Note, too, that it's not merely a problem of the stone Jedi facing different ways: if you examine the details of the sculpture, you see that there are so many differences that we might as well be looking at two completely different works. Observe, for example, how the Jedi's nose is half-buried in image (1) but fully above the earth in image (2). Then start looking at cracks in the rock and the contours of the Jedi's robes—the curves and shadows. Nothing really seems to match! Are we, in fact, looking at two different sculptures? Nothing in the movie indicates that there are two such mountains; there's never a wide shot with two stone Jedi in it. Yet the differences, point by point, are so vast in number that you have to wonder.
It's not a mountain; it's a fallen statue. Jedha is a very holy place and (was) the home of the Temple of Kyber. It is possible that there was more than one such fallen statue (like the Argonaths of LoTR).
ReplyDeleteIs this retconning? Perhaps. But, like you said, the differences are so great that it seems like (it should be) more than just a continuity error. If they were going for more than one statue, though, they probably could have made it a little more obvious that the two shots were different.
To be honest, I don't remember enough of that part of the film to speculate any further.
Well... it's a mountain now, dude. Formed in an unorthodox way, but a mountain all the same. But whether we call it a mountain or a statue, it's certainly a sculpture on the order of Mount Rushmore.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to think there's more than one of these guys, and severe editing led to the result we see on the screen. A shame: a missed opportunity for some visual storytelling.
Sure, I guess we can call it a mountain. I was just trying to say that it was once a statue that presumably stood really high. And maybe there were others.
ReplyDelete(I mean, at least, the film wants us to believe that it was once a statue, but there's no way a statue that massive falls over and remains more or less in one piece. I vaguely remember thinking that this was slightly ridiculous when I saw it.)
Oh, and it's waaaay bigger than Mt. Rushmore. Mt. Rushmore is only 18 meters high (I was incredibly disappointed at how small it was when I saw it in person). I did a little digging around on this ('cause, like I said, I didn't really remember this part clearly), and I found this:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/10/13/a-destroyed-jedi-statue-is-the-most-compelling-shot-in-rogue-one-a-star-wars-storys-new-trailer
Look at the still we can see in that article; just the part of the statue that we can see in frame is over twenty times longer than that tiny ship (roughly a ratio of 1:23). Assuming that what we see is two-thirds of the statue (looks like it might even be less, though) and that the ship is only five meters in length (which seems ridiculously short), the statue is at least 175 meters high. But I'm betting that there's more to the statue than just another third, and that the ship is longer than five meters--that statue had to have been at least 300 meters high.
Anyway, that's not what's really interesting about that still shot. Look in the upper left corner; is that me, or does that look like a foot? Maybe the base of another statue?