Rogue One Is The Gritty Star Wars Action Movie You’ve Always Wanted
Director: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, Forest Whittaker, Jimmy Smits and James Earl Jones
Studio: Lucasfilm/Disney
Rated: PG
Running Time: 2 Hrs, 14 Mins
Remember staging massive, sweeping battles with your tar wars toys when you were a kid? Â Your favourite figures and star fighters and vehicles all probably made appearances in at least one huge, dramatic battle. It was the fight you always wanted to see in the movies but never got to. Well, you might want to break some of those toys out of storage because Star Wars: Rogue One is probably the movie you made when you were a kid. And then some.
Video: Star Wars
After seeing her mother murdered and father abducted by Imperial forces as a child, Jynn Erso (Felicity Jones) winds up in an Imperial labour camp serving sentences on too many charges to count. Then without warning she’s rescued by Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), an intelligence officer in the Rebel Alliance. The Alliance, which is at a fragile crossroads, didn’t take such an enormous risk and invest the precious resources to rescue Jynn out of the goodness of their hearts however. They’re looking to recruit her in a mission to liberate her father Galen Erso, a weapons researcher who has just completed the planet destroying Death Star, a weapon that promises destruction for the entire Alliance and guarantees Imperial tyranny throughout the entire galaxy.
Tipped off to the Death Star’s existence by an Imperial defector (who was turned by Galen Erso-played by Mads Mikkelsen), Jynn and Andor fly across the galaxy in search of Galen, collecting a motley crew along the way. But as they race against time, desperately trying to complete their mission before the Empire completes its doomsday weapon, it becomes apparent that the two have very different objectives. While Jynn is trying to rescue her father from the Empire he has become disillusioned with, Captain Andor is operating under much different orders.
Like the droids two ill-fated Stormtroopers were looking for in A New Hope, Rogue One is probably not the Star Wars movie you were looking for. Or expecting. But that is hardly a bad thing. While there are references to the Force, there are no Jedis and the only light saber you see belongs to Darth Vader as he cuts down a legion of Alliance troops. We finally get to see the sacred Jedi city of Jedda, which lies in ruins following the Empire’s rise, but it is the first casualty of the completed Death Star’s omnipotent destruction. There are no Skywalkers, no wookies, no Ewoks or bounty hunters. But what you do get is a fresh little tale carved out of existing Star Wars mythos, all of it taking place against the backdrop of the venerable space saga’s very beginning.
The biggest thing to like about Rogue One is its individuality. The first standalone story ever told in the Star Wars universe, Rogue One manages to stand on its own because it’s different. While there’s always been plenty of action in the Star Wars movies before, Rogue One dials the intensity up a few notches. Until now, you’ve only ever seen action like this in video games. The movie is grittier as well as more intense. The Stormtroopers have dirt on their armour and the fallout from the violence is more intimate. Director Gareth Edwards does a good job of getting down in the dirt when the rebels are forced to use guerilla tactics against a much more powerful, much more sophisticated Imperial army. In fact, some of their tactics are reminiscent of those used by insurgents in more violent parts of the real world, including some used on western forces in some of the scarier vicinities of the globe.
While the film does grant Jynn more screen time than most of the other characters (and the advertising campaign until now has convinced us that Jynn was the lead), Rogue One relies more on an ensemble cast rather than a handful of stars. Jones does her job as Erso, but there are times when she overshadows Luna in the process. While Luna was supposed to be Erso’s male counterbalance, this never becomes too problematic.
The rest of the acting is pretty much what you would expect from a Star Wars movie-consistently solid with a few standouts. Alan Tudyk does an excellent job voicing Andor’s reprogrammed Imperial droid K-2S0, providing the majority of the movie’s humour with his understated sarcasm. Donnie Yen is the movie’s resident voice of wisdom and completely steals one of the movie’s more solid action scenes as the blind warrior-monk Chirrut Imwe. Ben Mendelsohn is more than capable as Director Orson Krennic, the Imperial officer tasked with completing the Death Star. Krennic is as brutal as he is ambitious and the only person he truly respects or fears is Darth Vader. Riz Ahmed is convincing as Imperial cargo pilot turned Rebel informant Bodhi Rook. Rook is an everyman confronted by an impossible moral choice and his character perfectly illustrates why Star Wars has been so successful embedding itself into pop culture’s notoriously short attention span.
While writing has never really been a strong suit of the Star Wars franchise, Rogue One’s story is a bit of a higher caliber than your average Star Wars flick (a smart move considering criticism that the plot of last year’s Force Awakens was recycled from A New Hope). Not only does it explain how the rebels got the plans for the original Death Star, it finally answers why such a monumental achievement included such an obvious, bone-headed flaw. And it answers both questions convincingly.
It also offers a look at the politics of both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. There are power struggles within the leadership of both, weather it be Krennic’s politicking to curry the Emperor’s favor (and his repeated clashes with other Imperial leaders) or the existence of less flattering elements of the Rebellion (Forest Whittaker’s Saw Gerrara is viewed as a fanatic by other members of the Alliance, his politics and tactics frowned upon by his peers). It also does a decent job of seamlessly inserting itself into the larger Star Wars story without detracting from its uniqueness.
One glaring shortcoming was the inclusion of Grand Admiral Moff Tarkin, originally played by the late Peter Cushing. The filmmakers tried to use CGI to bring back a realistic version of the Admiral for story purposes, and it might have worked if they only used it in a single scene (like they did with a younger Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War). But they put this digital caricature in a number of vital scenes alongside human actors and it soon became visually unsettling and felt cheap. For all the things this movie got right it felt like they settled on this point instead of investing a little extra effort to minimize how much they would depend on such a transparent effect.
Was Rogue One a complete jaw-dropper that will have the same cultural impact as some of the other Star Wars movies? Probably not. But it’s definitely better than any of the prequels (Edwards relied on practical effects whenever possible) and it was a solid entry into the series. You get to see a lot of your favourite toys from your childhood, the cameo by Vader is a great touch and it dipped its toe into some storytelling territory Star Wars almost never ventures into; self sacrifice and the idea that sometimes, for the greater good, the heroes don’t always get to see the happy ending.
In the end, Rogue One is a great holiday popcorn movie that fans and casual moviegoers alike will enjoy.
Image: Lucasfilms/Walt Disney Studios
