Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Call it “Star Wars: Episode 3.5”. Basically, this is the story of the mission to retrieve the plans to destroy the Death Star. The Death Star is the big planet-destroying uber-weapon of the Galactic Empire, and thanks to its reluctant creator Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), it is now fully operational. Galen works under the pompous Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), who is eager to show his superiors Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing…ish) and Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones) that he’s wearing his big boy pants. Meanwhile, the Rebel Alliance have a plan to find Galen Erso and learn everything they can about the Death Star in order to destroy it. This plan involves his daughter Jyn (Felicity Jones) joining up with a ragtag crew to meet with radical extremist Rebel fighter Saw Gerrera, who raised Jyn after taking her in when her mother was killed by Krennic’s Storm Troopers and Galen reluctantly going back to finish his job. The ragtag crew are: Roguish soldier Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), a meek pilot who has defected from The Empire named Bodhi (Riz Ahmed), blind but Force-sensitive warrior monk Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), and stoic warrior Baze Mulbus (Wen Jiang).

***** SPOILER CITY HERE, BEST NOT READ UNTIL AFTER SEEING THE FILM. THIS IS YOUR ONLY AND FINAL WARNING *****

2016 Gareth Edwards (The OK but murky “Godzilla”) film fills in the gap between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope”, by telling the story of the mission to nab the plans of the Death Star, the Galactic Empire’s deadly planet-destroying monstrosity. This one probably needs to be approached a little differently than other “Star Wars” films in that it’s telling just a small story that we already pretty much know the ending to, if not knowing in exact detail. For me (at least on first impressions), I didn’t quite have the emotional investment of having grown up with the original trilogy, nor did I get all weepy-eyed in nostalgia like with “The Force Awakens” (Despite seeing “Rogue One” not long after Carrie Fisher’s death, and sadly on the same day her mother Debbie Reynolds died. 2016 is a mass murderer at this point). It also happens to be a film where the previous and subsequent stories have already been played out, so there’s no post-film anticipation of where it’s all headed. I did, however have a kick-arse time with what in terms of tone and spirit, is pretty similar to “A New Hope” (Those apparent re-shoots to lighten the tone according to “A New Hope” have paid off if you ask me). So it’ll be interesting in the coming years to see where “The Force Awakens” and “Rogue One” sit with me in terms of my Top 200 of All-Time.

A mixture of that film, “The Alamo” and “Guardians of the Galaxy”, this is a lot of fun. On an action and pure entertainment level, it’s gonna be tough to beat this, even if I could’ve done without the overt ‘D-Day’ landing on a space beach deal. It’s a really cool climactic battle, but a bit on the nose as well. I was a bit worried going in that Edwards would bring shaky-cam and murky visuals here as he did with “Godzilla”, but thankfully the shaky-cam isn’t terribly noticeable until the finale. It looks really beautiful at times. When I saw the infamous early poster for the film set on a beach landscape and all of the “Baywatch”-esque parodies of it, I was a little worried I must say. However, it looks gorgeous, vibrant and the locales are all very interesting and varied, whilst also fitting into the “Star Wars” landscape as we know and love it. It has a tiny bit more of a CG look to it than the lived-in vibe “The Force Awakens” tried to bring back, but it’s nowhere near as CG-saturated as the prequels were. So that I was happy with. The fact that the story before and after this one has mostly been played out, meant that you really could watch this film as a stand-alone and it works perfectly. I myself pretty much shut my critical brain off for the most part, which isn’t normally very easy, considering I was planning on writing this review a few hours later and I’ve been using my critical brain for decades now. I think that’s a testament to just how much fun these films are, even the lesser prequels. “Star Wars” really is the best pure cinematic entertainment.

