Rogue One

• Also known as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Directed by Gareth Edwards
• December 10, 2016 (Pantages Theatre) / December 16, 2016 (US)
• Based on characters created by George Lucas

A group of rebels band together to steal the plans of the first Death Star.

The first and most important thing Rogue One has going is that it is a different type of Star Wars movie yet you can see how it connects to the larger film series. It feels like a Star Wars movie. It achieves that trick of being different yet fitting in with what came before. It is an aspect of that universe we have never seen.

Star Wars is not just stunning visuals. Star Wars is space opera and spectacle but there’s a level of cool even in the most mundane things. But more importantly the stories have a lot packed into them with a touch of humor to lighten the tension. It is not to undermine the story but to keep it from getting oppressively serious.

If there are opposing philosophies to be found in this it is between the approach of the Rebels and Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). A week before A New Hope Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) is stuck on using political and legal maneuvers to depose Palpatine while Saw is focused on conflict. Saw at the minimum understands that this is not a fight to be won in the courts or through formal rules of government. Heck everybody else realizes that blood needs to be shed but her. Incongruous with the later presentations of where Mon Mothma seems to understand what was going on. 

I admit to being unfamiliar with the character of Saw Gerrera-at least not enough to have a strong opinion on him, but he seems ridiculously paranoid to the point of me not being sure how he gets people to follow him. How is he even effective? He immediately assumes Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) is lying and decides to permanently scrub his mind by having a telepathic parasite rifle through it. It made for an interesting moment but made little sense beyond that.

Even when I first saw this, I never understood why they went CGI for Grand Moff Tarkin (Guy Henry) and Princess Leia Organa (Ingvild Deila). It just looks, well, weird. Use people. Billie Lourd-Fisher’s daughter-with a good wig and some strategic makeup could handle the look even if they used another voice. In Revenge of the Sith, Wayne Pygram (best known as Scorpius in Farscape) who has a passing resemblance to Peter Cushing briefly handled the part. Speaking of Farscape…

Ben Mendelsohn is the villain of the story Orson Krennic. The character is the director of advanced weapons research for the Imperial Military. This is the first movie I recall seeing Mendelsohn in. I assumed his familiarity to me was because he was on a career upswing at the time. It wasn’t until years later that somebody reminded me I had first seen him in Farscape as a one off alien, but an absolutely brilliant performance there and a fantastic performance here. My only complaint is that he went from a capable villain to little more of a sniveling whiner by the end who was a bit of a bumbler. Not comedically bumbling, but just couldn’t pull it together. I get why it happened but it was not the right choice.

I am a little disappointed that because of the ending none of these characters can appear in future Star Wars material. No “further adventures” if you will and in a fictional universe where characters do great deeds and often survive that’s a bit disappointing. And I liked them all. We got Andor but that was a prequel to this! Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), Cassian Andor (Diego Luna),

Orson Krennic, Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), Baze Malbu (Jiang Wen), and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk as the voice and motion-capture) were all great additions to the cast of Rebel fighters. Despite an ending that is the antithesis of a Star Wars ending it works though.

It gave the film emotional impact. You go into this thinking of all the miracle escapes that have happened in Star Wars, and you expect it to happen again. But because they die, it’s a bit of a gut punch and makes and this movie one of the rare instances it enhances the story of another film. It doesn’t take away but makes the stakes of A New Hope a bit more significant because of what was sacrificed.

There does not have the bouncy fun feel of the main Star Wars films or even Solo. It is a much more downbeat movie. It’s about hard choices and sacrificing your life for a bigger cause. It’s coming to terms with anger of the past and guilt over the present.

Success or failure has real impact. And they keep you guessing how success comes even though we know success does come. Getting the audience to consider the possibility of failure in a prequel film when we know failure doesn’t happen is a very difficult task but Gareth Edwards with a skillful hand accomplishes that. Our characters have shades of gray and darkness in them. Our Jyn Erso character would rather be anywhere else. Krennic, even though he gets less effective at the end, still displays enough intelligence to be a legitimate threat and a serious danger. He’s undone largely by his ego and arrogance.

There are enough visual nods and background bits that it creates a visual connection to Star Wars without being heavy handed. Plus we get a cameo from Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits)

himself. They stuck with the retro future look down to hairstyles and the computer graphics that you see. There may have been some cleaning up of them and smoothing out, but it blends seamlessly with anything from before.

Rogue One is the best of Disney era Star Wars films. It’s different yet feels as if it belongs. It managed to be its own thing without feeling as if it didn’t fit.