Star Wars: Rogue One - trailer 2

You've seen it already, I know you have, but what the hell:

That... doesn't look too bad. Then again, Lucas managed to make Star Wars boring, so the guy who turned in a snorefest like Godzilla..?

Yeah, I'm pretty definitively on-record as not having a very high opinion of Gareth Edwards' last movie, so I suspect that if this is good, it'll be more down to a script he didn't write and the involvement of Christopher McQuarrie and Tony Gilroy. Still, I want to be optimistic, and I will say that if Edwards is good at anything, it's solid VFX work, and getting the sense of scale across. The guy sure can pick a DP, too, and I love the score going on here.

Felicity Jones seems about as emotionless as I'd expect from the guy, though, so... fingers crossed, but breath definitely not held.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Yeah.... I’m a little bit late. The Force Awakens released on Blu-Ray in April, but I hadn’t seen it since it opened theatrically in December, and yesterday seemed as good a time as any to revisit.

The reason I put off rewatching it for so long was….

Okay, so a little bit of personal history: the high bar for Star Wars, walking into The Force Awakens, was The Empire Strikes Back, which is probably my favourite movie. When The Phantom Menace was still in production, I avoided pretty much everything about it (only to be spoiled by the soundtrack listing - thanks a lot, Qui-Gon’s Noble End), only to be horribly disappointed.

Two days before Attack of the Clones was released, I read the screenplay, which is the clearest demonstration I can come up with for how much The Phantom Menace had damaged my affection for the franchise.

The Force Awakens was going to be different, though - the first new “main series” Star Wars in a decade, with not just a new director, but one who was a self-professed fan. Even watching Abrams’ Star Trek, he seemed like he’d be a better fit for a galaxy far, far away….