Rogue One – “Let go your conscious self and act on instinct,” says Obi-Wan in Star Wars: A New Hope.
Perhaps that’s what the writers should have done when they sat down to craft this latest chapter in the franchise, because Rogue One is definitely not ‘A Star Wars Story’. No Jedi, No force, No larger than life characters and certainly No enduring heroes….which may explain why the powers that be felt they should kill them all off in the end and leave us with an overwhelming feeling of emptiness.
Rogue One tells the story that leads us up to the opening scene of ‘A New Hope’, where Princess Leia gives the plans for the death star to R2 and sends him on with his mission. But is one throw away line from the original film, “A lot of people died getting us these plans”, really enough for the basis of this whole prequel and does it justify killing the entire cast in what used to be family entertainment?
The main theme and core to the Star Wars legacy is The Force and the Jedi that practice it. That’s what Star Wars is all about and that’s what gives it the magic and the hope. Take that away and what’s left? A WAR MOVIE. And so with Rogue One what we have is a movie chock full of senseless killing that is really no longer suitable for family consumption. So since they’ve literally changed the genre, who is the target audience supposed to be? I found it very sad and ultimately distasteful to see a World War 2 tank and storm troopers walking through a village like Nazis. It just felt all wrong. The same goes with the beach slaughter at the end – it felt like I was watching the bombing of Omaha. And for what? So that the bumbling rebels could break into a perfectly situated data tower, resembling the Death Star on the inside, and plug in a usb to get the files. Wouldn’t they just hack it and avoid all this song and dance?
There’s also no real baddy, just pencil pushers and CGI tests. Why would you use some weak CGI of Grand Moff Tarkin rather than using the greatest cinematic baddy of all time – Darth Vader. If i’m going to see a Star Wars movie with Darth Vader then he should be in it. I don’t want to wait to just before the credits roll to see him pull his lightsaber out. Darth Vader is in the movie for about 4 minutes. Here Gareth Edwards has the opportunity to show Vader, but he doesn’t…WHY? I didn’t like ‘A force Awakens’, but when I watched that movie I expected to see Luke being Obi-Wan, that didn’t happen and we only saw him right at the end. But that was ok because there were enough other great characters to keep me invested. Kylo Ren, before he took his mask off…was a great character. In Rogue one there are no larger than life characters. Partly because there are no jedi and partly because they just haven’t been written. This story is all about the rebels. But how many of these rebels had the charm, wit and skill of a Han Solo? But then as I mentioned at the start of this article, if they had managed to create characters worth surviving for another installment would they then have chosen not to annihilate the entire cast in the end?
So what about the CGI? There’s just one question you have to ask to know if the CGI is good or bad. And that is, ‘Does it look real?’. No it didn’t, Grand Moff Tarkin looked like a computer game character. And the same for poor bloated over lit Leia in the end. Why have so many scenes with Gran Moff Tarkin? Why not use Vader for some of those Moff scenes in order to see the best baddy of all time and be able to put more resources into fewer shots off Moff? And why do it all in CGI, wouldn’t it be better to match angles and lighting plans up to the original footage and take those textures from the original Star Wars to make something that is actually perfect and seemingly flawless? Or better still, a real actor that would relish the role.
My biggest issue with Rogue One is that nothing surprised me. Where’s the twist? At least in ‘A Force Awakens’ we thought that maybe Kylo Ren would have been Luke. Too much? Given that Darth is Luke’s father and Leia his sister, of course it’s not – I would have loved to see Luke become Kaylo Ren…Of course he should still have his mask on right now as I write this and that’s what i’m talking about, the suspension of disbelief and then the big surprise. This is the Star Wars formula. The question is, is it now totally forgotten and lost forever?
As fans we expect so much from a Star Wars movie because we are so connected to the themes and the characters on an emotional level and in an incredibly positive way. So whilst we have to be open to new ideas and approaches and not just re-hash old story lines, there’s still one key aspect that has to be preserved. The thing that makes me wants to watch a Star Wars movie over and over again…The Characters. But the characters in Rogue One let me down. There was no urgency or intensity, no real character arc or magic. It’s not the battles that keep us coming back, it’s the characters. Lets hope that since the slate has been wiped clean, they can come back next time around with something that does hold true to the themes we love and expect.