Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One isn't nearly as much fun as last year's The Force Awakens, but that doesn't mean it's not a successful entry in the expanding Star Wars Cinematic Universe.  The film is being labeled "A Star Wars Story", and that sounds about right.  It's not a major entry in the series, rather it's a side story that explores a certain event in the overall timeline.  What this basically means is it's not entirely necessary, but I'm glad I saw it anyway.

Set shortly before the events of Episode IV, Rogue One does finally answer one element of the Star Wars storyline that has been the butt of jokes for fans for years now.  Namely, we finally learn why the Death Star had that one tiny fatal flaw that allowed the Rebels to destroy it with a single shot.  This alone will make it a must see for certain viewers, and I must admit, it's nice to finally get an answer.  Obviously, there are more throwbacks to the film that started it all.  Darth Vader (once again voiced by James Earl Jones) shows up in a few brief, but memorable sequences.  We also get the return of another villain recreated through somewhat eerie CG. (The dead and emotionless eyes the character has been given kind of creeped me out.) And, yet another character is brought back through the magic of a CG digital makeover.  That's all I dare say on that subject.

The main plot, meanwhile, introduces us to some new characters.  Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is a wanderer who is pretty much strong armed into joining the Rebellion.  Turns out her father (Mads Mikkelsen) is a key scientist helping the Empire construct a massive "super weapon" that is powerful enough to destroy a planet.  She was abandoned in childhood, brought up by radical extremist who fought the Empire (Forest Whitaker), and after eventually being abandoned by him as well, has basically lived a life on her own while running from her past.  However, through the Rebels, she begins to see the true evil behind the Empire, and agrees to fight alongside them, hoping that it will lead to some information on her father.

Jyn joins up with a ragtag group of rebel fighters, chief among them are the spy Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), and his smartalec droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk).  It's the droid who gets all the jokes and one liners in this film.  I kept on waiting for some funny banter to crop up between Jyn and Cassian, but it never does, which is one of the things that I was most disappointed in with Rogue One.  As a comic relief, K-2SO works fine, but it's a tradition in Star Wars for even the human stars to get a few one liners in there.  They are also joined up by a blind fighter who lives his life by the ways of the Force (Donnie Yen), his machine gun toting accomplice (Wen Jiang), and an Imperial pilot (Riz Ahmed) who has switched sides.  Their mission is to steal the Empire's plans for the Death Star, and stop the evil Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), who is in charge of the weapon and is starting to test it out on various innocent planets and cities.

Rogue One has all the spectacle one would expect, even from a side story in the series' universe.  And while I enjoyed it throughout, I constantly felt like it was missing the heart of some of the better entries.  The characters just don't seem as alive as they should, and we are never quite involved in the plight of Jyn and her crew as we should be.  This is all pretty much forgotten about during the climactic moments, which are as exciting as ever.  But I admit, it's somewhat of a let down after Force Awakens, which brought us the wonderful and memorable heroine, Rey.  Don't read this as the characters here are bad, as they're certainly not.  They just don't stand out quite the way that we hope they would.  It doesn't help that the screenplay mostly forces them to speak in exposition for a majority of the time.

Where the movie does succeed is on the level of visuals and effects.  We get to see some great new worlds in this one, there are some new aliens and a few that seem to be throwbacks to earlier films, and just like last year's entry, the movie does have an energy to it that the Prequel Trilogy was largely missing.  On the whole, this is is a success.  It's just not the roaring one that Episode VII was to me.  I know quite a few people thought that film was too familiar, so maybe they will like this one more, and I will be in the minority.  The important thing is that these new filmmakers do seem to understand what made the earlier Star Wars films work, and do a good job of expanding upon it with modern filmmaking techniques.

I have a feeling that Rogue One exists mostly to keep the franchise fresh in the mindset of the public before Episode VIII hits.  At that, the movie is successful.  It does succeed at being a darker and grittier entry in the series.  I just expected a bit more human emotion, and didn't get as much as I had hoped, save for the final moments.  The worst thing I can say here is that it's a great adventure when it could have been a spectacular one.

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