Rogue One

Rogue One launches itself at you without the Star Wars films' traditional opening crawl of exposition or John Williams' rousing theme, and it's simultaneously disconcerting and exciting. But almost immediately there's a shot inside a rural family home which prominently features a large glass of blue milk, instantly recognisable to fans from the franchise's '77 vintage. That's the tone of Rogue One in microcosm, efficiently distilled in the film's first minutes. This isn't going to be a Star Wars movie as you know them, but fans needn't worry: it's still Star Wars. That glass of blue milk is a sedative; a relaxing, reassuring tonic for anxious geeks.

Metaphorical glasses of blue milk litter the landscape of Rogue One, from mouse droids and a Dr Evazan cameo to a certain popular Sith lord (who even retains the reddish tint in his mask's lenses which disappeared post-Episode IV). But it's not just a conveyor belt of distracting nods and winks; this is very much its own thing - a scrappy, grubby, gloomy adventure that perfectly captures the mood of its place in the Star Wars timeline. The rebel alliance is fractured and flawed, and there's no sign of a magic wizard or his young apprentice on the horizon to save the galaxy from the tyrannical Empire. Ordinary grunts are going to have to get wet and dirty if they're going to root out any kind of hope for peace, and we're going to have to watch it through a handheld camera. Aesthetically, Gareth Edwards has absolutely nailed the attitude here, complementing his film's outsider status perfectly.

When Rogue One does go all Star Wars, it is properly, hair-raisingly belting. Watching new and inventive ways to blow up stormtroopers, AT-ATs and Star Destroyers is one of this miserable year's single greatest pleasures, and as the climax barrels headlong into the opening of A New Hope it falls over itself to provide one ridiculously thrilling shot after another. But there's much to admire in what's new, too: nicely-drawn characters whose backstories are only vaguely hinted at; a new and satisfyingly amusing droid in Alan Tudyk's scathingly honest K-2SO, and a more complex portrayal of the rebellion than we're used to, with militants and defectors threatening to destabilise the fragile alliance. Anyone with a favourite entry in the Expanded Universe who wishes it could be turned into a film (I'd plump for Claudia Gray's terrific 'sidequel' novel Lost Stars) will appreciate what's being done here.

But where Edwards conducts his effects sequences and space-based thrillery with the same brio he displayed in Godzilla, his work with actors is as disappointingly rote here as it was when he failed to get anything interesting out of the likes of Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen. Felicity Jones and Diego Luna's plucky heroes don't have anything like the impact of Daisy Ridley and John Boyega in The Force Awakens, despite the former pair being the more accomplished actors, and there's a tragic sense of missed opportunity in the precious few scenes shared by Mads Mikkelsen and Ben Mendelsohn, two actors who should, by rights, set the screen ablaze when pitted against each other.

Despite this, most of Rogue One works perfectly well as an above-average sci-fi action adventure with the added bonus of being a Star Wars film. But its third act heist - the actual theft and transmission of the plans that will lead to the destruction of the Death Star - is where things start to fall apart. Chris Weitz's script (apparently heavily reworked during reshoots by Tony Gilroy) throws countless unnecessary hurdles in front of our heroes, and the convoluted machinations they must go through to achieve their goal are frustratingly complex: one character has to do one bit of the job from this room, another has to do the other bit somewhere else, someone else has to throw a master switch which is way over there for some reason, that guy is doing something else but I can't remember what, and an antenna has to be aligned or something before another thing can happen. It's an awful lot of effort to go through to send what is essentially a bloody email, and the whole shebang comes across like a poorly-plotted Mission: Impossible film. None of this is helped by disorientating leaps between locations; at times it's unclear which base, spaceship or even planet we're on, and it's never long before we're bounced off somewhere else.

As a gap-filler between Episodes VII and VIII, Rogue One is a perfect reminder of how deliriously enjoyable and occasionally frustrating the Star Wars films can be. Technically on point for the most part (David Crossman's costume design flawlessly segues into the original trilogy and Michael Giacchino's score is skin-prickling at all the right moments, but one heavily CG-reliant character is overused and distracting), there's enough to tide fans over for another year as long as their The Force Awakens Blu-rays are close at hand. But there's also enough sloppiness to warrant concern about the rest of the franchise (Colin Trevorrow's appointment, in particular, often brings me out in a cold sweat), and all the blue milk in the galaxy won't ease that anxiety.

