Less Campbell, More Shakespeare: Thoughts on Rogue One

Rogue One proved that Lucasfilm/Disney could produce a solid stand alone Star Wars film, but it isn’t all the Internet is saying it is.

This post may seem painfully late-to-the-party, but I first saw Rogue One on 70mm in an IMAX dome and wanted to see it again before firing off my large-format goggled thoughts. In the way that The Force Awakens was the best fan film ever, Rogue One utilized well executed nostalgia to create the perfect spin-off. The real heroes of the movie were the art departments (costumes, set design, set dressers), technical crew (cinematography, lighting and color timing) and the director, Gareth Edwards, for holding it all together despite reports of extensive rewrites into the fall (covering both story and character arcs). Few films go through that kind of gauntlet and come out better for it.

Beware, spoilers below
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What Rogue One isn’t

I rarely read reviews before watching a film, but I like to look over a few after to see where my thoughts lined up, what I missed or what I caught that seems a bit different than other folks. For Rogue One there were a couple of things that kept popping up.

Rogue One was free from the story arc and mythology of the original Star Wars.

I would argue that the movie is more dependent on everything we know about Star Wars than anything that came after the original because it is tied to one of the most important events of the mythos and dovetails (pretty deftly to their credit) into A New Hope’s opening scene. We may not know where it is starting, but we certainly know the results. That dependence extends beyond the story to the design, look and feel of the film which had to appeal to both modern eyes but feel seamless to the elements born mostly out of constraint from forty years ago. If the look of the film was off, we would never suspend our disbelief long enough to allow the story to grab us.

Rogue One was like Saving Private Ryan and Dirty Dozen

You are wrong. Go back and watch these films.

Rogue One was the Star Wars “war” movie.

This point is likely the easiest to debate—however, only because of the subjective view of the prequel films created by Lucas. Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith had a much broader and more realized view of the war and conflict in the universe, even in “smaller” moments where Anakin kills the younglings and the Jedi are ordered to be executed.

I have also read praises for the “extensive” arial dogfights. Really?

Regardless of how you feel about the prequels, it is crazy to suggest that the scope of the battles both in the air and on the ground in Rogue One exceeded all of the other movies. What we all were responding to was the close-up, 16mm style, handheld style that gave those scenes grit, something the prequels lacked.

Okay, I’ve bagged on other people enough

What stuck with me the most after watching Rogue One is that it is the first Star Wars film to really stray from Joeseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. While it does carry the call to adventure (refusing and ultimately accepting), the talisman (something that has to be used or obtained), allies and the supreme ordeal, absent is the reward and return home. In this way the film plays out much more Shakespearean in nature, where tragic events lead to a journey that provides redemption, paid for with the ultimate price.

This didn’t take anything away from me enjoying the film per se, but along with things such as the reductive treatment of the Force to contrived mantras and wishful thinking, core elements of the Lucas-created world were a bit off.

If you were seven years old and Rogue One was the first exposure of any kind to Star Wars, it would not have captured your imagination or stuck with you as a filter for much of how you view the world as you grew up.

And while I really enjoyed the movie, that is my bottom line with Rogue One.