Since the wording in the part of the video dealing with deepfakery has been over-interpreted a few times, a clarification: What I mean when saying AI performances are "driven" by algorithms is that the *transformative* element of, say, the recreated face of a young Mark Hamill is automated - we're watching algorithmic interpretation of an image. Yes, it's an interpretation mapped onto a base layer that involved a human, but the final product is *processed,* not animated or acted. (Which is why it feels so flat and lifeless.) I can see there being a semantic argument here, but the point is that this method takes a meaningful human element out of the thing. Hope that clears things up for those who were taking it to imply there were never any humans involved at all. Still welcome to disagree about the end result, of course.
I mean, what if Andor was a show BEFORE this movie. My god, it would have made Rogue One so much more impactful. We could have glimpsed younger jyn connected with saws rebellion, feel the empire tightening it’s grip around the universe, even watching the power struggles within its ranks, like we are seeing now. And then we have to watch them all perish😩 It would have given this movie so much more life. Now they are creating a story worth telling posthumously, which cheapens it. Rogue One will always feel a little disconnected, algorithmic and dead because it was a cash grab, a story designed to capitalize on what the old movies were, instead of patiently world building what the Disney Star Wars could be.
@@thr33shadows Disney Star Wars has been all about duping the already very impressionable and mercurial fanbase with glimpses of what the saga used to be, buried underneath layers and layers of things that are foreign to it, like Jar Jar Abrams and his "mystery boxes", Rian Johnson's misplaced whodunnit sensibilities (which are now being put to better use elsewhere) and the trademark lifelessness of the mouse brand. and I know that not all of us Star Wars fans are like that, but when you remember that Force Awakens sits at the top 10 all time box office and that the newer shows have a good chunk of the fandom mesmerized over small cameos and references, it's pretty hard to reach any other conclusion.
"These movies exist to serve an algorithm, not humans" I cannot express to you how many times I've heard management at my job try to say that algorithms should just replace everything. It's extremely short sighted.
A really good algorithm would replace management. It eventually would require actors, writers, producers, musicians, composers, set, prop, and costume designers, etc. But the computers would crunch the numbers, obviating the suits in the suites.
Honestly. Some of the most insightful and thought intensive content I’ve ever seen. Legitimately made me feel more connected to my emotions over the franchise as a whole, and helped put into words what I could not. In a phrase, give me the right questions to ask myself. To make a long comment short; yeah this stuff is baller. Keep posting W’s king.
The line about artists being a set of instructions really resonated with me. It revealed to me all the thinking that's wrong with the attitude of Disney, trying to push innovations just because they can, when there's nothing wrong with the existing way of doing things. Artists really deserve to be treated with more respect.
I think Disney feel they have to push innovation in movies because that was one of the things Lucas was know for. They are following a set of instructions on how to make a Lucas type film without understanding the themes and art that Lucas made his stuff so appealing. Just like Hollywood made all those crappy scifi films after Star Wars.
@@obiwankenobi687 No it's muuuuch deeper ;) In fact it's A BAD SIGN. And the beginning of DEEP FAKE MOVIES. Or maybe the algorithm of concern in the production of this video really was the RUclips algorithm.
I would like to see more filmmakers go the opposite direction and make films with little or no CGI and plenty of old-school practical effects (even cheesy "low-budget" ones). It's much more satisfying to watch a spaceship explode (for example) in a film if you know that the creators were blowing SOMETHING to smithereens (usually a detailed miniature) IRL and filming that, rather than just creating a series of images on a computer screen.
What is “wrong” with the existing way of doing things? Why, profit maximisation, of course. Corporations exist solely to generate profits. There’s no legal way, in the US, to avoid that sole responsibility.
I've always argued that CGI Tarkin would've played better as a full-size hologram throughout the film. The blue tint and jumpy, static-y nature would've hid a lot of the flaws. It would've also read as him purposefully refusing to see Krennic in person, lowering the latter's status in the process, until Tarkin swoops in to steal the Death Star project from under him.
I remember thinking, "Gosh, I don't want to be mean, but the voice actor they got to play young Luke is giving such a wooden performance." Learning that they didn't even bother hiring a voice actor is a little distressing, but it certainly explains things.
That plot hole about the Death Star's weakness truly isn't a plot hole. Lucas based the idea on how pilots would target naval ships' exhaust ports to trigger chain reactions, causing massive damage to these impressive ships, which often were nuclear. He decided that despite the Death Star being so much bigger than most ships, it still would feature a structural feature that smaller vessels had that could then be exploited, but might be so hard to find, they needed the plans for the station's designs.
Yeah and it's so weird to act like the flaw was some totally unknown thing to the Empire. It wasn't, they covered it with ray shielding. They just didn't imagine that a small one-man fighter would be able to penetrate their defenses and launch a proton torpedo down a two-meter exhaust port while hurtling at top speed toward a dead end. It was literally just a subtle design flaw.
Thank you! I keep saying the thermal exhaust port is a plot point not a plot hole: The Empire dosn't belive one man can make any difference, or is of any value. That's why The Death Star doesn't have anti-fighter guns and TIE fighters are cheap and fragile.
Ironically Rogue One only corrobated your point and is compatible. If one listens to Erso's message intended for Jyn, he asserted that the reactor module was the exploitable component to destroying the station, since he sabotaged the system. Rendering it more vulnerable to pressurised explosions to any part of it. No mention of the exhaust ports - Erso never implemented them. They were clearly part of the design. Necessitated by the immense thermal energy and radiation generated by the reactor core. That needs to be funneled away from the reactor regardless, and any explosion to vital components result in chain reactions, as you asserted. In actuality, the film implicates that without a sabotaged hypermatter reactor system, it would have been even more difficult to destroy the Death Star, which is a testament to how fortunate the Alliance was - this already being evident within ANH. The film only reinforces Lucas thematic intention through adding it's own expansion on the Death Star's history. It's not necessary, however it may enhance ANH and there's a neat historical parallel with Galen Erso and the scientists, whom were instrumental in ushering the atomic/nuclear age.
@@AshanBhatoa The whole reason a thermal exhaust port is such a weakness without any additional tinkering is because of all the thermal energy and radiation generated by the reactor core of a machine that could destroy planets. Given how much energy is needed to produce a planet destroying blast, the equal reactive energy created for the attack has to be dispersed somewhere, out exhaust ports, which provide the necessary recipe for chain reactions to turn the Death Star's own produced energy back on itself (a webcomic done with Legos pointed this out years before Disney did Star Wars). Since those exhaust ports are such good targets for destroying the Death Star, there was no needed tinkering from the station's designer (who should've been a Genoshian, not a human, but they were likely trying to ignore or retcon the Prequels). There were likely multiple exhaust ports but the one focused on in A New Hope was likely the easiest to attack
@@mustlovedragons8047 I utterly love how incompetent the Empire is, which is so realistic like real-life villains who create societies that function horribly for their people. The best examples are how cheap and ill-trained the storm-troopers are compared to Clone Troopers, how little the Empire cares for its own men with the likes of non-shielded tie-fighters, and the fact the Emperor keeps funneling his budget into making Death Stars, which are wildly inefficient tools of war. Palpatine makes them because of his power addiction, using the Death Star to not just obliviate enemies but attempt to rule through fear. A smarter evil overlord would wipe out the populace of a planet so as to acquire and use the planet's raw resources, replacing rebellious former inhabitants with loyal subjects, giving the planet as a prize, but Palpatine being the power-mad despot he is, stupidly destroys a resource rich planet like Alderaan as a form of flexing. An. Entire. Planet. Of. Resources. It's mind-boggling to even attempt to think how much resources were lost from Alderaan's destruction, even relative to the galactic scale. Ironically, such an attack seemed to further unite divided factions and spur them on to more militant actions against the Empire (there's a great line from the radio drama when Leia screams at Tarkin and Vader that they have declared war on Life itself). Palpatine was a wonderfully crafty schemer, manipulating an entire galaxy into civil war so as to rise to absolute power, but once procurring that power, he horribly mismanaged ruling his galactic prize. He was doomed to fail, purely because of his own immoral nature ruling so many peoples.
George Lucas predicted the rise of films with dead actors in the 80s. He was pretty spot on. The only thing he was wrong about was he thought computer movies wouldn't be commercial. He was pretty prescient in a lot of ways. A very shrewd businessman and incredibly intelligent. When the technology didn't exist he spurred it forward, he created it. With his companies and employees.
@@lastjedi-1 From inventing ILM to create new innovations in visual effects in the ‘70s, all the way to pioneering digital film-making in the ‘00s, and everything in between, he’s always at the forefront of something new and exciting.
One crucial thing not mentioned here is the fact that make-up departments are unionised while CG artists are not. Tarkin absolutely could've been achieved with the makeup we have today, but CG artists are cheaper, so it's easy to see why they went with CG, beyond just being able to flex the tech.
One of your most thought-provoking videos yet. And I'm excited to hear about the additional media you're publishing. One thought--the new Avatar sequel (partial spoilers) feels like a very literal embodiment of these "deep fake movies" , because even the plot itself brings back characters who died in the first one. I think there's an interesting dialogue there. I hadn't realized the Tarquin actor was that on-point in real life. They absolutely should have just used traditional makeup and maybe prostehtics/wigs. He wouldn't have needed much at all.
Personally I don't have the same qualms with Avatar 2 (even more spoilers ahead) - I think it's a greater exposition on the themes of the first one, but it's also a natural progression. In the first movie we see extractive colonialism, in the second movie it's progressed to settler colonialism. In the first movie we see the opening stages of an anti-colonial war, in the second we see it's progression into encompassing the whole planet. The genocidal methodologies of the humans also progress further. Most importantly though, I think the second movie is about pacifism. Jake and Neytiri flee the forest to escape being hunted, the Metkayina are adamant they are not involved in the war, and the Tulkun are the ultimate species-wide pacifists. All 3 scenarios change by the end. Jake and Neytiri realise they can't keep their family safe by running, the Metkayina realise that they have to stand and fight to save their Tulkun, and Payakan is the ultimate exemplification of the overturning of Tulkun pacifism when he saves the Na'vi during the climactic battle. Cameron's message throughout the third film is rooted in the idea of just war, that to rebel is justified, and that these conflicts cannot be avoided or fled from - they have their way of finding you. In a way it's a parallel to the overall environmental message as well - in an interlinked global ecosystem (both on Pandora AND on Earth), harm to the system has knock-on effects on us all that cannot be escaped.
I feel like the passion, care, and time that went into avatar 2's creation makes it anything but a deepfake movie...maybe if you isolate out the plot but...
I am so in love with your videos that it feels like childhood Christmas whenever I see a new one! Can't wait for the LOTR video essays. I have a feeling they're going to be next level!
