Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Film Review (2016)

RATING:

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Life is a journey, not a destination”. If you’ve watched A New Hope, you can guess how Rogue One ends. But then, it’s the journey that counts, doesn’t it?

Rogue One is the tale of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), daughter of Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen). Her family went into hiding from the Empire but were found by Imperial Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). Jyn’s mother was killed, Galen was kidnapped to help engineer the dreaded Death Star and Jyn was left to be rescued by an old family friend, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), whom fans will recognise from the animated Clone Wars series.

Nineteen years later, the Rebels spring Jyn from Imperial captivity in exchange for her help. Her father has sent a message through a defected Imperial pilot, Bodhi (Riz Ahmed). Reluctantly, Jyn accompanies Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the reprogrammed Imperial robot K-2SO (voiced to deadpan wit by Alan Tudyk) to Jedha, a sandy city that is reminiscent of rural sections in the Middle East. Why does nearly every Star Wars film have a sandy planet?

A lot happens. The Rebel trio get caught in a skirmish between Gererra’s and Stormtroopers, much deadlier here than they would be in Luke Skywalker’s day. Jyn and Andor find Bodhi, and along the way, they pick up Chirrut (Donnie Yen), a blind monk warrior who believes in the Force, and his Force-skeptic friend, Baze (Jiang Wen). I think I’m predicting right that Chirrut’s line, “I am one with the Force, the Force is with me” will become an instantly quotable line in the already bountiful Star Wars plethora.

At the same time, Krennic is goaded into demonstrating the Death Star’s capabilities by Grand Moff Tarkin. Yes, that Moff Tarkin- Hollywood has brought the late Peter Cushing’s visage to life via the digital wizardry of zeroes and ones, opening a Frankenstein-ian can of worms regarding the implications of resurrecting dead actors but this is neither the time and place for it. What is relevant here is that Jedha becomes ground zero for the Death Star’s first testing. And the resulting destruction is devastatingly beautiful.

If there is a redeeming feature in this new galactic adventure, it’s that Rogue One is perhaps the year’s most entertaining and cinematic spectacle, even if it is occasionally let down by a lagging plot that I suspect has more to do with the troubled reshoots and rewrites that plagued the film. Ergo, there are skirmishes on the ground that are intimate and gritty, large-scale sequences that are cataclysmically gorgeous, and new characters that aren’t even half as well developed as those created in The Force Awakens. It’s a pity because the pedigree of acting talent is staggering. Felicity Jones delivered a stirring turn in The Theory of Everything that earned her an Oscar nomination and may score another for her role in the upcoming (at the time of writing) A Monster Calls. Diego Luna was one of the leads in Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mama Tambien. Riz Ahmed owned every scene in this year’s HBO miniseries, The Night Of. Mads Mikkelsen upstaged Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in the television series, Hannibal, while Forest Whitaker is an Oscar-winning actor, and Ben Mendelsohn won an Emmy award for the Netflix series, Bloodline. But none of them get to truly shine. If anybody gets a lion’s share of the good lines, it is Donnie Yen and Alan Tudyk, and they’re usually the quips and one-liners.

As with Godzilla, though, director Gareth Edwards shows a keen eye and knack for crafting taut visually thrilling set pieces (though it’s not clear if these are his work or those overseen by another during reshoots). One of these involve Darth Vader (voiced again by James Earl Jones), who effectively steals the entire film in under two minutes and will have everybody talking about it.

Rogue One bridges the prequels and originals by picking up nearly two decades after the Empire took control and before the Rebel Alliance openly retaliated. The mission is for a ragtag band of rebels to steal the plans to the Death Star from a high security Imperial vault. Perhaps you recall that design flaw in the weapon that would soon allow a simple farm boy from Tatooine to destroy it- turns out the flaw was purposely put in by none other than Galen Erso, who was coerced into helping build the Death Star. The story was conceived by Garry Whitta and John Knoll, the latter being one of the original creators of Adobe Photoshop, and scripted by Chris Weitz (Cinderella) and Tony Gilroy (the Bourne trilogy), though how much of their ideas made it in the end before getting lost amid a pile of studio notes and rewrites will remain anyone’s guess. Underneath the film’s surface are hints and glimmers of a far darker story restrained by its PG-13 rating. Imagine if the viscera of Saving Private Ryan had to be toned down, and you’d have Rogue One, a Guns-of-Navarone inspired if watered-down war film that stumbles in the urgency of plot despite excelling in spectacle.

Star Wars will forever be entrenched in pop culture vernacular and as a result, any new instalment will always and unfairly be compared with the cinematic masterpieces of the Original trilogy, a problem that plagued the reception of the Prequels, rather than enjoying the new films on their own merits. But since the question cannot be avoided: how does Rogue One fare in the Star Wars canon? I would venture to hazard that it is a hybrid of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope crossed with the darker tone of The Empire Strikes Back. Make of that what you will.

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DIRECTED BY: Gareth Edwards
PRODUCED BY: Kathleen Kennedy, Allison Shearmur, Simon Emanuel
SCREENPLAY BY: Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy
STORY BY: John Knoll and Gary Whitta
BASED ON: Characters created by George Lucas

STARRING: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, Forest Whitaker, James Earl Jones