likely couldn’t support his weight and couldn’t resist the lava river that would have melted it to nothing- that kind of stuff.  That’s low hanging fruit- another software development term for fixing a small problem quickly. 

Low

      25)  The Mustafar battle is too long.  Take off 3-4 minutes and add those to the fight scene between Palpatine and four Jedi . . . just sayin’.

Medium

      26)  How could Yoda not have been ready for whatever Sidious was going to throw at him?  He’s showing up to the lair of a devil who, Yoda has to assume, already defeated four other Jedi (three of them in about 12 seconds).

Critical

      27)  Padme delivers two healthy 6-9 pound children when she’s still only an estimated 4-6 months           pregnant after not showing much of anything for the majority of a movie that probably spans               the length of, by the most liberal measure- 2 weeks.  Lucas has no idea how to deal with                       pacing, or continuity, or biology.  In fairness, he’s probably not into realism, or accurately                   portraying the passage of time. Yep, the story is geared toward 6-12 year old boys, so                           presenting a woman with child wasn’t a focus, but c’mon.  He made the same mistake in The             Empire Strikes Back, which I’ll get to, and Rian Johnson glaringly makes it in The Last Jedi, which I’ve addressed already.  Stop it, just stop it.  Write the outline of your story and think about when these events happen in time.  Unless Padme is actually some kind of alien-reptile from the movie Species, whose gestation period is tracked in hours or days, don’t bring that kind of time-math into a movie you put in front of a paying audience.

 My wife said that only tall women would have a chance to be 4-5 months pregnant without                 noticeably showing.  Natalie Portman is not 6-2. 

Severe

      28)  He has to get this stuff right.  Uncle Owen looks maybe 30 at the end of this movie.  He’s at least 60 at the beginning of Star Wars, the next time we see him.  By my math, that’s 30 years.  Obi-Wan is about 35 when he brings Luke to the Lars’.  Obi-Wan is at least 65 in Star Wars.  Unless Star Wars or Jedi time is different, none of that makes sense.  Luke is not only 20 at the beginning of Star Wars.

      29) None of the deleted scenes should have made it into the movie, even the one that shows Yoda landing on Dagobah.

Unfortunately, this WWW installment was about as long as the one for Attack of the Clones, while Revenge of the Sith is a much better movie.  In my opinion, it was demoted to the 4^th best following Rogue One’s 2016 release.  Since 4-5 of the points made above concerned things that were well done, and another 5 were used to track the Critical error of Padme’s pregnancy, there might appear to be as many defects as AOTC, though there aren’t.

Another reminder- anyone who accidentally has read this at all, or this far, might question the assessment of Padme’s pregnancy (critical) and the ages of characters involved in the transfer of Luke to Tatooine (severe) as being a bit too pedantic in nature.  Tough.  Those things are killers in the whole continuity, consistency, technical delivery/execution of the story.  You cannot sit down to write a story that is meant to fit together with revered and respected series portions and get that timing wrong.  This is akin to having a battle scene in a movie about World War II in 18^th century California or putting 7 stars on the helmet of a 4-star general.

So, in the words of my 13 year old son, and my father, who passed away in 2016- stop being so thick, and do a better job of making this shit up.