Excellent video. Your analogy about "deepfake movies" really hit the nail on the head. It's truly a shame that the general public don't seem to see any problems with these artistically devoid, soulless products. Film studios have discovered that they can do the absolute bare minimum and still make huge profits and hold huge appeal. As long as that continues, I don't see things getting better anytime soon. I can't wait for your next video. Please keep up the great work!
It’s no wonder Disney is hemorrhaging money given how they’ve essentially allowed an algorithm to write all their recent movies and shows. Hopefully Andors success in the SW community will encourage them to put more effort into their properties
Corporations have realized that they can appeal to the lowest common denominator andmake reliable profits. Appealing to intelligent viewers is a lot harder and more time consuming.
I think there is quite a bit of growing awareness amongst the public. Many of these "deepfake movies" have received horrendous reviews (although they do seem to be box office successes a lot).
@@nigeltheoutlaw agreed, however, as of late, that business mode has proven to be less and less reliable and profitable. Cooperations like Disney need a renaissance of creativity for their properties and soon, or else they’ll bleed them dry and have nothing to show for it
"The general public don't seem to see any problems with these artistically devoid, soulless products". The people normalizing this dangerous technology: "Well, you have to start somewhere".
George Lucas did say to a fellow USC graduate that he should give up acting and going to animation because he didn’t like dealing with actors. Excellent video is always my friend. Thanks for making my day.
Incredible essay and analysis. The way you tied deepfake animations to deepfake movie, not to mention how animation is meant to breathe, not reanimate. Great points!
What you said about Rogue One not having any new vehicles struck a chord with me. I was watching a video recently about how in the sequel movies the Resistance X-wings and First Order Tie Fighters have exactly the same silhouette as the ones from the Original Trilogy, whereas George Lucas's films always featured ships that had major differences in their silhouettes, even if one ship was a precursor to another (like the ARC fighter being a precursor to the X-wing). I think, and I know this will be a hard pill for us to swallow, this is a consequence of the Clone Wars in a weird way. In the Clone Wars, the screenwriters and showrunners were operating within a very limited timeframe, so logically the Republic and the Separatists would be using the same ships for most of the Clone Wars. Most of the Disney movies and shows take place in the same two parts of the Star Wars universe: After the Original Trilogy, and Between the Prequels and the Original trilogies. After the sequels and Solo, it seems like Luke and Han have been cut out of as many Star Wars projects as possible, and the focus has been more on side characters that made their appearances in the Clone Wars like Ahsoka or the Mandalorians. I think this is because Disney wants to use characters like memories it can just bring up to make us think it's respecting Lucas' legacy. The stories they make with the characters are designed to be simple, modular plots where characters can be plugged in as cameos to perform a mundane task and then leave. Will a series between the Original Trilogy movies like the Clone Wars ever happen? There's certainly material there, story arcs you could fill in the details of like Han's choice to become a rebellion general, or plot holes to patch in like how Luke got a kyber crystal to make his second lightsaber (or why he hasn't met Ahsoka to train with her), but I hope Disney doesn't do this because I know it will end up being full of filler and cheap attempts at nostalgia-baiting if it doesn't totally discredit and overshadow the OT characters like the sequels and Kenobi and Solo did.
@@thomaslange9480 U-Wing, Krennics Shuttle, Rogue One Zeta shuttle, Occupier tank, TIE Striker, TIE Reaper. Some of these might be more or less OT-derivative designs, but that is mostly on the era the film is set in and they have still done more to make themselves distinct than the ships within the OT (just slapped different wings on the same TIE cockpit while in RO the entire ships body is just as different as the wings). It's far more distinct from TFAs approach where every new design was purposefully as ugly and utilitarian as possible and tucked away into the background as fast as possible to make way for X-Wing, TIE Fighter and Millenium Falcon.
@@Grandof-the-PentastarAlignment I completely agree. This was a great video, and definitely made me re-evaluate certain aspects of Rogue One further, such as the character dynamics and development, which were really good, as a rudimentary basis, however they were not meaningfully expanded upon to fulfill the potential they had as characters. Simultaneously, I also perceive these films through a practical lens. Asserting that the film had no new vessels is an odd argument. I don't believe one can sustain it far, before individuals cite the U-Wing, TIE Striker, TIE Reaper, the barges, shuttles, combat vehicles and etc. They are all derivative, however sufficiently different. I also disagree that one cannot understand Jyn's motivations.
@@daegnaxqelil2733 There were tons of vehicles. I didn't pick this up in the video but if he said it then it's plain bonkers. What they didn't do is the "LOOK AT THIS BUY THE TOY" type introduction that we get sometimes. They did it the right way.
I find your adherence to calling the deep fakes and animated characters ‘things’ intriguing. It’s simple language handles like this that will be increasingly important for us to maintain a grip on reality.
You say, “I am allowed to do anything”-but not everything is good for you. You say, “I am allowed to do anything”-but not everything is beneficial. 1 Corinthians 10
The algorithmic movie argument is valid to a lot of projects out there, but I really don’t think it applies to Rogue One. Gareth Edwards is just a huge huge fan of the original trilogy and that’s why there’s so much nostalgia in the movie. Whether you liked it or not, Rogue One is undoubtedly a passion project from a very dedicated fan. You can call it simple or uninspired, but it’s definitely not the result of a heartless algorithm.
And even there characterization of the characters is close to what Edwards did: these characters are always witnesses of events more important than themselves. Just Monsters. Even on nostalgia, I don't find Edwards as complacent as Abrams (while both are fans of OT) according to me, the micro-reference that So uncivilized points to is closer to the "upside down" he had underlined in another video that the complacent wink
That literally is what happened with this movie. Disney disagreed with Gareth Edwards and has several reshoots done, so some of the more algorithmic scenes are probably a result of the studio getting between the artist and the film.
You never disappoint with your reasoning! I had never really looked at Rogue One like that, because like many others, I was just happy that Disney finally managed to pull off something that felt a bit like Star Wars again... but looking back at it like this, I must admit that you hit the nail on its head. It was not that Disney suddenly understood how to make Star Wars, they were just lucky with their algorithms for once. They are still dead inside 😕
Wow, I usually dont watch philosophical videos, specially not for Star Wars for a while. But this one was so honest, that kept me watching after the first 30 seconds. You are very original!
I still cannot understand why this channel has only 130 thousand subscribers, it should have at least 200 thousand units ready with a million more well on the way! But seriously, this channel is spotless and magnificent and you are doing beautiful work!
Seriously, some of the best Star Wars and generally video content on RUclips. It shows that you really understand the impact cinema has, and we all appreciate that.
@@sukitron5415 >wow, so you hate people who actually want to do what they do. Proudly. Those who wax poetic about how great it is for creatives to make what they want to make would never be okay with *me* making what *I want* to make. I am simply returning the favor. >Also anti corporatism isn't communism Never said it was. However, anti-corporatism is very often bound up in anti-Americanism and economic illiteracy. I simply know what side my bread is buttered on.
I thought that was a brave choice. It's not the "safe" approach. But I think the emotional impact of the film would be blunted if Jyn and Cassian are able to escape at the last minute.
That was always my thinking. It's a brave choice, sure but it also made me honestly never feel the need to rewatch the movie again in a way I can't ever really explain. Personally I would have had the monk and droid survive but that's just me.
Interesting video. I happen to like Rogue One a lot, although I fundamentally disagree with their choice of doing digitally de-aged Tarkin and Leia. I'd have much rather seen Tarkin recast as Guy Henry, who is also an excellent actor and would've honored Peter Cushing's performance. Hiding his face does a disservice both to him and to Peter's legacy. The scene with Leia was just unnecessary as a whole, but they could've recast her as well. We have so many talented young actors who could fill these roles, that resorting to digital fakes is such a creatively bankrupt thing to do. Sebastian Stan, for instance, would make an amazing Luke Skywalker, yet he's not given the chance to do so. It's a pretty awful thing that studios are doing, and I hope it stops.
In Rogue One it honestly worked really well. I was happy to see Tarkin expanded more onscreen, and as you said the actual standin was just as good (if not potentially better) than CGI. But it really is just a crutch now, like refusing to recast young Luke Skywalker despite having perfect actors (like Sebastien Stan) to put in the role.
Sebastian Stan costs more than Mark Hamill at this point. Disney want to do everything on the cheap. Like the new movie's director not having made a feature film before. Easy scapegoat for its failure, and cheaper than someone established.
you can never get something right if your motivations are wrong. people may not notice that something is off if off things is all they get but if you have something with the right heart to compare it to (just as there are living breathing humans you can compare deepfakes to) you will always be able to tell kudos on another fantastic video, looking forward to your future projects!
Please keep making videos about what you love! Don’t just do what’s trendy. We love your insights, keep following your authenticity! Honestly, I would watch you about shows, books, or movies I hadn’t seen, because I gain so much insight into art and story when I listen to your essays, no matter the topic. Can’t wait for the LOTR’s video.
I used to really like Rogue One, I honestly did, but as the years went by, the film ultimately rang somewhat hollow to me - the characters were surface level, the aesthetics were reused, and the film's existence was meant to solve a 'plot hole' that wasn't actually a plot hole.
@Darth Doofus As you said - Star Wars is about the evil within, not the exterior evil. But it's also about the good that can return from evil. I like your idea - in a sense, having Galen Erso being the main character of a film like Rogue One could have made for a much more captivating story. You mentioned the parallel to Einstein - it's also a similar parallel to Oppenheimer. You mentioned them being a 'Confederate' scientist - do you mean that the scientist would have been on the side of the Separatists in the Clone Wars, only to be recruited by the victorious empire to build their new tech? (not unlike Operation Paperclip irl?) I meant to say, I haven't been working much on the speculative outline for episode 9 recently due to educational work, novel work, and a fun alt history side project about Rome, so sorry if there's not much major to discuss about it at the moment. Though I will say.... I happened to be watching a random re-write of the sequel trilogy recently. It was actually rather good, but what caught my attention was a point made about the opening to episode 7. It was about how, to keep in line with the established victory of the Rebellion in ROTJ, the opening shot of Ep 7 would show not another Imperial Star Destroyer, but instead a New Republic ship. The opening, dominant ships of each trilogies beginning do show the state of power in the galaxy. Ep 1 has the focus be on the Republic ship, Ep 4 has the focus on the Star Destroyer. They reflect the ones in charge. It wouldn't make sense for the domineering Star Destroyer to occupy the shot once again when, narratively, we last saw them crashing down in ROTJ. This causes me to think and again return to the other idea of how to poetically structure the sequels - by having them appear as natural sequels to the OT than just inverting the PT (remember, last line in 3 was from C-3P0 so we open with him and R2 as the beginning characters in 4, so the last line in 6 was from Leia so we open with her and Han as the beginning characters in 7)
I personally feel the uncanny valley works WELL for Tarken. He is supposed to be an unsettling character, so that effect arguably enhances that bit of the preformance. Leia probably shouldn't even have shown up though given that the exact opposite is true for her.