An incomplete history of Michael Giacchino's awful cue title puns

I ruddy love Michael Giacchino. Not as much as I ruddy love John Williams, John Barry, Hans Zimmer, Bernard Herrmann, Danny Elfman or David Arnold, but Giacchino can sleep soundly knowing that he's probably tucked away somewhere in The Incredible Suit's top ten film score composers, like, ever. His music is by turns cock-tinglingly thrilling and heartbreakingly lovely, and I fully expect him to take over Star Wars duties once John Williams forgets where he left his baton.

All that said, Michael Giacchino is a menace to the English language. His propensity for naming his cues with some of the world's worst puns is tantamount to wurder (word murder, yeah?), and now he's committed multiple punnicide with his Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes score. Have a look at these, if your eyes can take it:

"Gibbon take". "GIBBON TAKE".

Giacchino has been at this for years, and as much as I love him, it's time to expose his crimes. Stand by to cringe your face off because most of what follows, while in no way exhaustive, is certainly exhausting.

Giacchino started small with a couple of minor puns in his first major feature score: Lava In The Afternoon, which refers to Mr Incredible's volcano-based meeting with femme fatale Mirage, and Lithe Or Death, a nod to Mrs Incredible's loose-limbed bendiness. The Incredits seems innocuous enough, but even the most notorious serial killers begin by pulling the legs off spiders, and this was a mere hint of what was to come.

Michael Giacchino went literally insane with the puns for his cues for JJ Abrams' equally mad TV series, shoehorning character names into random phrases like a man being paid per homophone. Unforgivable punnery over six seasons of Lost include Getting Ethan, Thinking Clairely (ugh), Booneral, Shannonigans, Kate's Motel, Claire-a Culpa (seriously?), Heart Of Thawyer (what?), Jintimidating Bernard, All Jack-ed Up, Benundrum, Nadia On Your Life, Of Mice And Ben, Keamy Away From Him, Helen Of Joy, None The Richard and Hugo Reyes Of Light.

Giacchino reseved a special place in pun hell for Terry O'Quinn's John Locke though, working overtime on the likes of Crocodile Locke, Locke'd Out Again, Through The Locke-ing Glass, Locke-ing Horns, Locke-about and Locke At It This Way. People have been LOCK-ED AWAY for less, hahaha kill me.

Giacchino gave us a triple whammy in J-Jabs' 2006 Cruiseathon: Helluvacopter Chase and Shang Way High (because Ethan Hunt's on a Shanghai rooftop, yeah?) are pretty bad, but I do have some grudging admiration for The Chutist, combining as it does Hunt's joint loves of firing guns and parachuting.

Probably the raciest pun ever seen in a score for an animated film popped up with Ratatouille's Kiss And Vinegar, while Granny Get Your Gun and Heist To See You were mere appetisers for the truly atrocious main course that is End Creditouilles. Jesus.

Giacchino's terrific Star Trek score may be the work of a genius, but that genius is evil. For all the musical wonder and fairly mild punnery of Enterprising Young Men, it doesn't cancel out the horror of Hangar Management or Matter? I Barely Know Her!. And if you thought one play on the words "Nero" and "near" wasn't enough, you're in luck: just for you, Giacchino squirts out Nero Sighted and Nero Death Experience.

There's a bird in Up called Kevin. He has a beak. Therefore: Kevin Beak'n. Not sure if this counts as a step in Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon.

Swamp And Circumstance is as bad as we've been led to expect, but Pterodactyl Ptemper Ptantrum is something else. I think it might actually be genius but I suspect not.

Although GIacchino only composed a couple of cues for Fringe, his fingerprints are all over some of the other cue titles. The name of the series' supernatural location Reiden Lake was used to replace the word "riding" TWICE, with Reiden Out The Storm and Reiden Out To Madness. On a particularly bad day, Giacchino also apparently came up with Connecting The Fringe-cidents. And yet until now, nobody has ever investigated his own paronomasial activity.

As upsetting as My Heart Goes Vroom, Towkyo Takeout and Mater Of Disguise are, they're still not as woeful as the film to which they belong. And when all's said and done, The Turbomater is actually a little bit brilliant.

Location-based double entendres are the order of the day here: Give Her My Budapest, Kremlin With Anticipation, From Russia With Shove and Mumbai's The Word allow Giacchino to go global with his gobbledegook. He didn't forget those character-based puns though: Moreau Trouble Than She's Worth, Eye Of The Wistrom and Launch Is On Hendricks are all as forgettable as the characters on which they're based.

