Only sometime in the last few days did I learn that Star Wars: Rogue One<\/i> was directed by Gareth Edwards. Somehow I had not gotten around to seeing this film.<\/p>\n
There is always lots to do, life is busy, the friends I had wanted to see it with had already seen it. There are a million excuses for not seeing a first-run blockbuster film.<\/p>\n
But then I found out who the director was, and I knew I had to see it. Gareth Edwards is the plucky guy who, seven years ago, directed Monsters<\/i>, one of my favorite Sci Fi films of all time.<\/p>\n
And the beautiful thing is that it was something of a rogue movie. Edwards’ budget for this feature film was $15,000. Not $15,000 for special effects, but $15,000 total<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Like any truly groundbreaking film, its user ratings on IMDB are mostly either 10 stars or 1 star. People were either completely enthralled by it, as I was, or they were deeply offended by it.<\/p>\n
Even though Monsters<\/i> featured giant scary extraterrestrial creatures, it was nothing at all like the sort of big budget super-heros and villains CGI heavy extravaganza that today passes for science fiction. At its core it was a relationship film, about two people who weren’t even likeable.<\/p>\n
In other words, it was the opposite of a fan-boy friendly comic-book film. I loved everything about it.<\/p>\n
So when I found out that Gareth Edwards had directed the latest Star Wars film, I rushed out and saw it, just this afternoon. And I was not disappointed.<\/p>\n
Unlike most movies that pass for science fiction these days, Star Wars: Rogue One<\/i> actually makes thematic sense from a psychological perspective. The exposition makes clear, on a moral and ethical level, in a way that emerges naturally from character development, why the good guys are the good guys, and the bad guys are the bad guys.<\/p>\n
And it doesn’t do that in a cheap or easy way. It makes its characters earn their right to be on the side of goodness.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting to compare the two films in terms of budget. By my calculations, Star Wars: Rogue One<\/i> cost about 10,000 times as much to make as Monsters<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Yet both are good. That’s quite a range. Three cheers for the brilliance of Gareth Edwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Only sometime in the last few days did I learn that Star Wars: Rogue One was directed by Gareth Edwards. Somehow I had not gotten around to seeing this film. There is always lots to do, life is busy, the friends I had wanted to see it with had already seen it. There are a … Continue reading “Rogue movies and others”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18530,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18529\/revisions\/18530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}