I think that would have been fine with just the actor. I'm honestly a bit sad that Solo flopped at the box office, because Lucasfilm has gone on record saying that they consider the reason to be that there was no deepfake. That doesn't bode well for future projects
@@officialmonarchmusic KK is a dumbass who doesn't understand the movie flopped because of The Last Jedi... At the same time she was advertising the return of Ewan McGregor 🤣 the irony
I don't like that they did Tarkin this way, but for me, there's a certain humor to it. I see Peter Cushing primarily as Victor Frankenstein. They've frankensteined Frankenstein himself.
This video has a Rogue One review, which i respect and has great points i can agree on despite me loving the movie, an ethical doubt and a defense of human nature compared to good algoryrhms, this is why i love this channel, thank you So Uncivilized.
I liked Rogue One overall. It's still possibly the best Disney SW film and definitely my favorite they've made. Some weird decisions with the 're-animation' you pointed out, but I think the lack of characterization on any of the characters works for the movie more than against it. By filling the cast/story with side characters, I think the story emphasizes (whether intentional or not) that even the people you think are unimportant were actually essential for the victory in the OG SW to happen. It was that context that made Rogue One my favorite, obnoxious fan service or not.
Very good video! it's funny that you refer to this as a DEEPFAKE movie... because back in 2016-2017, I started referring to ROGUE ONE dismissively as a TEMP-MOVIE (similar to the term TEMP TRACK) I enjoyed the movie the first time, but it did not survive a theatrical rewatch (I completely dozed off halfway through). And your video covers a lot of the reasons why I don't think the movie works despite all the cool ideas/concepts within it There was a Yahoo Movies UK interview with the film's editors back in 2017 where they talked about the way early concepts of the movie were comprised of clips from tons of other movies as placeholders. Even to the point they used existing clips to time out how long it should take for a door to close And something about that really made me derisive of ROGUE ONE. The interview is good. But here is the specific excerpt about the story reel that was made for the movie before a script was set: ------------------- START: Colin Goudie: I’d worked with Gareth [Edwards] previously. I cut his movie ‘Monsters’ so we’d already got a relationship and I’d actually done a couple of projects with him before that as well. So he got me on board in September of 2014 and asked me to do a story reel for ‘Rogue One’. There was no screenplay, there was just a story breakdown at that point, scene by scene. He got me to rip hundreds of movies and basically make ‘Rogue One’ using other films so that they could work out how much dialogue they actually needed in the film. It’s very simple to have a line [in the script] that reads “Krennic’s shuttle descends to the planet”, now that takes maybe 2-3 seconds in other films, but if you look at any other ‘Star Wars’ film you realise that takes 45 seconds or a minute of screen time. So by making the whole film that way - I used a lot of the ‘Star Wars’ films - but also hundreds of other films too, it gave us a good idea of the timing. For example the sequence of them breaking into the vault I was ripping the big door closing in ‘Wargames’ to work out how long does a vault door take to close. So that’s what I did and that was three months work to do that and that had captions at the bottom which explained the action that was going to be taking place, and two thirds of the screen was filled with the concept art that had already been done and one quarter, the bottom corner, was the little movie clip to give you how long that scene would actually take. Then I used dialogue from other movies to give you a sense of how long it would take in other films for someone to be interrogated. So for instance, when Jyn gets interrogated at the beginning of the film by the Rebel council, I used the scene where Ripley gets interrogated in ‘Aliens’. So you get an idea of what movies usually do. END -------------------------------- I'm sure this was very nice and helpful for the editors on the movie, but jeez.... what a PERFECT way to underline how this movie's existence feels like it was a SOULLESS series of 'algorithmic' decision-making.... on top of which, it seems like Edwards' approach worked so poorly that Gilroy claims he had to come in and save the thing to get it functioning at all And to me, the movie STILL has the problems of feeling like a mechanical hodgepodge of better movies
@@SoUncivilized414just recently started listening to Tansy Gardam’s podcast series about the making of ROGUE ONE called ‘GOING ROGUE’. That interview with the editor comes up in the 2nd episode and the host is as bewildered by it as we are… but she adds more context to it because it conflicts so heavily with Garett Edwards’ approach to directing the actual movie With THE CREATOR coming out soon, I’m really interested in seeing what Edwards does with his creative freedom and to see if his ability to direct compelling scenes between actors has improved (I’m not a fan of Monsters or Dullzilla)
I do think deepfake (for better but mostly worse) will become so realistic in the future that you won't be able to tell the difference. And the range of voice will be handled by an actor, maybe even the original. I'd love to have Matk Hamill voice Luke Skywalker--his voice isn't the same now so it'd require so tech but the emotion would still be there. But I'm not against a recasting either. But after Solo flopped due to TLJ sucking, I doubt they'll ever recast again.
This is the first of your videos I've half disagreed with. I definitely think you make good points about it, but I really liked the new characters and the values they symbolized. I also love that we got to see Vader go further than he had in the Original Trilogy. I was freaking out during that moment in the theater! I think a big part of Rogue One for me is the Star Wars feel. I truly think the planets and music captured that feeling in a way that virtually no other Disney Star Wars content has. I liked the video, because even if I disagree with part of it each video you make is such great quality and your arguments are so well formed. I've been around since the beginning (just a few hundred subs) and I'm excited to see where you go next!
Personally I disagree with you, but Im glad you didnt just bash the movie and presented a really good argument. I wish there was more discourse like this among the community.
Rogue One is just serviceable at best, being "the best Disney Star Wars movie yet" is a patheticly low bar. And this comes from someone who enjoyed it at first.
IMHO why Rogue One works is because Gareth Edwards respects the franchise and wanted to make a movie that fits in the real Star Wars and not celebrate himself like the hacks Abrams and Johnson did. And because it has characters that they take the time to build and make interesting and relatable. And as you said yourself - it focused not on the "elite" of the Rebel Alliance but the infantry and the guerrillas and the fact that every war is dirty and no party is 100% "clean". And as Andor expands it, the movie also shows us what makes people risk everything to become fighters in a resistance to an overwhelming power. People that have nothing to lose because they already have lost everything. Ok, just as Luke in Episode IV. However I do agree that there was no reason to not recast Tarkin and Lea.
I fucking love you man, every single video of you makes me walk away with a completely new view on things. And you just casually mention these things that i had never even thought about before, thank you man keep it up
I mean I still like Rogue One, but yeah, I do agree that recasting the OG characters would be better than deepfaking them. Especially since Ahsoka is apparently doing a full-on adaptation of the Thrawn Trilogy. No way you're doing the Thrawn Trilogy with Luke Skywalker either absent entirely or relegated to inconsequential deepfake cameos.
I want to say the stories of these characters are more in-depth in the novelization. That book does so much for each of the characters that I wish were in the movie but are either only implicit or not mentioned. Worth a read if you liked rogue one !
Yeah I’m not really sure what he was trying to say. Like the films are bad because no new vehicles were added? Like I understand if he made the point saying it was too similar to the originals, and by adding more vehicles it could’ve made the film more unique, but I don’t see the need to add more vehicles really what difference would it have made?
But Tony Gilroy played a very large role getting Rogue One completed AND he was central to bringing Andor to fruition... and Andor is arguably one of the best acted, best written Star Wars 'things' made yet.
"But muh Tony Gilroy" Rogue One is just serviceable at the end of the day, and Andor is the most overrated Star Wars thing since TCW. Dull, verbose, politically on-the-nose, uninteresting characters, yet another Rebels vs Empire narrative with "muh grey morality" sprinkled in. Normies are so easily excitable.
It's always nice to listen to someone intelligent propping up a treasured movie of mine, or ripping one I hate, with thought-provoking arguments. I've come to find though that criticism of movies I really enjoy gets my gears turning the most. Makes me question why I liked the movie in the first place, and realize how those likes and preferences often overshadow the same faults that I tend to criticize in other movies. I would say that rogue one should have, and maybe for a lot of fans already has, ended up as one of the star wars greats, if not for the treatment of jyn erso's character. The other non-character writing faults pointed out here don't stick out to me nearly as much as the wooden dialogue of the prequels, and I have an obsessive love for the prequels. Maybe it's just easy for me to look at a star wars female protagonist like jyn and avoid thinking on the negatives when the main competition is Rey Skywalker. The characters, writing, and dialogue felt competent almost the whole movie; and IMO was often very compelling, even when we had to assume jyn's motivations. I would also say that, ironically, this movie felt the least amount of deep fake as any star wars content Disney has produced (along with Andor). Even less than the bad batch or the Mando. It felt like the only piece of content that genuinely set out to tell a compelling story in a setting that just happened to be star wars. It wasn't trying to copy what George Lucas accomplished, it had its own message to share. Mature and dark themes, a story about the gritty reality of rebellions, the cost of preserving hope in a tyrannical dystopia for the non-skywalkers. The story was much more personal than some bothan spies just dying off screen. It evoked feelings that I only got from a few of the super dark clone wars episodes, feelings I didn't even get from episode 3. The "deep fake" content was there to ground the story into the star wars universe, not to carry the story itself. I don't think George Lucas star wars ever got close to what Rogue One pulls off in his movies, I don't think he was trying to. Yes all the "reanimated" pieces hurt more than helped, but to me it felt far from Disney trying to jam a bunch of the star wars nostalgia nuggets down my throat.
8:59 Your explanation here is absolutely perfect. This is _exactly_ why I haven't been to the cinema in 16 years. I hate colour grading most of all. It's either desaturated or teal-and-orange, every fucking time. It's soul-crushing, which I think is the intent behind it, quite frankly.
It’s so anti-film and anti-art to believe that a cgi Peter Cushing is going to have a better performance than a real human being. people like the human aspect of art.
There will be a time when a actor or actress will sign a contract to license there image, get a check and, an extra will do the part but no one will ever see the extra's face just the face of the licensed actor.
I think Luke Skywalker in Book of Boba Fett looked absolutely amazing, it was very recognizable. As far as I know Mark Hamill spoke and acted out most of the scenes and I'm absolutely fine with making him look younger. Look at "Kenobi": Hayden Christensen was just put into make-up for his Padawan-look. And it looked off. I would've liked just a little de-aging so it doesn't look weird. Obi-Wan was far easier to make look younger because most of his face was covered by a beard and his long hair distracts the attention from his face. I think technology is fantastic and if we use it in certain cases, like to alter the voice of actors or their looks to make them look younger than they are it's completely fine, even desired. Imagine just how off it would've looked to see someone else as Luke. This would've killed the Mamdalorian completely. And if we would've left everything out involving Luke, we would've been disappointed. Also, in defence of special effects: you also don't create action scenes with explosions and so on purely with practical effects, because you can't afford to destroy everything for tens of shots realistically, no, you rely on special effects. And we are used to it. Just as we will get used to see old actors young or dead actors alive.
