There was that feeling of overwhelming odds on the ground at Scarif. Nothing like waves of reinforcements and AT-AT's to ruin an infantry trooper's day.
That's probably the realest thing ever. The Empire seems to be a conglomerate of certain nations/styles. You've got German/Nazi uniforms, and a sort of combination of German/British efficiency, followed by the Russian doctrine of Heavy Armor and lots and lots of men. Well, at least from days of old. I dunno how well that stacks up against the more modern military of today.
No opening crawl?! What the heck?! When did the day come that a Star Wars movie opens without a crawl?!
Yeah, this rather jarring. No opening crawl, not even the usual fan fare with the STAR WARS blasting ont eh screen really made it feel awkward and jarring. Just seemed like I wasn't watching a Star Wars movie at first. then again, I guess that's to be expected since the crawl is only supposed to be used in the primary IX Saga movies.
The Rebel fleet above Scarif. It felt like the fleet had more ships than what was Endor (and didn't the Mon Calamari join the Rebellion after A New Hope?). The whole point of A New Hope was that they didn't have the big ships needed to fight a major engagement, hence they had to stage lots of hit-and-runs, besides only having a few squadrons of fighters to attack the Death Star. I know they can retcon it all with 'losses at Scarif' and whatnot, but still a sticky point for me.
I can't say this bothered me much. Once I've seen how many were destroyed, it made sense that they had only a handful remaining, and unfortunatly, they just choose to not throw everything they have left at the Death Star a few days later. Instead, just a couple squadrons of fighters. I suppose we could find an explanation for that somehow, but that's the only part that irks me regarding the 'fleet'. It seems like that one Admiral made the call to ride into battle and then so many paid the price for it. On the plus side, they got the plans, sooo...win?
Too many planet jumps for me. I like to see new planets, but I think seven is too many to cram into a single film (but I guess we got spoiled with lots of other films by getting to wander around on them for a period of time).
Now I can get behind this. I won't complain about desert/snow planets, as I think they are just going to be a permanent fixture of SW for the rest of the time. WHile there wasn't any snow, I believe Jedha was located on a desert planet. (side note: why are scifi planets almost always a single biome? Sometimes 2 biome's, but usually just one) We did get a few new planets this time around. The beginning planet where Papa Erso was taken away was a nice change, and I really loved Scariff. That was just an awesome shake up of what we usually get. But yeah, we didn't get to take much in when it comes to like the first 30 minutes of the film, give or take.
Didn't the AT-AT get developed after A New Hope?
I dunno. I know we didn't originaolly see them until ESB, but then the PT had to go and put some walkers that while different and smaller, you could see the idea of how the Empire came to build them. Similar with the Starfighters that would later be seen. Then again, this is probably my biggest grief with the new material being put out. I feel nothing is explained to a decent level, and it's almost expected or demanded that you will view ancilliary material, like a novelization, or the other comics/books/cartoons to get the rest of the info. Visual guides and dictionaries are cool, but I feel I shouldn't have to rely on extra media to have this explained. Then again, I was spoiled with some 31 years of EU, almost 40 if you go back to 1977.