“Our Rebellion is all that remains to push back the Empire. We think you may be able to help us.”
| Director | Year | Genre | Run time | Rating |
| Gareth Edwards | 2016 | Sci-fi, Action | 133 min |  |
This review spoils the basic set-up of Rogue One.
The original 1977 Star Wars film opens with a text crawling across the screen, stating: “It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR.”
Thirty-nine years later, Rogue One is here to elaborate on this battle, how the rebels got the secret plans, and explain how the Death Star could have such a horrible design flaw as to allow a single, well-placed shot to destroy it. It’s easy to take a cynic view and say this plot is an unnecessary but safe expansion of the saga, guaranteed to appease fans by neatly connection the original trilogy with the infamous prequels, but such a dismissal is unfair. Rogue One tells a compelling story on its own terms, even if it stumbles for a while before it gets going.
The film opens fifteen years in the past on a remote planet, where scientist Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) has escaped his evil imperial employer, and made a quiet life for himself with a wife and daughter. Alas, their idyllic existence is disrupted when Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) arrives, accompanied by storm troopers. Krennic intends to use whatever means necessary to persuade Erso to resume work on the Death Star. Erso really doesn’t want to do this, but when the evil guys shoot his wife he surrenders, in the hope that the empire won’t find his daughter Jyn, who is hiding. This opening sequence, notably devoid of the series’ trademark crawl, is exhilarating, and immediately establishes Rogue One as the most visually stunning Star Wars movie. Cinematographer Greig Fraser (Zero Dark Thirty) gives Rogue One a dark but softly beautiful look, while director Gareth Edwards brings more of the stunning VFX vistas that elevated 2014’s Godzilla. Edwards, who began his career creating digital effects for TV shows, has a knack for bringing a poetic touch to VFX-laden wide shots. The way giant shadows moves across space stations, the camera swoops through landscapes, and planets float in the background, keeps the film visually engaging when the script flounders.
Which it does, for quite a while, after its magnificent opening. When the film cuts to the now adult Jyn (Felicity Jones), the next 30-40minutes grow increasingly disengaging, as the film introduces a multitude of characters hacking their way through poorly written dialogue. Like Guardians of the Galaxy, this is a space opera about an unlikely group of comrades, but whereas watching the group come together was the most enjoyable part of Guardians, it’s a frustrating process here. The film doesn’t stick with one point of view, but cuts haphazardly between stories, which makes it difficult to maintain an overview over who the characters are and what they’re trying to accomplish, until they’re all together and their goals align.
It’s a solid collection of characters, though, and delightfully diverse. Felicity Jones deserves all the praise that was wrongfully placed on Daisy Reed last year. Jyn is a cynical, cold woman who subtly transforms into a passionate rebel during the course of the film. Rogue One’s wannabe Han Solo character is played by Mexican Diego Luna, and he does a good job of straddling the line between roguish cool guy and conventional hero. Riz Ahmed is given the short stick as a cargo pilot who defects from the Empire. There’s simply not much for him to do, and you can feel the actor struggling to do something memorable with a thinly written character. Many have praised the films only comedic character, the robot K-2SO, voiced by Alan Tudyk, and he is a welcome presence in an otherwise slightly dour film. While I love Tudyk as much as the next guy, the real show stealers for me were Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang as a blind samurai and his mercenary buddy.
Mads Mikkelsen is great in the few scenes he has as Jyn’s father. His talent especially shows through in a scene that he manages to make emotional, even though he’s just a hologram delivering one minute of exposition. The biggest travesty of Rogue One is its horrendous CG-resurrection of Peter Cushing, who died in 1994, to have him resume the role of Grand Moff Tarkin. Equal parts unethical in conception and embarrassing in execution, it rips you out of the film every time they cut to the character, who should’ve been allowed to rest in peace along with the actor who portrayed him. What’s worse: the film doesn’t need Grand Moff Tarkin. All his scenes are unnecessary and dull. The return of Darth Vader is more successful. He’s given an appropriately small amount of screen time, and his last scene, where he rips through a chanceless hallway of rebels, reminds you how exciting action can be in this universe.
Rogue One emphasis the war in Star Wars. Amy Nicholson and David Ehrlich note how the film’s imagery echoes scenes from the Middle East, and similarly how it fails to do anything interesting with this. There’s not much thematic exploration to find in Rogue One, except the sentiment that is asserted again, and again, and again, that rebellions are build on hope. You could make solid drinking game by downing a shot every time a character says hope in this film. I have no specific complaints about the war scenes, but they do nothing for me whatsoever. There’s just something in my bones that start yawning when spaceships shoot laser at each other, which is one of the reasons I never got that invested in this franchise.
The film’s climax is gripping, as you slowly realise exactly what kind of story this is. It’s a shame that the two biggest characters spend the majority of the climax removed from battle, operating a joystick, and it’s a crime that Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang weren’t given more to do here either, but the overall story crescendos beautifully as it draws to a close. I’ll dive briefly into full-on spoilers for some last thoughts on the ending.
***Mega spoilers begins***
I love that all the main characters start dying left and right towards the end. When K-2SO goes you’re like “sure, they have to let a minor character eat it in a film like this,” but then they just keep falling one by one, and you realise this is a film about the rebels who are not just willing to die for their course, but who actually does. I just wish we had spent more time with Jyn and Cassian as they sit on the beach and the explosion approaches. How epic would it have been to just sit with these characters for 1-2 uninterrupted minutes, while the blast wave draws closer? Also, while I’m in spoiler-land, another small quibble: How pointless was it for Forest Whittaker’s character to die just because “he was tired of running.” It always yanks me out of a film when characters are super-ready to die for no apparent reason other than dying on screen looks cool.
***Mega spoilers ends***
I’m not a big Star Wars fan, and Rogue One hasn’t changed that, but I do consider it the best entry into the saga since 1983. I remain hopeful for Episode VIII since Rian Johnson wrote and directed it, and Rogue One is good enough that I’ll watch the next spin-off as well, but I doubt I’ll ever follow this universe with the same passion I do Marvel’s.
Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3748528/combined
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_One
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rogue_one_a_star_wars_story/
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