10:12 "They're not movies for humans, they're content for algorithms." I can't think the amount of times I've seen someone online say "I don't care if [Rings of Power/Fantastic Beasts/Asoka] isn't amazing. I'm just glad we're getting more [Middle Earth/Harry Potter/Star Wars] content."
Excellent and thoughtful video as usual! You've brought points about the film I hadn't thought before that illustrates well a common issue with movies nowadays. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to the LOTR video already!
Damn dude... what an essay... I really liked the idea behind the "deep-fake movie", I think this is exactly what we all think about recent franchise-related movies. In all this, I think that still, the Rogue One was one of the best "deep fake movies" recently.
Rogue One was the last "Star Wars" movie I paid to see, *because* I knew, when I saw "deep fake Peter Cushing" on the screen, Disney was about to make a series of horrible decisions. *And I was right...*
as always with anything Disney related, it's an empty husk once you examine it closely enough. it's sad though because it's still among the "better" Disney Star Wars products
Yeah this, I've watched so much of this star wars they shit they pump out (after TRoS, always illegally) and I've had one episode of one show that I've enjoyed with no reservations
I'll be quite honest, it's hard to watch content about Disney's Star Wars. Even if it's expository work, I can't shake off the fact that it's all _post-mortem_ for me. Whatever Rogue One did right, whatever it did wrong, it's really, _really_ hard to care. If I can't consider the sequel trilogy canon, the rest is little more than fanfiction in my heart. Good fanfiction is still fanfiction. As for my take on deepfakes and the more mundane means of cinematic resuscitation, well... I don't want to sound so religious but there's really no other fitting language. I think it's sacrilegious. Desecration, almost literally. Whether or not you are digging up a dead person's body for real and stringing it up for a jig on a theater scene, or getting people to cook it up digitally, it disgusts me the same. They only do it for nostalgia points anyway. _Look, look! He dances for you once more! Ain't it funny? Isn't it a hoot? Give us money._
I would really love a video exploring Anakin/Vader and the his whole arc and redemption. I know it’s been done a ton by other channels, but you’re unique perspective on the films fascinates me. Also, would love to see you cover other Star Wars media, like the old books, games and shows. Can’t wait for the LOTR video!
8:01 No one has said deepfake Luke is just as good as having Mark Hamill play him. But many of us are blown away and impressed with how good the technology is getting…and we appreciate the ability to reintroduce some of our favorite characters from the OT, albeit even if they aren’t 100% convincing yet.
We're heading toward a dystopia where our movies are completely made by robots and algorithms, you can't replicate soul and a life time worth of ideas, experiences, and values
"You can't replicate a soul and a lifetime worth of ideas, experiences, and values" That is because the things you describe are unquantifiable and vague. People want good actors who look the part, a soul and a lifetime worth of ideas, experiences, and values, is just a concept, an idea, without any physical reality.
Unlikely. Humans will get annoyed at soulless movies (see: the response of this entire video essay and resulting comment section based on only two minor characters being AI) because art is supposed to make you feel things.
There's nothing more personal to drive the creation of a product than greed, since greed is always aimed towards one's benefit and never others. I agree with movies being made because you want to tell a story and amaze the world, even if the story itself has holes and is quite silly, as long as it drives the imagination it's worth a try; sadly these days it's not about that, but rather pleasing a bunch of corpos that want infinite money (and this is true for movies, series and videogames).
Greed does benefit others though in the creation of opportunities for others because someone's vision cannot often come to fruition alone. If you don't like what a corporation is creating, then don't feed it money or even attention, they aren't entitled to that. I'm not anti-corporation but I certainly choose which ones to support.
Ah excellent video and points! Cutting right to the heart, that Disney does not care about Star Wars! Its just a franchise they can milk for money and to be able to say "we made a Star War". Lucas had a point, a story he wanted told, themes he wanted explored, characters he wanted brought to life. He cared about what he was doing. I'm struck while reading EU novels how much those authors cared about what they wrote and how it fit in the universe. The enthusiasm and dedication to the canon/lore. Thats what made it so special to me and why I stick with it over this new disney canon. Its also why Dave Filoni tramping all over the EU for his stupid fuckin show is so annoying. He lacks any of that care for the universe. /rant
I liked Rogue One way more than anything else Disney did with Star Wars. But I still didn't really like it. It had nothing offensively bad in it. It just wasn't actively _good_ to a sufficient degree. Your comparison here explains why. It felt dead. Lifeless. Synthetic. I guess a well-designed undead abomination is still better than a horrifically malformed biological experiment that begs you to put it out of its misery.
Movies and shows are in such a wierd place nowadays. I feel like within the past decade, they have heavily shifted towards, as you put it, producing content and not movies. I am not exagerating when I say that I have no interest in over 95% of popular movies/shows these days. There is no passion behind them, no interest to tell good story, no love that flows into it, feed by the desiree to create art. It's all just about feeding content to the masses. Which is not to say that every single movie made today sucks, but if I was to try to think back on new movies in the past years (Granted, Covid messed things up) that stuck with me....there is Dune...and maybe 1 or 2 less popular ones and that's it. Whereas the era from 2000-2010 has had DOZENS of memorable movies. Rogue One itself is a wierd one. I watched it in cinema and a couple of times afterwards, but kinda just stopped watching it a few years back. The movie is just...pointless. Sure, it has some very nice visuals (Seeing Star Destroyers in such high qualilty was nice), but that's it. It tries to fill a gap in the Star Wars movies that simply doesn't exist. And Lucas himself would never bother to waste a full movie for nothing either. Sadly there is no end in sight with this trend, heck even the Marvel fans are still not burned out - even though their even ash should already be burned to nonexistance after the spam of soulless movies. But of course the root of these problems are not just in the companies. As long as people watch movies not matter their qualilty, studios will keep milking them by pumping out content, instead of movies.
Even among people who are not big fans of Rogue One, I have not heard of anyone disliking the now iconic Darth Vader hallway scene. I would argue that given how late in the production process they added that wonderful sequence onto the end, it feels like the most "human" part of the movie in a way. While not groundbreaking in any way, it effectively displayed the rebel soldiers' dedication in the face of helplessness. There is something very human about a relay race against death itself. After all, each generation is passing a torch (or the plans to the death star) from one set of hands to the next, in a desperate attempt to avoid the inevitability of being cut down by the passage of time (or Vader).
Me, too! Checking the channel after a while and sad to see the latest was 7 months ago. I hope it means there are big things in the works, rather than the author going through some tough times.
It's stuff like this why I wish more companies made a bigger shift towards realistic animation. Stop trying to use live-action when actors are so limited in how they can move, and stop trying to cast celebrities as they become increasingly irrelevant. If you're going to blow the entire budget on VFX that is several magnitudes worse than stuff that came out in the 90's, then at the bare least cut out the actors and go all-in on CGI.
Love the video, but I think you could've made a separate video about your thoughts on Rouge One, so you can spend more time on the technology/ human nuance aspect without having to tie it into a grander theme.
While I don't agree with all of your problems with RO, you still make many valid criticisms. I especially agree with your view on deep fakes, as they're distracting and can't replace a real actor. Your ending point about "deepfake movies" also reminds us that we need more original content to balance out our overreliance on existing franchises.
I don't know if it's fair to call GB Afterlife a deepfake movie. As a massive GB fan, I got the feeling the artists really cared about making that film
Since the wording in the part of the video dealing with deepfakery has been over-interpreted a few times, a clarification:
What I mean when saying AI performances are "driven" by algorithms is that the *transformative* element of, say, the recreated face of a young Mark Hamill is automated - we're watching algorithmic interpretation of an image. Yes, it's an interpretation mapped onto a base layer that involved a human, but the final product is *processed,* not animated or acted.
(Which is why it feels so flat and lifeless.)
I can see there being a semantic argument here, but the point is that this method takes a meaningful human element out of the thing. Hope that clears things up for those who were taking it to imply there were never any humans involved at all. Still welcome to disagree about the end result, of course.
(mic drop)
No need for clarification - if you ask me √
I mean, what if Andor was a show BEFORE this movie. My god, it would have made Rogue One so much more impactful. We could have glimpsed younger jyn connected with saws rebellion, feel the empire tightening it’s grip around the universe, even watching the power struggles within its ranks, like we are seeing now. And then we have to watch them all perish😩 It would have given this movie so much more life. Now they are creating a story worth telling posthumously, which cheapens it. Rogue One will always feel a little disconnected, algorithmic and dead because it was a cash grab, a story designed to capitalize on what the old movies were, instead of patiently world building what the Disney Star Wars could be.
@@thr33shadows Disney Star Wars has been all about duping the already very impressionable and mercurial fanbase with glimpses of what the saga used to be, buried underneath layers and layers of things that are foreign to it, like Jar Jar Abrams and his "mystery boxes", Rian Johnson's misplaced whodunnit sensibilities (which are now being put to better use elsewhere) and the trademark lifelessness of the mouse brand. and I know that not all of us Star Wars fans are like that, but when you remember that Force Awakens sits at the top 10 all time box office and that the newer shows have a good chunk of the fandom mesmerized over small cameos and references, it's pretty hard to reach any other conclusion.
@@sunsetman22 ayye you watched the 3 hour nerdonymous special on the sequels too?!! You’re a good fan, I appreciate you
"These movies exist to serve an algorithm, not humans"
I cannot express to you how many times I've heard management at my job try to say that algorithms should just replace everything. It's extremely short sighted.
I’m frightened to ask what it is you do for a living 😅
He is in the military and called a minute-man. He confirms the nuclear launch codes.
Us military doesn't use the term " minute man " anymore , not since 2021. It's not inclusive enough.
That's the scary thing though, when you're job as a human gets replaced by an ai to serve the algorithm of society.
A really good algorithm would replace management. It eventually would require actors, writers, producers, musicians, composers, set, prop, and costume designers, etc. But the computers would crunch the numbers, obviating the suits in the suites.
It’s a shame this guy hasn’t uploaded in a year. He’s great
Honestly. Some of the most insightful and thought intensive content I’ve ever seen. Legitimately made me feel more connected to my emotions over the franchise as a whole, and helped put into words what I could not. In a phrase, give me the right questions to ask myself.
To make a long comment short; yeah this stuff is baller. Keep posting W’s king.
@@GriffithRexas soon as that youtube cheque came in, he gone quiet 😤
The line about artists being a set of instructions really resonated with me. It revealed to me all the thinking that's wrong with the attitude of Disney, trying to push innovations just because they can, when there's nothing wrong with the existing way of doing things. Artists really deserve to be treated with more respect.
