Jan 9, 2020
Rogue One, indeed. The first (actual) Star Wars spinoff film.
What a weird movie. There is so much to unpack with Rogue One. Maybe a little too much. I’m going to try to, for everyone’s sakes, keep this review under 2,000 words. I don’t think there are many movies like this, where I loved so much and likewise hated so much at once. This is the Star Wars movie I wanted as a teenager, and yet, it’s the one I find problematic as an adult. I applaud Disney for trying something new and allowing spinoffs, but I’m annoyed they didn’t let Gareth Edwards go dark as he wanted to go with it. This movie has great special effects, yet it also has the uncanny valley CGI Peter Cushing abomination as a major character. The cast is great with interesting and distinguishing characters, yet I don’t actually care about them at all. It had my favorite droid in the Star Wars universe, but that’s only because he doesn’t really act like a droid. The Darth Vader scenes are cool, but they’re also really forced and unnecessary. The third act is fun, but does it make up for the boring first two acts? Every single pro is met with a con in this movie. It’s baffling, frustrating, and feels like Star Wars…but also does not.
Rogue One is essentially a cash cow, but I don’t care about that. As I mentioned in my Force Awakens review, Star Wars is the biggest merchandise milking franchise there ever was. Rogue One is also completely unnecessary; the opening crawl in Star Wars, AKA, A New Hope, is all you need. What’s next, a movie that takes place before The Empire Strikes Back depicting the snippet of crawl that reads “ the Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy” or something? Probably, at this rate. And lastly, Rogue One attempts to justify its existence by “fixing” one of cinema’s biggest perceived plot-holes: The Death Star thermal exhaust port. People, that was never a plot-hole, it just was what it was. It’s a contrivance, not a plot-hole.
All that being said, sure whatever, let’s have a Rogue One movie. Not a bad idea, on the whole. You take the Rebel Alliance, pit them against the Empire, make a war movie that’s still PG-13 because Star Wars is, at the end of the day, meant for everyone, especially children. Cool. I’ll watch it, something a little darker. The problem with Rogue One is that nothing feels fully formed or cohesive. I’m sure its lengthy re-shoots contributed to that, but those re-shoots do not account for all of its problems. It’s like someone took the cookies out of the oven a bit too early, and that’s bad, but the cookies didn’t have enough chocolate chips in the first place to begin with. Still, it’s not burned, and it’s edible, but boy do I wish I had a batch of delicious chocolate chip cookies instead of cookies my guests would eat out of pity because someone worked hard on them for the sake of something to satiate.
Rogue One tells the story of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), daughter of one of the main (and unwillingly forced) architects of the first Death Star, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen). After he mother is killed and her father is forcibly made to work on the project, Jyn is taken in by the controversial Rebel leader, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). The movie essentially skips the entire portion of Jyn’s life where we would have seen her relationship with Saw, and jumps several years into the future where she is a full grown woman, and becomes the lead figure in the Rebel operation to steal the plans to the Death Star.
Jyn’s journey in Rogue One is a very hollow one, entertaining at most, vapid at its worst. Scenes that should be emotional beats are immediately passed over for massive action pieces. And while I think I understand the intent of not allowing a person in a war time to breathe/process grief, it starts to get monotonous when the movie clearly wants you to care, but never spends real time nurturing that seed. For instance, there is a friendship between a faithful blind monk and cynical gunner. It’s an interesting dynamic, and the two have distinguishable traits even in the vast Star Wars universe, but if you pointed a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you anything about them, not even their names. I just know their equipment and very basic surface traits. And when *SPOILERS* the entire Rebel cast of the movie is killed in the end on their suicide mission (something that admittedly, I respect), I never felt hurt, so much as sitting in my seat thinking “Oh no, not…that guy.”
Take for instance, Saw Gerrera. He’s a bit of a loopy character, suffering from PTSD and physical disabilities from years of guerilla style warfare against the Empire. He has a gas mask to breathe and engages in extreme methods of warfare, meant to be a Rebel parallel of Darth Vader. Interesting concept. Yet he gets all of 5 lines with Jyn, the girl he raised, and he inexplicably decides to let himself die needlessly, claiming “I will run no longer!” when the Empire rains fire on his location to teach the Rebels a lesson. But…what is he referring to? This big dramatic moment means literally nothing to the audience who got all of 3 minutes of screen-time with Saw, and virtually no scenes in which is is particularly likeable. It’s a cool concept of a character, but it’s so half baked that I just don’t care. And that’s Rogue One. A lot of cool concepts and cool buildup, but the payoff is minimal and unsatisfying. It’s nothing inherently bad or completely illogical, but it certainly feels more like the cut-scene to a video game with good gameplay, but a weak story. You just want to play the game, you don’t care about hearing these characters talk, it might as well be a loading screen.
There is also something else I have mostly avoided up until this point, as it could open up an entire can of worms that I’m not sure how to tackle. That would be the portrayal of Grand Moff Tarkin, a character previously only seen in A New Hope, played by Peter Cushing, with a brief cameo in Revenge of the Sith, played by a younger actor shot from afar. Now, in case anyone needs a refresher, Tarkin was essentially the Imperial officer in charge of the Death Star, ranking even above Darth Vader. So naturally, writing a story about the Death Star that takes place immediately before A New Hope decades after the movie was released and decades after Cushing had died was…tricky. Hence, the retroactive creation of the real creator of the Death Star, Orson Krennic, played by Ben Mendelsohn. Krennic is in Rogue One solely because Tarkin could not be. It makes sense, because the void in that story simply must be filled in some capacity. Essentially, Tarkin ends up stealing Krennic’s credit and letting Krennic die, hence he is the “sole genius” of the Death Star by A New Hope. Story-wise, it actually works. That being said, what was the point of fitting in Krennic if the movie decided to essentially bring back Cushing from the dead as the epitome of uncanny valley level CGI?
