I finally got a second screening in yesterday. And this time around I was able to pick up on more of the easter eggs. Spotting the Ghost on Yavin IV as well as during the space battle was great. I missed Chopper making his way around the base, but that's not a major tragedy. It was also good to hear that page for GENERAL Syndulla.
The lack of the crawl wasn't quite as jarring this time around. I noticed it a good deal more on my first screening, but maybe since I was better prepared for there being no crawl or the opening fanfare I was ready to get right into the prologue.
I was also able to pay more attention to the score, too. There were plenty of nods to John Williams work in there. Some of the music during Jyn and Cassian's fight with the Stormtroopers on Jedha sounded like it could have been from an OT movie and probably would have worked in one of the Indiana Jones movies, too. I also noticed the one theme that was similar to "Across the Stars". It was not just your impression, Scott, because it hit me very much the same way.
I was also able to pay attention to the moment when the transmission tower on Scarif got vaporized. Based on where the beam struck in the water, I get the sense that the tower was not specifically targetted. That shot just had to be within a reasonable proximity of the Scarif base and would have annihilated it either way.
I definitely liked seeing OT Vader in action on Admiral Raddus's ship. Some of his fighting style actually looks like
some of the Vader vs Rebels videos that were used to demo Battlefront. It made me wonder if the Battlefront developers got a look at ROGUE ONE in the process of developing Vader for the game. One thing that surprised/confused me? The interior of Raddus's ship looked strikingly like that of the Tantive IV. While the interior of almost any Imperial facility looks similarly stylized, I always thought that Rebel Alliance craft might not be quite as standardized. So when the Rebel troopers made their way from the Profundity into the Tantive IV, there really was no indication that they had gone from one ship into another. At least until after that hatch had been closed and Gareth Edwards (in his role as a Rebel Fleet Trooper) disengaged the docking clamp and the Tantive IV broke away. My one quibble with this situation? Vader enters that docking bay just in time to see the Tantive IV breaking away, and his cape is billowing. In space.
My only other continuity question? C-3PO and R2-D2 are on Yavin IV as the Rebel fleet is scrambling for Scarif. The Profundity had presumably already left, since that one Rebel technician reports to Mon Mothma, General Merrick and Bail Organa that Raddus has left for his ship. Maybe I'm just getting too tied up in the process, and the Rebel fleet had sometime to assemble in Yavin orbit before making the jump to hyperspace, but all in all I think that might be minor stuff.