I think Disney feel they have to push innovation in movies because that was one of the things Lucas was know for. They are following a set of instructions on how to make a Lucas type film without understanding the themes and art that Lucas made his stuff so appealing. Just like Hollywood made all those crappy scifi films after Star Wars.
They literally just wanted tarkin and luke and didn’t want anyone else playing the roles do they cgi’d them it’s not this deep
@@obiwankenobi687 No it's muuuuch deeper ;) In fact it's A BAD SIGN. And the beginning of DEEP FAKE MOVIES. Or maybe the algorithm of concern in the production of this video really was the RUclips algorithm.
I would like to see more filmmakers go the opposite direction and make films with little or no CGI and plenty of old-school practical effects (even cheesy "low-budget" ones). It's much more satisfying to watch a spaceship explode (for example) in a film if you know that the creators were blowing SOMETHING to smithereens (usually a detailed miniature) IRL and filming that, rather than just creating a series of images on a computer screen.
What is “wrong” with the existing way of doing things? Why, profit maximisation, of course.
Corporations exist solely to generate profits. There’s no legal way, in the US, to avoid that sole responsibility.
I've always argued that CGI Tarkin would've played better as a full-size hologram throughout the film. The blue tint and jumpy, static-y nature would've hid a lot of the flaws. It would've also read as him purposefully refusing to see Krennic in person, lowering the latter's status in the process, until Tarkin swoops in to steal the Death Star project from under him.
I remember thinking, "Gosh, I don't want to be mean, but the voice actor they got to play young Luke is giving such a wooden performance." Learning that they didn't even bother hiring a voice actor is a little distressing, but it certainly explains things.
my man, I'm telling you, we're already shoulder-deep in dystopia, and we haven't even realized it yet.
@@sunsetman22 Very true if 1984 is pure dystopia we're in 1974 at best
I don't see the point when they would have had to pay Mark Hamill anyway... Unless there was a loophole and the got out of paying him.
That plot hole about the Death Star's weakness truly isn't a plot hole. Lucas based the idea on how pilots would target naval ships' exhaust ports to trigger chain reactions, causing massive damage to these impressive ships, which often were nuclear. He decided that despite the Death Star being so much bigger than most ships, it still would feature a structural feature that smaller vessels had that could then be exploited, but might be so hard to find, they needed the plans for the station's designs.
Yeah and it's so weird to act like the flaw was some totally unknown thing to the Empire. It wasn't, they covered it with ray shielding. They just didn't imagine that a small one-man fighter would be able to penetrate their defenses and launch a proton torpedo down a two-meter exhaust port while hurtling at top speed toward a dead end. It was literally just a subtle design flaw.
Thank you! I keep saying the thermal exhaust port is a plot point not a plot hole:
The Empire dosn't belive one man can make any difference, or is of any value. That's why The Death Star doesn't have anti-fighter guns and TIE fighters are cheap and fragile.
Ironically Rogue One only corrobated your point and is compatible.
If one listens to Erso's message intended for Jyn, he asserted that the reactor module was the exploitable component to destroying the station, since he sabotaged the system. Rendering it more vulnerable to pressurised explosions to any part of it.
No mention of the exhaust ports - Erso never implemented them. They were clearly part of the design. Necessitated by the immense thermal energy and radiation generated by the reactor core. That needs to be funneled away from the reactor regardless, and any explosion to vital components result in chain reactions, as you asserted.
In actuality, the film implicates that without a sabotaged hypermatter reactor system, it would have been even more difficult to destroy the Death Star, which is a testament to how fortunate the Alliance was - this already being evident within ANH. The film only reinforces Lucas thematic intention through adding it's own expansion on the Death Star's history.
It's not necessary, however it may enhance ANH and there's a neat historical parallel with Galen Erso and the scientists, whom were instrumental in ushering the atomic/nuclear age.
@@AshanBhatoa The whole reason a thermal exhaust port is such a weakness without any additional tinkering is because of all the thermal energy and radiation generated by the reactor core of a machine that could destroy planets. Given how much energy is needed to produce a planet destroying blast, the equal reactive energy created for the attack has to be dispersed somewhere, out exhaust ports, which provide the necessary recipe for chain reactions to turn the Death Star's own produced energy back on itself (a webcomic done with Legos pointed this out years before Disney did Star Wars). Since those exhaust ports are such good targets for destroying the Death Star, there was no needed tinkering from the station's designer (who should've been a Genoshian, not a human, but they were likely trying to ignore or retcon the Prequels). There were likely multiple exhaust ports but the one focused on in A New Hope was likely the easiest to attack
@@mustlovedragons8047 I utterly love how incompetent the Empire is, which is so realistic like real-life villains who create societies that function horribly for their people. The best examples are how cheap and ill-trained the storm-troopers are compared to Clone Troopers, how little the Empire cares for its own men with the likes of non-shielded tie-fighters, and the fact the Emperor keeps funneling his budget into making Death Stars, which are wildly inefficient tools of war. Palpatine makes them because of his power addiction, using the Death Star to not just obliviate enemies but attempt to rule through fear. A smarter evil overlord would wipe out the populace of a planet so as to acquire and use the planet's raw resources, replacing rebellious former inhabitants with loyal subjects, giving the planet as a prize, but Palpatine being the power-mad despot he is, stupidly destroys a resource rich planet like Alderaan as a form of flexing. An. Entire. Planet. Of. Resources. It's mind-boggling to even attempt to think how much resources were lost from Alderaan's destruction, even relative to the galactic scale. Ironically, such an attack seemed to further unite divided factions and spur them on to more militant actions against the Empire (there's a great line from the radio drama when Leia screams at Tarkin and Vader that they have declared war on Life itself). Palpatine was a wonderfully crafty schemer, manipulating an entire galaxy into civil war so as to rise to absolute power, but once procurring that power, he horribly mismanaged ruling his galactic prize. He was doomed to fail, purely because of his own immoral nature ruling so many peoples.
George Lucas predicted the rise of films with dead actors in the 80s. He was pretty spot on. The only thing he was wrong about was he thought computer movies wouldn't be commercial. He was pretty prescient in a lot of ways. A very shrewd businessman and incredibly intelligent. When the technology didn't exist he spurred it forward, he created it. With his companies and employees.
exactly, its why I hate when people insist Lucas isn’t intelligent or a good filmmaker.
@@darthgamer9861 George Lucas is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
The man has been ahead of his time from the beginning
@@lastjedi-1 From inventing ILM to create new innovations in visual effects in the ‘70s, all the way to pioneering digital film-making in the ‘00s, and everything in between, he’s always at the forefront of something new and exciting.
@@taffysaur it’s wild to me that Steve Jobs gets all the credit for Pixar when it started with Lucas
One crucial thing not mentioned here is the fact that make-up departments are unionised while CG artists are not. Tarkin absolutely could've been achieved with the makeup we have today, but CG artists are cheaper, so it's easy to see why they went with CG, beyond just being able to flex the tech.
One of your most thought-provoking videos yet. And I'm excited to hear about the additional media you're publishing. One thought--the new Avatar sequel (partial spoilers) feels like a very literal embodiment of these "deep fake movies" , because even the plot itself brings back characters who died in the first one. I think there's an interesting dialogue there.
I hadn't realized the Tarquin actor was that on-point in real life. They absolutely should have just used traditional makeup and maybe prostehtics/wigs. He wouldn't have needed much at all.
Personally I don't have the same qualms with Avatar 2 (even more spoilers ahead) - I think it's a greater exposition on the themes of the first one, but it's also a natural progression. In the first movie we see extractive colonialism, in the second movie it's progressed to settler colonialism. In the first movie we see the opening stages of an anti-colonial war, in the second we see it's progression into encompassing the whole planet. The genocidal methodologies of the humans also progress further.
Most importantly though, I think the second movie is about pacifism. Jake and Neytiri flee the forest to escape being hunted, the Metkayina are adamant they are not involved in the war, and the Tulkun are the ultimate species-wide pacifists. All 3 scenarios change by the end. Jake and Neytiri realise they can't keep their family safe by running, the Metkayina realise that they have to stand and fight to save their Tulkun, and Payakan is the ultimate exemplification of the overturning of Tulkun pacifism when he saves the Na'vi during the climactic battle.
Cameron's message throughout the third film is rooted in the idea of just war, that to rebel is justified, and that these conflicts cannot be avoided or fled from - they have their way of finding you. In a way it's a parallel to the overall environmental message as well - in an interlinked global ecosystem (both on Pandora AND on Earth), harm to the system has knock-on effects on us all that cannot be escaped.
I feel like the passion, care, and time that went into avatar 2's creation makes it anything but a deepfake movie...maybe if you isolate out the plot but...
I am so in love with your videos that it feels like childhood Christmas whenever I see a new one! Can't wait for the LOTR video essays. I have a feeling they're going to be next level!
Well said 👏🏻
I'm just commenting to boost the algorithm for this pro human content.
❤
Damn
YES 😂 more people need to see this underrated content
Smar
No human! Deepfake the robots!
Excellent video. Your analogy about "deepfake movies" really hit the nail on the head. It's truly a shame that the general public don't seem to see any problems with these artistically devoid, soulless products. Film studios have discovered that they can do the absolute bare minimum and still make huge profits and hold huge appeal. As long as that continues, I don't see things getting better anytime soon. I can't wait for your next video. Please keep up the great work!
It’s no wonder Disney is hemorrhaging money given how they’ve essentially allowed an algorithm to write all their recent movies and shows. Hopefully Andors success in the SW community will encourage them to put more effort into their properties
Corporations have realized that they can appeal to the lowest common denominator andmake reliable profits. Appealing to intelligent viewers is a lot harder and more time consuming.
I think there is quite a bit of growing awareness amongst the public. Many of these "deepfake movies" have received horrendous reviews (although they do seem to be box office successes a lot).
@@nigeltheoutlaw agreed, however, as of late, that business mode has proven to be less and less reliable and profitable. Cooperations like Disney need a renaissance of creativity for their properties and soon, or else they’ll bleed them dry and have nothing to show for it
"The general public don't seem to see any problems with these artistically devoid, soulless products".
The people normalizing this dangerous technology: "Well, you have to start somewhere".
George Lucas did say to a fellow USC graduate that he should give up acting and going to animation because he didn’t like dealing with actors. Excellent video is always my friend. Thanks for making my day.
Incredible essay and analysis. The way you tied deepfake animations to deepfake movie, not to mention how animation is meant to breathe, not reanimate. Great points!