The cast in this are pretty much all excellent, and I might even place them as the best “Star Wars” cast to date on a pure acting level. Felicity Jones is the anchor of the film, and I fall more and more in love with her with every film. She’s terrific here, a much better performance than the slightly ‘aw, shucks I’m in a “Star Wars” movie with THE Han Solo? OMG!’ performance of Daisy Ridley in “The Force Awakens”. One benefit Ridley has over Jones, though is that she’s got two more films to go and will hopefully grow as an actress. Jones had to nail it here and she does. She’s an excellent heroine. On the Dark Side (sorry), our own Ben Mendelsohn may not exactly show what a great actor he is here, but he does show himself to be an excellent ham. Playing the slimy, wormy little shit of a villain Krennic, he’s a little Napoleon, a little Caesar, and a whole lotta ‘About to get choked out when Vader hears about all this’. He’s hilarious. I was also looking forward to seeing martial arts actor Donnie Yen in a “Star Wars” film, and appropriately cast as a staff-wielding blind monk, he doesn’t remotely disappoint. Dude kicks arse, but in a seriously Zen, almost holy (maybe even Jedi?) kind of way. He looks to be having a whale of a time, and even gets a couple of moments of humour, too. The other acting highlight for me was actually a bit of voice (and motion capture?) work from Alan Tudyk as droid K-2SO. Humour in the “Star Wars” universe can be a tricky thing to master, as Jar-Jar Binks can attest to (Or that awful conveyor belt scene in “Attack of the Clones”), but K-2SO is frequently very funny. I thought after the prequels that I’d had my fill of droids, and as much as I loved them in the original trilogy, C3PO and R2D2 didn’t do much for me in “The Force Awakens” either (nor the cutesy but bland BB-8), but K-2SO is more than alright with me. By the way, did anyone else feel Tudyk was intentionally aping Anthony Daniels’ C3PO voice at times? It was my main thought about him, in between laughs. Diego Luna, essentially the second lead in the film, is fine as the very roguish Cassian Andor. I wasn’t initially sold on him, but he’s solid, and the character itself is for me, one of the more interestingly shaded (Even if he becomes a little more conventional towards the end). Riz Ahmed, so brilliant in “The Night Of” and “Nightcrawler” is well-cast as the rather nervy pilot and Empire defector Bodhi. He’s actually kind of sweet. Wen Jiang, Forest Whitaker (much better than he appeared to be in the trailer if you ask me), and Mads Mikkelsen don’t give great performances or anything but certainly add presence and authority to their roles. James Earl Jones is back briefly to voice the inimitable Darth Vader and is pretty much as impressive as ever. The character’s entrance is definitely grandly presented and his final moments are among the highlights of the film as a whole. Forget the horror that was ‘Noooooo!’, this is Darth Fucking Vader: Bad Arse Mofo, and he gets to choke some idiots. Perhaps the most surprising addition to the cast is ‘Peter Cushing’, yes the actor who died in 1994 is here…sort of. The character of Grand Moff Tarkin really needed to be here, so Edwards manages to give us as good a CG Tarkin as 2016 can possibly muster, and the actor chosen to mimic Cushing’s inimitable voice does a pretty damn good job of it. The eyes are of course the letdown, but by and large the CG Moff Tarkin isn’t as much of a distraction as I was expecting. In fact, I kinda bloody loved seeing him. It’s not nearly as ‘on the nose’ as Laurence Olivier’s hologram turning up in “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”, as there’s a legit plot reason for the character being here and therefore the actor’s visage. The CG Princess Leia at the end of the film is a wonderful likeness, if slightly too ‘pristine’ to convince entirely as human. As for the other big cameo player (I actually didn’t spot C3PO and R2D2 on my first viewing!), I was pleasantly surprised to see Jimmy Smits reprise his role as Leia’s adopted father Bail Organa. I always wished the prequels made better use of him, and although he’s barely in this, I didn’t even know he was going to turn up at all. There’s some other cute call-backs, including the ‘I don’t like you, either!’ guy, and my personal favourite: Imperial guards! I know they never really did anything, but they look so freaking cool in their red masks and robes. In fact, I geeked out more for them during Vader’s first big scene, for a second or two.

The other thing I was most impressed with here was the music score, for the first time not by the great John Williams, but J.J. Abrams favourite composer Michael Giacchino (“Star Trek”). He mostly composes an original (but affectionate towards the series) score, occasionally calling upon Williams’ themes. It might just get you a little misty-eyed, even if ‘The Imperial March’ really shouldn’t be here, since it didn’t actually debut until “The Empire Strikes Back”. It kinda had to be here, though. It’s Vader. It’s his theme music. So I understand the thought behind its inclusion. I actually think the score here is better than Williams’ blandly reverential work on “The Force Awakens”.

I honestly have very few negatives with this film. Darth Vader’s mask looked different to me, and not in a good way. It somehow didn’t seem as threatening, although they did everything they could with camera shots and body language to definitely make him intimidating. Something was just a little off about the mask, though. I also would’ve liked more scenes with Forest Whitaker’s supposed extremist rebel character. And for fuck’s sake, if you’ve ever thought that Storm Troopers were useless dunderheads with poor aim, there’s more evidence in this film than any other film in the franchise that Storm Troopers, seen in various forms here (and yes, fellow nerds I do know they’re not all called Storm Troopers. I’m lazy, OK?), are really, really dumb. Gomer Pyle dumb. Clancy Wiggum dumb, bordering on Ralph Wiggum dumb. That’s not a flaw with the film, really, just…I feel a little sorry for them.

Like I said in my review of “The Force Awakens”, this review and rating may only be temporary as my view may change with time and repeated viewings. However, on first impression I enjoyed the hell out of this film. For the most part, this does a great job of filling the gap between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope”, and if you’re not a prequel-lover, rest assured that this does mostly look and feel more akin to the original trilogy than the more portentous, CG-lathered prequels. And if you felt “The Force Awakens” cribbed too much of its story from “A New Hope” (I personally understood why it did so), you may enjoy this one more as it’s less inspired by previous “Star Wars” films and more the films that inspired the original trilogy. It’s basically a war movie in space. I love all of these films, animated “The Clone Wars: A Cheap-Arse Star Wars Happy Meal” aside. They really are great entertainment, so don’t be discouraged by the likely temporary rating I’m giving it. I really enjoyed this. I will probably enjoy it even more in the coming years. The screenplay is by Chris Weitz (Director of “About a Boy” and “American Pie”) and Tony Gilroy (“The Devil’s Advocate”, “Armageddon”), from a story by John Knoll (an ILM guy) and Gary Whitta (the awful “The Book of Eli” and the underrated “After Earth”).

Rating: B