Rogue For All: A Star Wars Story
Ever since The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars has been something incredibly small against the backdrop of something incredibly large. It’s a generational space opera with a few key soloists, a cyclical familial tragedy playing out every thirty odd years, with nebulous concepts at stake; Good vs Evil, Dark vs Light, Democracy vs Totalitarianism, Limited Power vs Unlimited Power, that kinda stuff. The Force Awakens continued this theme far more successfully than I expected, tying together both trilogies in the battle for the heart of trashboy youngling murderer Kylo Ren, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad that this mythical form of Star Wars storytelling can live on in 2016.
However, this means that my favourite Star Wars has always existed in the periphery, within The Clone Wars, or Republic Commando, or X-Wing, tales of soldiers and politicians, heroes and villains of every possible scale, turning this universe into something more than a family reunion gone very, very wrong. Rogue One, Disney’s first theatrical dive into the wider universe of Star Wars plants its flag proudly in this tradition, and scrambles to cram as much texture and life into its barely over 2 hour running time as it can.
The first half of the film shows the Rebel Alliance as this completely ineffectual fuck up, so scared of being too ‘extreme’ in its rebellion that it casts out anyone willing to get their hands dirty and get anything done in the name of moral superiority. The Rebellion here is a relic of the prequels (with Jimmy Smits getting a fanfare entrance! my man!), a group of senators failing to stop the Emperor from keeping power just as they failed to stop the Emperor from gaining it in the first place. This is not an organization even close to ready to fight a galaxy spanning Civil War at all, let alone to be on the right side.
In fact, only one of our heroes (Cain? Cass? Kyle Katarn? Hang on — ok yeah, Cassian) is a Rebel at all. Jyn Erso is the daughter of Mads Mikkelsen, Space Otacon, the designer of the Death Star who is more than a little unhappy that the Star of Death isn’t being used for peaceful means. There’s Chirrut and Baze, Guardians of the Kaiba Temple, people whose usefulness is entirely dismissed by our Rebellion Hero Man upon first meeting. And finally we have two imperial characters, a reprogrammed droid named K-2SO and a defecting pilot named Bohdi. Mads’ message doesn’t even go to the alliance, it goes to Saw Gerrera, the dude who the Alliance kicked out for being the only one willing to do any actual rebelling.
Rogue One is not the story of its protagonist or even its ensemble, it is the story of the birth of the rebellion itself, if not in name then in spirit, as they finally end this movie ready and willing to fight the Empire. Jyn, against orders, leads a group of soldiers on a daring mission to steal the plans. An Alliance Admiral, against orders, brings a fleet of fighters to back them up, even including archival footage of the original Red and Gold leaders from the 1977 movie. Rogue One is the story of the tiniest of victories hard won by the choices and sacrifices of every single character on the screen, big and small.
This is hammered home after our protagonists have died, after their mission is complete, and after the film could have chosen to run credits. But instead, Rogue One ends with what may be the best five minutes of Star Wars yet put to screen, as we follow the Death Star Plans on their journey to Leia aboard the Tantive IV, through the hands of nameless, doomed alliance soldiers struck down by the pursuing Vader. The plans are finally handed to Leia, and the final soldier asks her, “what is this?”
She responds, of course, with one word: “hope.”
It’s an incredibly cheesy ending that no doubt didn’t land for everyone, but it works because it’s a strong and pointed counter argument to the end of Revenge of the Sith, where baby Luke is delivered to Tatooine, living proof that the Light Side has not gone, ready to become the titular ‘New Hope’ of the following movie (quick aside: Star Wars is very stupid sometimes).
But in Rogue One, hope is nothing so frivolous as a bloodline or the power of an ethereal force. Hope is real, it can be held in the hand, and it comes at the cost of so much sacrifice. It doesn’t take a miracle to win a war, it takes soldiers. So much of Star Wars hinges on the fact that the fate of the Galaxy hinges on one man’s choice to fall into evil, and Rogue One rejects that entirely. It echoes my favourite piece of sci-fi from 2016, Counter/Weight from Friends at the Table, where thinking of villains as mythic and inevitable is exactly how you lose.
It’s easy to think that if one mind was changed, if one choice was reversed and if one miracle was achieved the world would be saved, but that’s not the world Rogue One is living in. Instead it argues that although we can never put everything back as it should be, if we actually do the work, we can make real progress and achieve great things. Because without the force, without prophecies, without Jedi Knights and chosen ones, without a master plan or silver bullet, there is just flesh and metal, and whatever is in between.