What you said about Rogue One not having any new vehicles struck a chord with me. I was watching a video recently about how in the sequel movies the Resistance X-wings and First Order Tie Fighters have exactly the same silhouette as the ones from the Original Trilogy, whereas George Lucas's films always featured ships that had major differences in their silhouettes, even if one ship was a precursor to another (like the ARC fighter being a precursor to the X-wing).
I think, and I know this will be a hard pill for us to swallow, this is a consequence of the Clone Wars in a weird way. In the Clone Wars, the screenwriters and showrunners were operating within a very limited timeframe, so logically the Republic and the Separatists would be using the same ships for most of the Clone Wars.
Most of the Disney movies and shows take place in the same two parts of the Star Wars universe: After the Original Trilogy, and Between the Prequels and the Original trilogies. After the sequels and Solo, it seems like Luke and Han have been cut out of as many Star Wars projects as possible, and the focus has been more on side characters that made their appearances in the Clone Wars like Ahsoka or the Mandalorians. I think this is because Disney wants to use characters like memories it can just bring up to make us think it's respecting Lucas' legacy. The stories they make with the characters are designed to be simple, modular plots where characters can be plugged in as cameos to perform a mundane task and then leave.
Will a series between the Original Trilogy movies like the Clone Wars ever happen? There's certainly material there, story arcs you could fill in the details of like Han's choice to become a rebellion general, or plot holes to patch in like how Luke got a kyber crystal to make his second lightsaber (or why he hasn't met Ahsoka to train with her), but I hope Disney doesn't do this because I know it will end up being full of filler and cheap attempts at nostalgia-baiting if it doesn't totally discredit and overshadow the OT characters like the sequels and Kenobi and Solo did.
U wing was new to me
@@thomaslange9480 U-Wing, Krennics Shuttle, Rogue One Zeta shuttle, Occupier tank, TIE Striker, TIE Reaper. Some of these might be more or less OT-derivative designs, but that is mostly on the era the film is set in and they have still done more to make themselves distinct than the ships within the OT (just slapped different wings on the same TIE cockpit while in RO the entire ships body is just as different as the wings). It's far more distinct from TFAs approach where every new design was purposefully as ugly and utilitarian as possible and tucked away into the background as fast as possible to make way for X-Wing, TIE Fighter and Millenium Falcon.
@@Grandof-the-PentastarAlignment I completely agree. This was a great video, and definitely made me re-evaluate certain aspects of Rogue One further, such as the character dynamics and development, which were really good, as a rudimentary basis, however they were not meaningfully expanded upon to fulfill the potential they had as characters.
Simultaneously, I also perceive these films through a practical lens. Asserting that the film had no new vessels is an odd argument. I don't believe one can sustain it far, before individuals cite the U-Wing, TIE Striker, TIE Reaper, the barges, shuttles, combat vehicles and etc. They are all derivative, however sufficiently different. I also disagree that one cannot understand Jyn's motivations.
there was an imperial armoured vehicle seen during the ambush scene of jedha, as well as transport dropships
@@daegnaxqelil2733 There were tons of vehicles. I didn't pick this up in the video but if he said it then it's plain bonkers. What they didn't do is the "LOOK AT THIS BUY THE TOY" type introduction that we get sometimes. They did it the right way.
This is a currently extremely under-rated channel. Looking forward to seeing it grow/explode in the coming years.
It already has exploded.
I find your adherence to calling the deep fakes and animated characters ‘things’ intriguing. It’s simple language handles like this that will be increasingly important for us to maintain a grip on reality.
The fuck are you talking about?
Another excellent video, and you hit on some important philosophical questions here.
"Just because you can doesn't mean you should."
You say, “I am allowed to do anything”-but not everything is good for you. You say, “I am allowed to do anything”-but not everything is beneficial.
1 Corinthians 10
Blessed doctor Ian Malcolm!!
The algorithmic movie argument is valid to a lot of projects out there, but I really don’t think it applies to Rogue One. Gareth Edwards is just a huge huge fan of the original trilogy and that’s why there’s so much nostalgia in the movie. Whether you liked it or not, Rogue One is undoubtedly a passion project from a very dedicated fan. You can call it simple or uninspired, but it’s definitely not the result of a heartless algorithm.
And even there characterization of the characters is close to what Edwards did: these characters are always witnesses of events more important than themselves. Just Monsters. Even on nostalgia, I don't find Edwards as complacent as Abrams (while both are fans of OT) according to me, the micro-reference that So uncivilized points to is closer to the "upside down" he had underlined in another video that the complacent wink
Rouge One felt like a cynical corporate product from start to finish. I stopped watching Star Wars after seeing it.
Always thought of modern movies as films made by a committee but linking it to deepfakes and algorithms is far more accurate. Awesome video (as usual)
Really miss these videos man
That literally is what happened with this movie. Disney disagreed with Gareth Edwards and has several reshoots done, so some of the more algorithmic scenes are probably a result of the studio getting between the artist and the film.
You never disappoint with your reasoning! I had never really looked at Rogue One like that, because like many others, I was just happy that Disney finally managed to pull off something that felt a bit like Star Wars again... but looking back at it like this, I must admit that you hit the nail on its head. It was not that Disney suddenly understood how to make Star Wars, they were just lucky with their algorithms for once.
They are still dead inside 😕
Wow, I usually dont watch philosophical videos, specially not for Star Wars for a while. But this one was so honest, that kept me watching after the first 30 seconds. You are very original!
I still cannot understand why this channel has only 130 thousand subscribers, it should have at least 200 thousand units ready with a million more well on the way!
But seriously, this channel is spotless and magnificent and you are doing beautiful work!
Seriously, some of the best Star Wars and generally video content on RUclips.
It shows that you really understand the impact cinema has, and we all appreciate that.
I think this is why I like fanfiction so much. It is fundamentally anti-corporate. It's made by artists who actively want to make what they're making.
As if I needed another reason to hate fanfiction.
@@natowaveenjoyer9862so you hate anti corporatism? Or people that want to make what they're making?
@@sukitron5415 Both. Equally.
@@natowaveenjoyer9862 wow, so you hate people who actually want to do what they do. Also anti corporatism isn't communism
@@sukitron5415 >wow, so you hate people who actually want to do what they do.
Proudly. Those who wax poetic about how great it is for creatives to make what they want to make would never be okay with *me* making what *I want* to make. I am simply returning the favor.
>Also anti corporatism isn't communism
Never said it was. However, anti-corporatism is very often bound up in anti-Americanism and economic illiteracy. I simply know what side my bread is buttered on.
alright Mr. Uncivilized, it's been a year, where's that new video you been working on?
I remember thinking Disney made a catastrophic mistake by killing all these new characters off rather than making more films with them.
I thought that was a brave choice. It's not the "safe" approach. But I think the emotional impact of the film would be blunted if Jyn and Cassian are able to escape at the last minute.
That was always my thinking. It's a brave choice, sure but it also made me honestly never feel the need to rewatch the movie again in a way I can't ever really explain. Personally I would have had the monk and droid survive but that's just me.
Interesting video. I happen to like Rogue One a lot, although I fundamentally disagree with their choice of doing digitally de-aged Tarkin and Leia. I'd have much rather seen Tarkin recast as Guy Henry, who is also an excellent actor and would've honored Peter Cushing's performance. Hiding his face does a disservice both to him and to Peter's legacy. The scene with Leia was just unnecessary as a whole, but they could've recast her as well.
We have so many talented young actors who could fill these roles, that resorting to digital fakes is such a creatively bankrupt thing to do. Sebastian Stan, for instance, would make an amazing Luke Skywalker, yet he's not given the chance to do so. It's a pretty awful thing that studios are doing, and I hope it stops.
In Rogue One it honestly worked really well. I was happy to see Tarkin expanded more onscreen, and as you said the actual standin was just as good (if not potentially better) than CGI. But it really is just a crutch now, like refusing to recast young Luke Skywalker despite having perfect actors (like Sebastien Stan) to put in the role.
Sebastian Stan costs more than Mark Hamill at this point. Disney want to do everything on the cheap. Like the new movie's director not having made a feature film before. Easy scapegoat for its failure, and cheaper than someone established.
you can never get something right if your motivations are wrong. people may not notice that something is off if off things is all they get but if you have something with the right heart to compare it to (just as there are living breathing humans you can compare deepfakes to) you will always be able to tell
kudos on another fantastic video, looking forward to your future projects!
Please keep making videos about what you love! Don’t just do what’s trendy. We love your insights, keep following your authenticity! Honestly, I would watch you about shows, books, or movies I hadn’t seen, because I gain so much insight into art and story when I listen to your essays, no matter the topic. Can’t wait for the LOTR’s video.
This guy never misses. Ever. 10/10 video.
We have got to blow this channel up so it’s as big as Star Wars theory. More SW fans need to see this
@@thr33shadows yes, Its just so... Elevated and spot on
Like hitting womp-rats back at Beggar's Canyon
Except for Snyder video.
@@Сайтамен that one was very good too.
Miss your vid’s man! Plz keep making them
It's so crazy timing wise, I was rewatching all your videos last night and was saying to myself "when is the next one" and BOOM
I used to really like Rogue One, I honestly did, but as the years went by, the film ultimately rang somewhat hollow to me - the characters were surface level, the aesthetics were reused, and the film's existence was meant to solve a 'plot hole' that wasn't actually a plot hole.
@Darth Doofus As you said - Star Wars is about the evil within, not the exterior evil. But it's also about the good that can return from evil.
I like your idea - in a sense, having Galen Erso being the main character of a film like Rogue One could have made for a much more captivating story. You mentioned the parallel to Einstein - it's also a similar parallel to Oppenheimer.
You mentioned them being a 'Confederate' scientist - do you mean that the scientist would have been on the side of the Separatists in the Clone Wars, only to be recruited by the victorious empire to build their new tech? (not unlike Operation Paperclip irl?)
I meant to say, I haven't been working much on the speculative outline for episode 9 recently due to educational work, novel work, and a fun alt history side project about Rome, so sorry if there's not much major to discuss about it at the moment.
Though I will say.... I happened to be watching a random re-write of the sequel trilogy recently. It was actually rather good, but what caught my attention was a point made about the opening to episode 7.
It was about how, to keep in line with the established victory of the Rebellion in ROTJ, the opening shot of Ep 7 would show not another Imperial Star Destroyer, but instead a New Republic ship.
The opening, dominant ships of each trilogies beginning do show the state of power in the galaxy. Ep 1 has the focus be on the Republic ship, Ep 4 has the focus on the Star Destroyer. They reflect the ones in charge. It wouldn't make sense for the domineering Star Destroyer to occupy the shot once again when, narratively, we last saw them crashing down in ROTJ.