The CGI is impressive, but it’s more like watching a video game with very good graphics. Notice, that is the second time I had to compare Rogue One to a video game. It’s so distracting and it knocks you out of the story. To the untrained eye, it’s not noticeable, but anyone who watches media enough will be scratching their head as to why. As I said before, this could easily be a tangent in of itself regarding the future of cinema, the portrayal of dead stars, technology, and so on. It’s a hot topic. Who gets the credit? The CGI team, the dead actor, both, etc…and having people perform for audiences as if they never died is mind boggling to think about as well. Who can make the call if the deceased was never even around for this technology and never spoke about it? And just to further drive the needle in a little bit further, Rogue One also has a needless CGI Carrie Fischer cameo to show Princess Leia receiving the Death Star plans, and Fischer was still alive during production, but now there’s going to be old footage of her in Rise of Skywalker cobbled together using scenes from The Force Awakens. It’s a mess. Which brings me to the next problem area with Rogue One.
It is littered with fan service. Shoehorning in nostalgic characters, memorable lines, and settings from A New Hope, almost as if it is too afraid to let go of the past and try something new. It has to keep the rabid Star Wars fan-base appeased, so it throws empty references with no impact on the story to keep interest. It can’t just tell its own interesting story, it needs a shot of nostalgia every few minutes to keep it pepped and awake. So you’ll get a cameo from C-3P0 and R2-D2, CGI Leia and Tarkin, 2 Darth Vader scenes that don’t warrant their existence, blue milk, the angry bar flies Luke bumps into, the chessboard Han and Chewie play, and a lot of other small references and quotes squeezed into the film. I’m not going to lie: I’m a fan of the Darth Vader scenes, simply because it’s fun to see bad guys do their thing, even if an aged James Earl Jones sounds like he’s just finished choking on water as he speaks. But it is a bit cheapened when you have so much fan service thrown in that none of it seems special. The only reason I’m OK with the Vader scenes is because they’re in character, and because yes, Darth Vader’s entire introduction in the saga is hunting down the Rebels who stole the plans. That being said, all of the fan service in this movie really distracts from you know, the movie, and makes you think of the other movies in the franchise instead. It’s a big crutch, and makes you think that A New Hope is the more important movie and thus, the better one, not giving Rogue One much of a chance to just…be itself.
So those are the problem areas in Rogue One. A sloppy, jumbled script, surface deep characters, bizarre film-making choices, and obvious cash cow techniques. I do think the story suffered from its extensive re-shoots, and I wish I could see Gareth Edwards’ original vision, but that simply is not what happened. That being said, I actually like Rogue One. I don’t love it by any means, and I think it has gotten progressively worse upon each viewing, but I don’t groan nearly as much watching it as I do when I watch the Prequels. It might feel too forced (ha), it suffers from horrendous editing thanks to the re-shoots, but with all of those problems stacked against it, it still told a story, even if a few of the puzzle pieces are missing. The image is recognizable, you can fill in the holes yourself. You shouldn’t have to, as the puzzle makers should’ve ensured you’re get all the pieces, but they didn’t mean to rob you of that piece smacked square in the middle. Boy, I’m full of similes/metaphors today, aren’t I?
I said at the start of this review that this film is what I wanted as a teenager. And yeah, in that sense, it delivers. It’s a movie that puts action and cool stuff first, before character development and story. Sometimes I can take off the critic cap and just sit back and enjoy movies like I used to, like I still do, and Rogue One is a pretty easy movie to do that with. It’s a bit messy, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at a few lines, that I didn’t get mesmerized by some of the action sequences with their pretty lasers, or that I didn’t “squee” in my seat when I saw Darth Vader take out those piddly Rebels with extreme prejudice. It’s a slow build up over 2 acts with a fun enough third act, and the movie does take itself seriously. There was passion and effort put into this, and it certainly wants to feel like a war epic, as much as a Disney PG-13 rated Star Wars film can be. It got bogged down, certainly, and it’s something I’d rather watch on Netflix (or Disney+ now, I guess) while I did something else in the meantime, but there are moments where my eyes are glued to the screen. Especially anything involving K-2SO (Alan Tudyk). I love K-2SO. I feel bad because this review is wrapping up and I barely brought up my favorite sassy droid. I know there is a plan to make a Disney+ series of K-2SO and the other major character from Rogue One, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). I can’t say I’m shivering with anticipation, but sure, I’ll watch it.
Now then, there is something else rather admirable about Rogue One. It’s one of the most diverse Star Wars films in the franchise. People from all different walks of life, ethnicity, and gender, etc. are all present. And you know what? It really helps the movie feel like a larger galaxy. Star Wars never quite had the same sense of scale as Star Trek did, and I think part of that is due to Star Trek’s groundbreaking first cast coming out years before A New Hope and their constant representation of the world through people of different places, races, and genders. It also doesn’t help that over half the people in Star Wars are apparently related in some capacity, but I digress. So I give major points to Rogue One for both those aspects: a diverse cast in terms of film industry representation, and for world building’s sake.
As I said before, Rogue One is a bizarre film, a strange experiment in the Star Wars franchise that would jump-start Disney’s attempt to essentially own two Marvel-level franchises, which are interconnected movies with spinoffs and recurring characters. There is no use denying that The Marvel Cinematic Universe has influenced Star Wars for better or for worse (likely the latter), and I think trying to force the Marvel formula on Star Wars just doesn’t work. That being said, I think Rogue One was tolerable…but I could have lived my life in bliss without it having been made. I had fun, but I took nothing from it, and that’s a bit disappointing.