With no less than THREE puns based on John Carter's nemeses the Therns, Giacchino scores a hat-trick of horror with A Thern For The Worse, A Thern Warning and Thernabout. Fortunately he Therns it all around with the quite excellent Thark Side Of Barsoom, so I'll pardon him on this occasion.

Despite being set in space, we're brought back to Earth with a bump for a bunch of half-hearted lulz in the over-abused sequel: Meld-merized, The Kronos Wartet, Earthbound And Down, Warp Core Values and Buying The Space Farm all seem like a cry for help from a spent man. Only Brigadoom shines through the darkness, but by then it's too late.

Giacchino graced this Halloween TV special with some fine tunes, but then went and called some of them Motel Me A Scary Story, I've Got A Bag Feeling About This and Iguana Be Kidding Me. Truly terrifying.

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With the evidence thus laid out, it seems only right that Michael Giacchino should be forced into pun-silence for the rest of his career. Fortunately for him there are mitigating circumstances, which are that all of these cues, no matter how appallingly-named, are quite, quite brilliant. The defendant shall walk free, but he should know that for a very long time he'll be on pun probation. Punbation. Proba-pun. Propuntion? That'll do.

Saturday Playlist #15: Star Trek

I quite like the old Star Trek films. I don't love them by any stretch, but the ones with the original crew are fun and harmless, except for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which is so bad it makes the Next Generation films look good. And let me tell you, they're not. Watching them is like being at a party with all the boring people from somebody else's office. You don't like them, you don't know what they're talking about and one of them keeps saying "Make it so". Ugh. Thank Christ for JJ Abrams and his balls-out brilliant reboot.

Of the eleven Star Trek films, six composers contributed scores - Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Leonard Rosenman, Cliff Eidelman, Dennis McCarthy and of course the spankulous Michael Giacchino.

"All of that is very interesting", I hear you yawn, "but what about that version of Pulp's 'Common People' that William Shatner did? That was freakin' awesome!"

I don't know, you people.

William Shatner - 'Common People'

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #15:

STAR TREK

Saturday Playlist #4: Michael Giacchino

This week's orchestral orgy comes courtesy of Pixar and JJ Abrams regular and spelling pedants' nightmare Michael Giacchino, best known for being the film composer most often confused for an overpriced coffee.

There's no point in me explaining who he is and what he's done while Wikipedia still exists, so do head over there and edumacate yourselves. But before you do...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #4:

MICHAEL GIACCHINO

Disclaimer: This playlist includes an abridged version of Giacchino's monstrously majestic masterpiece "Roar!", composed for the end credits of Cloverfield, because the full twelve-minutes-and-nineteen-seconds leviathan isn't on Spotify. You can get it on iTunes though and I wholly recommend doing so as fast as your wallet will allow.

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Bwwwoooooooowwwwww Didididididididi Bwwwwwooooowwwwww*

Every other movie blog and his dog have already made this point, but that's never stopped The Incredible Suit in the past so I don't see why it should now. Anyway you shouldn't even be reading any other movie blog so if you've already seen this you've only got yourselves to blame. I'll keep it brief and to the point:

• The music on the Inception trailer is great
• It's not from Hans Zimmer's score, which probably isn't even finished yet
• It's by some chap called Zack Hemsey
• Here it is without Leonardo DiCaprio wittering all over it:

If you amble over to the official Inception website you can hear a sniplet of Zimmer's actual score, which is reassuringly Zimmery and points to an inevitable soundtrack purchase come July.

The Incredible Suit is increasingly of the opinion that some of the music being used for trailers these days is good enough to be released on a compilation of its own. One of the Star Trek trailers used this piece by trailer-music-go-to-guys Two Steps From Hell, which - despite being alarmingly similar to Zimmer's Batman Begins score - would have sat quite comfortably with Michael Giacchino's eventual (and excellent) Star Trek soundtrack:



So the campaign starts here for the creation of a trailer music album which I propose to call "Now That's What The Incredible Suit Calls Trailer Music That Doesn't Feature In The Film Or On The Official Soundtrack", which will feature Bishop's Countdown from Aliens as a bonus track because it's been used in almost every sci-fi trailer since 1986.



*Thanks to Jo Stroud for transcribing the Inception trailer music lyrics

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