This causes me to think and again return to the other idea of how to poetically structure the sequels - by having them appear as natural sequels to the OT than just inverting the PT (remember, last line in 3 was from C-3P0 so we open with him and R2 as the beginning characters in 4, so the last line in 6 was from Leia so we open with her and Han as the beginning characters in 7)
I personally feel the uncanny valley works WELL for Tarken. He is supposed to be an unsettling character, so that effect arguably enhances that bit of the preformance.
Leia probably shouldn't even have shown up though given that the exact opposite is true for her.
I don't mind Leia, she's the baton pass needed to go into the next movie.
I think that would have been fine with just the actor. I'm honestly a bit sad that Solo flopped at the box office, because Lucasfilm has gone on record saying that they consider the reason to be that there was no deepfake. That doesn't bode well for future projects
@@officialmonarchmusic KK is a dumbass who doesn't understand the movie flopped because of The Last Jedi... At the same time she was advertising the return of Ewan McGregor 🤣 the irony
I don't like that they did Tarkin this way, but for me, there's a certain humor to it. I see Peter Cushing primarily as Victor Frankenstein. They've frankensteined Frankenstein himself.
Carry Fisher thought it was old footage so...
we hope you're okay dude.
Where have you been my friend?? I love your videos and would love some more SW ones!
This video has a Rogue One review, which i respect and has great points i can agree on despite me loving the movie, an ethical doubt and a defense of human nature compared to good algoryrhms, this is why i love this channel, thank you So Uncivilized.
I liked Rogue One overall. It's still possibly the best Disney SW film and definitely my favorite they've made. Some weird decisions with the 're-animation' you pointed out, but I think the lack of characterization on any of the characters works for the movie more than against it. By filling the cast/story with side characters, I think the story emphasizes (whether intentional or not) that even the people you think are unimportant were actually essential for the victory in the OG SW to happen.
It was that context that made Rogue One my favorite, obnoxious fan service or not.
Very good video!
it's funny that you refer to this as a DEEPFAKE movie... because back in 2016-2017, I started referring to ROGUE ONE dismissively as a TEMP-MOVIE (similar to the term TEMP TRACK)
I enjoyed the movie the first time, but it did not survive a theatrical rewatch (I completely dozed off halfway through). And your video covers a lot of the reasons why I don't think the movie works despite all the cool ideas/concepts within it
There was a Yahoo Movies UK interview with the film's editors back in 2017 where they talked about the way early concepts of the movie were comprised of clips from tons of other movies as placeholders. Even to the point they used existing clips to time out how long it should take for a door to close
And something about that really made me derisive of ROGUE ONE.
The interview is good. But here is the specific excerpt about the story reel that was made for the movie before a script was set:
-------------------
START:
Colin Goudie: I’d worked with Gareth [Edwards] previously. I cut his movie ‘Monsters’ so we’d already got a relationship and I’d actually done a couple of projects with him before that as well. So he got me on board in September of 2014 and asked me to do a story reel for ‘Rogue One’.
There was no screenplay, there was just a story breakdown at that point, scene by scene. He got me to rip hundreds of movies and basically make ‘Rogue One’ using other films so that they could work out how much dialogue they actually needed in the film.
It’s very simple to have a line [in the script] that reads “Krennic’s shuttle descends to the planet”, now that takes maybe 2-3 seconds in other films, but if you look at any other ‘Star Wars’ film you realise that takes 45 seconds or a minute of screen time. So by making the whole film that way - I used a lot of the ‘Star Wars’ films - but also hundreds of other films too, it gave us a good idea of the timing.
For example the sequence of them breaking into the vault I was ripping the big door closing in ‘Wargames’ to work out how long does a vault door take to close.
So that’s what I did and that was three months work to do that and that had captions at the bottom which explained the action that was going to be taking place, and two thirds of the screen was filled with the concept art that had already been done and one quarter, the bottom corner, was the little movie clip to give you how long that scene would actually take.
Then I used dialogue from other movies to give you a sense of how long it would take in other films for someone to be interrogated. So for instance, when Jyn gets interrogated at the beginning of the film by the Rebel council, I used the scene where Ripley gets interrogated in ‘Aliens’.
So you get an idea of what movies usually do.
END
--------------------------------
I'm sure this was very nice and helpful for the editors on the movie, but jeez.... what a PERFECT way to underline how this movie's existence feels like it was a SOULLESS series of 'algorithmic' decision-making.... on top of which, it seems like Edwards' approach worked so poorly that Gilroy claims he had to come in and save the thing to get it functioning at all
And to me, the movie STILL has the problems of feeling like a mechanical hodgepodge of better movies
"Temp Movie" is very good, very accurate. Gets at that same idea. Also, what a wild interview snippet.
@@SoUncivilized414just recently started listening to Tansy Gardam’s podcast series about the making of ROGUE ONE called ‘GOING ROGUE’.
That interview with the editor comes up in the 2nd episode and the host is as bewildered by it as we are… but she adds more context to it because it conflicts so heavily with Garett Edwards’ approach to directing the actual movie
With THE CREATOR coming out soon, I’m really interested in seeing what Edwards does with his creative freedom and to see if his ability to direct compelling scenes between actors has improved (I’m not a fan of Monsters or Dullzilla)
I do think deepfake (for better but mostly worse) will become so realistic in the future that you won't be able to tell the difference. And the range of voice will be handled by an actor, maybe even the original. I'd love to have Matk Hamill voice Luke Skywalker--his voice isn't the same now so it'd require so tech but the emotion would still be there.
But I'm not against a recasting either. But after Solo flopped due to TLJ sucking, I doubt they'll ever recast again.
"he's more machine now, than man."
Nice one, great one. Genius, even
This is the first of your videos I've half disagreed with. I definitely think you make good points about it, but I really liked the new characters and the values they symbolized. I also love that we got to see Vader go further than he had in the Original Trilogy. I was freaking out during that moment in the theater! I think a big part of Rogue One for me is the Star Wars feel. I truly think the planets and music captured that feeling in a way that virtually no other Disney Star Wars content has. I liked the video, because even if I disagree with part of it each video you make is such great quality and your arguments are so well formed. I've been around since the beginning (just a few hundred subs) and I'm excited to see where you go next!
Personally I disagree with you, but Im glad you didnt just bash the movie and presented a really good argument. I wish there was more discourse like this among the community.
Same, I disagreed, but will leave a thumbs up on the video.
Rogue One is just serviceable at best, being "the best Disney Star Wars movie yet" is a patheticly low bar. And this comes from someone who enjoyed it at first.
IMHO why Rogue One works is because Gareth Edwards respects the franchise and wanted to make a movie that fits in the real Star Wars and not celebrate himself like the hacks Abrams and Johnson did.
And because it has characters that they take the time to build and make interesting and relatable. And as you said yourself - it focused not on the "elite" of the Rebel Alliance but the infantry and the guerrillas and the fact that every war is dirty and no party is 100% "clean".
And as Andor expands it, the movie also shows us what makes people risk everything to become fighters in a resistance to an overwhelming power. People that have nothing to lose because they already have lost everything. Ok, just as Luke in Episode IV.
However I do agree that there was no reason to not recast Tarkin and Lea.
Been over a year with no video, hope you're doing OK
Duude, saying Disney Starwars is just DeepFake movies is kind of the perfect summation of what those movies feel like to watch.
I swear with every new upload it seems like you one-up yourself. Stellar work as always!
why this channel only have 9 videos? best channel i see this year
Because the videos are so well made
I have never pondered Star Wars harder than when I digest the concepts put forth by this man’s work. Amazing.
I fucking love you man, every single video of you makes me walk away with a completely new view on things. And you just casually mention these things that i had never even thought about before, thank you man keep it up
Chatbots, Deepfakes, CG “Resurrections…” Oh my…
By Natural Still by the way we interpret it incorrectly. It refers to being Still as in death, hence your body no longer moves.
Superbly done. You explained to me reasons I hadn't even realised were gnawing at me that underlay my lack of engagement with Rogue One.
I mean I still like Rogue One, but yeah, I do agree that recasting the OG characters would be better than deepfaking them. Especially since Ahsoka is apparently doing a full-on adaptation of the Thrawn Trilogy. No way you're doing the Thrawn Trilogy with Luke Skywalker either absent entirely or relegated to inconsequential deepfake cameos.
I want to say the stories of these characters are more in-depth in the novelization. That book does so much for each of the characters that I wish were in the movie but are either only implicit or not mentioned. Worth a read if you liked rogue one !
If Disney could make a new SW movie that is just 50% as good as Rogue One, maybe I'd consider paying to see it.
9:45 I think the TIE reapers and the U wing are both new designs from this film
Yeah I’m not really sure what he was trying to say. Like the films are bad because no new vehicles were added? Like I understand if he made the point saying it was too similar to the originals, and by adding more vehicles it could’ve made the film more unique, but I don’t see the need to add more vehicles really what difference would it have made?
@@favic27 i think he's reinforcing that the film is showing things that have been seen before in other films.
@@gelatin.skeletin yeah that’s a fair point
But Tony Gilroy played a very large role getting Rogue One completed AND he was central to bringing Andor to fruition... and Andor is arguably one of the best acted, best written Star Wars 'things' made yet.
"But muh Tony Gilroy"
Rogue One is just serviceable at the end of the day, and Andor is the most overrated Star Wars thing since TCW. Dull, verbose, politically on-the-nose, uninteresting characters, yet another Rebels vs Empire narrative with "muh grey morality" sprinkled in. Normies are so easily excitable.
@@yrooxrksvi7142 Horrible take.
@@chai8941 Cope and seethe.
It's always nice to listen to someone intelligent propping up a treasured movie of mine, or ripping one I hate, with thought-provoking arguments. I've come to find though that criticism of movies I really enjoy gets my gears turning the most. Makes me question why I liked the movie in the first place, and realize how those likes and preferences often overshadow the same faults that I tend to criticize in other movies.
I would say that rogue one should have, and maybe for a lot of fans already has, ended up as one of the star wars greats, if not for the treatment of jyn erso's character. The other non-character writing faults pointed out here don't stick out to me nearly as much as the wooden dialogue of the prequels, and I have an obsessive love for the prequels. Maybe it's just easy for me to look at a star wars female protagonist like jyn and avoid thinking on the negatives when the main competition is Rey Skywalker. The characters, writing, and dialogue felt competent almost the whole movie; and IMO was often very compelling, even when we had to assume jyn's motivations.
