Star Wars: Rogue One Review

3.5 Stars

 

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . ."  Those iconic words lit up the screen for the eighth major Star Wars film, just a year after Episode VII: The Force Awakens revitalized the franchise with director J.J. Abrams calling the shots.  Star Wars: Rogue One could also be called Episode 3.5 as it takes place approximately 20 years after Episode III ends and leads right into Episode IV: A New Hope.  Rogue One was not directed by Abrams, but rather the English director Gareth Edwards who doesn't have much of a library of directorial credits.  Most notably, he has directed Monsters (an alien invasion sci-fi drama) and Godzilla in 2014.  Both of those films boasted intense special effects which played into his Star Wars debut.

A lot happened at the end of Episode III.  Obi Wan (Ewan McGregor) reluctantly fought and defeated his apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) who was burned by lava over most of his body.  Anakin was saved and became the dark sith lord Darth Vader made up mostly of machine to keep him alive.  He was seduced by the dark side for its potential power, namely that of saving his beloved wife Padme (Natalie Portman) from death, something he could not do for his mother.  However, Padme died giving birth to twins Luke and Leia.  To hide both children from Vader, Yoda and Obi Wan (the only remaining Jedi) and Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits)(one of the few Senators not deceived by Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid)) determined their fate.  Bail adopted Leia and raised her to be the princess of Alderaan.  Luke was raised by his uncle Owen and aunt Beru Lars on the desert planet of Tatooine with Obi Wan keeping a distant but watchful eye.

The formation of the Galactic Empire was Palpatine's master plan to take over the galaxy and destroy all Jedi.  With one of the strongest Jedi at his side in Darth Vader, the evil Empire has developed  a powerful weapon called the Death Star.  It's the size of a small moon and has the capacity to destroy an entire planet in seconds.  There is a small, but growing faction of fighters opposed to the Empire called the Rebels.  They know the successful completion of the Death Star would almost guarantee the eradication of their Rebellion.  Rogue One is the story of the Rebellion's mission to steal the blue prints to the Death Star to analyze its design and discover a weakness.  Spoiler alert: they get the schematics to Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), they do find a weakness, and Luke (Mark Hamill) uses the Force to help guide his X-Wings' shot with the accuracy he compared to bullseyeing a womp rat in his T-16 on Tatooine.

But this isn't that story.  This is Rogue One and it's the story of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones).  As a child, she barely escaped a Stormtrooper attack on her planet.  15 years later, she is a criminal who finds herself in the captivity of the Rebellion.  They promise her freedom if she can help find out what the Empire's plans are.  In doing so, she learns her father was coerced into helping design the Death Star.  This prompts Jyn to not only join the Rebels, but lead their mission to steal the plans to the planet-destroying weapon.

The preview for Rogue One looked just as visually stunning as the recently released Episode VII, even though director Edwards would still be considered somewhat of a rookie based on his very small sample size of projects.  Of course, I was excited because it's a Star Wars movie and I was also curious to see who of our favorite classic Star Wars characters would make some sort of cameo appearance. We already knew Darth Vader was in the film.  Unfortunately, two others showed up, but I'll get to that in a second. I had high hopes for Rogue One, though I cautiously gave it a 4 Star Prediction out of 5 stars.  I had hoped that number would go up after seeing it; however, it looks like it's going to go down.

If you don't want any spoilers, you should stop right here.  Otherwise, here we go.  Right from the beginning, a black screen displayed the blue words "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . " and then it jumped right into the movie.  That's right, no scrolling yellow synopsis to let you know what's going to happen.  Then, after the first scene, the title popped onto the screen with no traditional Star Wars theme music that was the score for all seven other movies.  Next, the movie jumps from planet to planet it seemed every 5 minutes for the first half of the film.  Since it jumped around so much, it was hard to keep track, except for the subtitle telling you where you were and what the significance was of its location.  Every other Star Wars movie didn't need that because the dialogue effectively let you know where you were.  Felicity Jones did great as Jyn Erso, however, like the movie itself, she had the unfortunate task of having to follow Daisy Ridley's performance as Rey in Episode VII and it fell a bit short.  She was, however, one of the three bright spots in the movie among a sea of unmemorable characters.  And the final gripe I had with Rogue One was the appearances of Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin.  So how did a 60 year old Carrie Fisher and a Peter Cushing who passed away 22 years ago reprise their roles? Computer animation.  Really good computer animation, but still noticeable and distracting computer animation.  

Okay, enough with the downers.  In addition to an entertaining performance from Felicity Jones, there were two other things that really made this worth watching.  The droid K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) was a security droid for the Empire before being reprogrammed to serve the Rebel Alliance.  And he was programmed with a snarky personality that has clever one liners in the movie that made him quite endearing.  The other scene that was probably the best scene in the whole movie was Darth Vader showing off what an angry Sith Lord can do with the dark side of the force.  In his own words from Empire Strikes Back, it was "impressive, most impressive."

So, I anticipated 4 Stars, but Rogue One was a bit of a letdown for me.  I'm dropping it to 3.5 Stars as my final rating.  It's worth watching in the theatre, but more of a rental.  I'll definitely be owning it, but that's more because a Star Wars fan has to have all of them in their collection.  If this was a stand alone movie, I doubt I would.  That being said, it made me even more anxious to see Episode VIII next year.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.