The cinematography is absolute garbage. One of the worst looking Star Wars movies I’ve ever seen. You literally can’t see or tell what’s going on in a bunch of scenes because of terrible lighting. The cinematography and the social justice droid are my two biggest complaints. Other than that I thought the movie was fine. Nothing special. I went in expecting to hate it and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. 6.8/10
shareThe art design was also lacking. A lot of basic shapes used, like boxy awkward looking speeders, and that one alien helmet design that was literally a hexagon with two eyes. I also think one of the costumes was repeated. I saw an Enfys Nest ally wearing the same costume as one of the bad guy's security peeps.... but maybe that was intentional, like it had been taken by Enfys gang.
shareThose are fair takes
shareYup, the lighting and blocking is atrocious, Soylo was an unpleasant experience and the hideous look of the film is a major reason
shareMany brought that up long before RLM stated it.
I wonder why that is, even in HD all seems underlit and poorly blocked (except the desert scenes in Act 3).
Were they going more of a 70s low budget look to embrace the lowlife milieu, or what went wrong - this is the most expensive Star Wars but does not look that way, quite the contrary.
that is mostly because of reshoots
shareok, I get tonal fluctuations or plot holes because of rehoots, but the lighting?
What happened, could the not afford the electricity for the lights anymore...?
I should have been more clear. What I meant was that it is the most expensive film in the series because of reshoots. The extra money wasn't going towards the film's quality or lighting (though technically it was because they were probably (hopefully) reshooting bad scenes).
Why it was shot so poorly in the first place is beyond me though. Probably just bad direction or my personal 100% serious theory which was to mask how he didn't look like Harrison Ford at all so they kept him in darkness for a large part of the movie.
Didn't look, sound or behave like Han Solo either. This film literally told us more about side characters such as qi'ra than it did the events of a young HS - quite strange.
I didn't totally dislike the film, I was more amazed at how boring it was - quite a feat when you consider that it's based on one of the most popular characters in the SWU.
They gave this film too much credit.
While expectation were at an all-time low as people braved the crowd of less than 20 people on opening night to see this film, it was just rather boring (which is an AMAZING achievement when you think about it). There was some great cringe and some laughable scenarios like the empire needing to transport materials by train .... instead of by ship (lol) - and of course a heap of randomness that doesn't make much sense in the SWU - but overall it is more of a bore flick than a disgrace.
Visually it is incredibly subpar of a SW film though.
From an Academy-Award nominated cinematographer too (for Arrival).
Either Ron Howard came in too late and just didn't have time to care how the movie looked, or they were using the darkly-lit scenes to hide poor alien masks and cheap sets (to possibly save money after wasting so much with the previous directors). WhatTheFlick reviewers saw this in 3D, and with the darkened screen, you could literally not see who was talking.
There's a time for Godfather level of darkness in a movie, but a Star Wars movie shouldn't be it.