I would also say that, ironically, this movie felt the least amount of deep fake as any star wars content Disney has produced (along with Andor). Even less than the bad batch or the Mando. It felt like the only piece of content that genuinely set out to tell a compelling story in a setting that just happened to be star wars. It wasn't trying to copy what George Lucas accomplished, it had its own message to share. Mature and dark themes, a story about the gritty reality of rebellions, the cost of preserving hope in a tyrannical dystopia for the non-skywalkers. The story was much more personal than some bothan spies just dying off screen. It evoked feelings that I only got from a few of the super dark clone wars episodes, feelings I didn't even get from episode 3. The "deep fake" content was there to ground the story into the star wars universe, not to carry the story itself. I don't think George Lucas star wars ever got close to what Rogue One pulls off in his movies, I don't think he was trying to. Yes all the "reanimated" pieces hurt more than helped, but to me it felt far from Disney trying to jam a bunch of the star wars nostalgia nuggets down my throat.
If you held every single movie to the standards of your average RUclips critic, You would never be able to enjoy a movie.
@@itzYonko Same thing goes for pretty much anything else a youtuber can critic. They're certainly often interesting though
I was waiting for this video like Obi-Wan was waiting for Luke
8:59 Your explanation here is absolutely perfect. This is _exactly_ why I haven't been to the cinema in 16 years. I hate colour grading most of all. It's either desaturated or teal-and-orange, every fucking time. It's soul-crushing, which I think is the intent behind it, quite frankly.
It’s so anti-film and anti-art to believe that a cgi Peter Cushing is going to have a better performance than a real human being. people like the human aspect of art.
There will be a time when a actor or actress will sign a contract to license there image, get a check and, an extra will do the part but no one will ever see the extra's face just the face of the licensed actor.
A lot of recent movies are made to remind us of what was cool, instead of being cool.
This is it exactly.
A deepfake performance is like a phone tree voice - sounds like a person, but you feel in your soul it’s not.
I think Luke Skywalker in Book of Boba Fett looked absolutely amazing, it was very recognizable. As far as I know Mark Hamill spoke and acted out most of the scenes and I'm absolutely fine with making him look younger. Look at "Kenobi": Hayden Christensen was just put into make-up for his Padawan-look. And it looked off. I would've liked just a little de-aging so it doesn't look weird. Obi-Wan was far easier to make look younger because most of his face was covered by a beard and his long hair distracts the attention from his face.
I think technology is fantastic and if we use it in certain cases, like to alter the voice of actors or their looks to make them look younger than they are it's completely fine, even desired. Imagine just how off it would've looked to see someone else as Luke. This would've killed the Mamdalorian completely. And if we would've left everything out involving Luke, we would've been disappointed. Also, in defence of special effects: you also don't create action scenes with explosions and so on purely with practical effects, because you can't afford to destroy everything for tens of shots realistically, no, you rely on special effects. And we are used to it. Just as we will get used to see old actors young or dead actors alive.
10:12 "They're not movies for humans, they're content for algorithms." I can't think the amount of times I've seen someone online say "I don't care if [Rings of Power/Fantastic Beasts/Asoka] isn't amazing. I'm just glad we're getting more [Middle Earth/Harry Potter/Star Wars] content."
I thought the title was interesting, then I saw the name! Thanks so much man, I've been waiting months for you to upload again!!
What happened to bro bro
Excellent and thoughtful video as usual! You've brought points about the film I hadn't thought before that illustrates well a common issue with movies nowadays. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to the LOTR video already!
We need more videos dude. Its hard to find such well structured, well spoken, and entertaining videos such as yours🙏
Damn dude... what an essay... I really liked the idea behind the "deep-fake movie", I think this is exactly what we all think about recent franchise-related movies. In all this, I think that still, the Rogue One was one of the best "deep fake movies" recently.
Rogue One was the last "Star Wars" movie I paid to see, *because* I knew, when I saw "deep fake Peter Cushing" on the screen, Disney was about to make a series of horrible decisions.
*And I was right...*
I suspect this is as close as we'll get to a Mandalorian video, too, huh?
as always with anything Disney related, it's an empty husk once you examine it closely enough. it's sad though because it's still among the "better" Disney Star Wars products
Yeah this, I've watched so much of this star wars they shit they pump out (after TRoS, always illegally) and I've had one episode of one show that I've enjoyed with no reservations
This guys video essays are the only ones I consider worth watching. I find them mentally engaging and entertaining.
Saw this pop up, immediately went for it!
I'll be quite honest, it's hard to watch content about Disney's Star Wars. Even if it's expository work, I can't shake off the fact that it's all _post-mortem_ for me. Whatever Rogue One did right, whatever it did wrong, it's really, _really_ hard to care. If I can't consider the sequel trilogy canon, the rest is little more than fanfiction in my heart. Good fanfiction is still fanfiction.
As for my take on deepfakes and the more mundane means of cinematic resuscitation, well... I don't want to sound so religious but there's really no other fitting language. I think it's sacrilegious. Desecration, almost literally. Whether or not you are digging up a dead person's body for real and stringing it up for a jig on a theater scene, or getting people to cook it up digitally, it disgusts me the same. They only do it for nostalgia points anyway. _Look, look! He dances for you once more! Ain't it funny? Isn't it a hoot? Give us money._
you make some of the best video essays i’ve ever seen, your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed and please make more videos :)
I would really love a video exploring Anakin/Vader and the his whole arc and redemption. I know it’s been done a ton by other channels, but you’re unique perspective on the films fascinates me. Also, would love to see you cover other Star Wars media, like the old books, games and shows. Can’t wait for the LOTR video!
We do see new vehicles in Rogue One though. The U-Wing, TIE Striker, the cargo shuttle, the tank thingie.
8:01 No one has said deepfake Luke is just as good as having Mark Hamill play him. But many of us are blown away and impressed with how good the technology is getting…and we appreciate the ability to reintroduce some of our favorite characters from the OT, albeit even if they aren’t 100% convincing yet.
We're heading toward a dystopia where our movies are completely made by robots and algorithms, you can't replicate soul and a life time worth of ideas, experiences, and values
"You can't replicate a soul and a lifetime worth of ideas, experiences, and values" That is because the things you describe are unquantifiable and vague. People want good actors who look the part, a soul and a lifetime worth of ideas, experiences, and values, is just a concept, an idea, without any physical reality.
Unlikely. Humans will get annoyed at soulless movies (see: the response of this entire video essay and resulting comment section based on only two minor characters being AI) because art is supposed to make you feel things.
@@lyndabethcave3835 well, annoyance is something to feel but not profitable :P
There's nothing more personal to drive the creation of a product than greed, since greed is always aimed towards one's benefit and never others. I agree with movies being made because you want to tell a story and amaze the world, even if the story itself has holes and is quite silly, as long as it drives the imagination it's worth a try; sadly these days it's not about that, but rather pleasing a bunch of corpos that want infinite money (and this is true for movies, series and videogames).
Greed does benefit others though in the creation of opportunities for others because someone's vision cannot often come to fruition alone. If you don't like what a corporation is creating, then don't feed it money or even attention, they aren't entitled to that. I'm not anti-corporation but I certainly choose which ones to support.
Ah excellent video and points! Cutting right to the heart, that Disney does not care about Star Wars! Its just a franchise they can milk for money and to be able to say "we made a Star War". Lucas had a point, a story he wanted told, themes he wanted explored, characters he wanted brought to life. He cared about what he was doing. I'm struck while reading EU novels how much those authors cared about what they wrote and how it fit in the universe. The enthusiasm and dedication to the canon/lore. Thats what made it so special to me and why I stick with it over this new disney canon. Its also why Dave Filoni tramping all over the EU for his stupid fuckin show is so annoying. He lacks any of that care for the universe. /rant
I liked Rogue One way more than anything else Disney did with Star Wars. But I still didn't really like it.
It had nothing offensively bad in it. It just wasn't actively _good_ to a sufficient degree.
Your comparison here explains why. It felt dead. Lifeless. Synthetic.
I guess a well-designed undead abomination is still better than a horrifically malformed biological experiment that begs you to put it out of its misery.
Movies and shows are in such a wierd place nowadays. I feel like within the past decade, they have heavily shifted towards, as you put it, producing content and not movies. I am not exagerating when I say that I have no interest in over 95% of popular movies/shows these days. There is no passion behind them, no interest to tell good story, no love that flows into it, feed by the desiree to create art. It's all just about feeding content to the masses. Which is not to say that every single movie made today sucks, but if I was to try to think back on new movies in the past years (Granted, Covid messed things up) that stuck with me....there is Dune...and maybe 1 or 2 less popular ones and that's it. Whereas the era from 2000-2010 has had DOZENS of memorable movies.
Rogue One itself is a wierd one. I watched it in cinema and a couple of times afterwards, but kinda just stopped watching it a few years back. The movie is just...pointless. Sure, it has some very nice visuals (Seeing Star Destroyers in such high qualilty was nice), but that's it. It tries to fill a gap in the Star Wars movies that simply doesn't exist. And Lucas himself would never bother to waste a full movie for nothing either.
Sadly there is no end in sight with this trend, heck even the Marvel fans are still not burned out - even though their even ash should already be burned to nonexistance after the spam of soulless movies. But of course the root of these problems are not just in the companies. As long as people watch movies not matter their qualilty, studios will keep milking them by pumping out content, instead of movies.
I’m so glad you’re making more videos again. I’ve been checking your channel weekly for months now to make sure I haven’t missed any new vids
Even among people who are not big fans of Rogue One, I have not heard of anyone disliking the now iconic Darth Vader hallway scene. I would argue that given how late in the production process they added that wonderful sequence onto the end, it feels like the most "human" part of the movie in a way. While not groundbreaking in any way, it effectively displayed the rebel soldiers' dedication in the face of helplessness. There is something very human about a relay race against death itself. After all, each generation is passing a torch (or the plans to the death star) from one set of hands to the next, in a desperate attempt to avoid the inevitability of being cut down by the passage of time (or Vader).
Dude when are you coming back? Love the videos! Hope to see you soon!
Me, too! Checking the channel after a while and sad to see the latest was 7 months ago. I hope it means there are big things in the works, rather than the author going through some tough times.
It's stuff like this why I wish more companies made a bigger shift towards realistic animation. Stop trying to use live-action when actors are so limited in how they can move, and stop trying to cast celebrities as they become increasingly irrelevant. If you're going to blow the entire budget on VFX that is several magnitudes worse than stuff that came out in the 90's, then at the bare least cut out the actors and go all-in on CGI.
I thought this with the Warcraft movie.
You're one of the only "Star Wars RUclipsrs" I watch anymore.
Love the video, but I think you could've made a separate video about your thoughts on Rouge One, so you can spend more time on the technology/ human nuance aspect without having to tie it into a grander theme.
While I don't agree with all of your problems with RO, you still make many valid criticisms. I especially agree with your view on deep fakes, as they're distracting and can't replace a real actor. Your ending point about "deepfake movies" also reminds us that we need more original content to balance out our overreliance on existing franchises.
I don't know if it's fair to call GB Afterlife a deepfake movie. As a massive GB fan, I got the feeling the artists really cared about making that film