Mediocre Movie Month 2016 Palate Cleanser: Some Thoughts on "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (spoiler-lite)

Go see Rogue One, but don't take your kids.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Directed by Gareth Edwards
Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Allison Shearmur, Simon Emanuel
Written by Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy, Story by John Knoll, Gary Whitta

Starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, Forest Whitaker

Budget: $200M

Before I get any distance into this post, I'll just put up a totally spoiler-free opinion:

Go see Rogue One, but think twice about taking your kids. This is not necessarily a Star Wars movie for children.

Okay, now that that's out of the way.

When Disney bought the Star Wars IP (actually Lucasfilm entirely) for a monstrous $4B back in 2012 there was a somewhat understandable outcry across the Internet Outrage Machine. People were wary of merging the entertainment MegaCorp with a beloved childhood franchise, ignoring the fact that Star Wars was George Lucas's personal whore for nearly 30 years already at that point. Of course, there was some fear that Disney would insert their characters into the Galaxy Far Away, or vice versa, but Disney didn't fasten its white-gloved fist around the world's popular culture output by being stupid.

Unrelated photo compilation.

After fairly warm reception of The Force Awakens most of the naysayers retreated to their webforums where they complained about the Sue-ness of Rey, the fact that Finn was black, and failed to realize their inability to enjoy a movie that's more an homage than a remake (or a soft reboot). I liked EpVII and I have high hopes for the next installment of the Saga.

And some things are better left buried in the dark places
of the world.

When Disney announced plans to release new Star Wars movies every year until the lights go out, there was more backlash. People complained that Disney was milking their childhood while simultaneously calling for more Star Wars movies. The cognitive dissonance went unnoticed and continues to this day, where you'll find any number of competing opinions on whether Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie ever made, or whether it's an affront to all things good and worth fighting for.

I personally thought it was somewhere in between, but closer to the latter.

Rogue One has a fairly simple story: there are plans for a superweapon capable of ending all resistance to the Galactic Empire, and we've gotta get them. We follow Jyn (Jones), Cassian (Luna), and various other characters across the galaxy as they fight the Imperials, argue amongst each other, and generally act sad as things unfold around them.

That's pretty much the only thing I can really say without spoiling large portions of the movie. While I try to avoid major spoilers, there are minor ones listed here.

This movie has been hyped as a darker turn for the Star Wars universe, which is something I am 100% in support of. While I think the Saga films following the Skywalkers should definitely be lighter space-adventure stuff, I am fine showing a more boots-on-the-ground approach to the Galaxy, and I think Rogue One does a very good job. One of my favorite sequences was an action scene where it's a bunch of revolutionaries fighting some storm troopers in a city street, and an AT-ST arrives to mop up the fight. Awesome!

I always thought the Star Wars universe was fairly limited, considering we follow the Skywalker clan across two generations (maybe three?) and generally stay limited on this single family. The expansion of the universe here...mostly works. My main criticism comes from the fact that it's a little hard to reconcile the appearance of these well-known Star Wars images in a movie where people are getting murdered by grenades, interred in forced-labor camps, and getting mowed down by laser fire as they leave a building.

The Original Trilogy
I've always liked Gareth Edwards, and I think he does a fine job directing here. The action scenes are competent, the gunfights are tense, if a little long at points, and the space stuff is well executed. The third act in general is fantastic, taking place on a tropical planet as a group of rebels is attempting to win the day and things just go from grim to dark. There's enough new stuff that it feels like a story taking place in a different place in the Galaxy, while there's enough old stuff that it doesn't feel like the prequels where everything had a strange sense of disconnect.

The sets look practical, the droids look good, and when there's CGI sequences they don't stand out as obviously green-screened or cartoony.

The Prequels
This section is a bit longer, but you probably shouldn't take that as a condemnation of the film as a whole. As I said above I liked the movie quite a bit after thinking about it, and I suspect I'll enjoy it even more on a second view. That said, the movie falls short in quite a few areas which I totally understand as being deal-breakers for people who are a little more discerning in their choice of science fiction (Specifically Star Wars).

First, there are minimal attempts to develop characters. We get several different conversations where they'll talk about how they've lost a lot, but we never get any explicit detail. Jyn's backstory is relegated to a fifteen-minute opening, after which is jumps forward in time without telling us anything that happened in-between. There's a single line she says to a character she spent a long time with, but we never actually see it. I thought there were three scenes in particular which should have been added that would have really, really solidified the characters. The script could have easily cut out all of the scenes taking place on the Death Star in order to make time.

And that's another thing. There are two instances of CGI de-aging in the film, and while both are technically spectacular it doesn't do anything to eliminate the Uncanny Valley effect. Grand Moff Tarkin  shows up several times and has lines, and every time he's on screen it's like watching a high-quality Blizzard Cinematic. In both cases I would have vastly preferred seeing the character only in reflection, from behind, or not alt all. The other instance is one of the last shots of the movie, which is a whole other problem:

Just the absolute worst.
Also, spoilers.

Okay. So because this movie is set between EpIII and EpIV it makes sense that the end of Rogue One will run up against the beginning of A New Hope. But the last two minutes of this movie are entirely unnecessary. There's a hack convention where, in an attempt to shoe-horn a new entry of a series into the old one, it'll be forced to rub shoulders with old entries in the series. You see this a lot in bad fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero novels where time travel is used to reveal a new, hip character is
responsible for all the events of the series. You know who you are, Moffat.

At least it had the restraint to keep Luke from appearing.

The Expanded Universe
Where were the bothans? Bothan used to be cat-people, but did they change it to mean Chinese? Or was that simply because Disney wanted the movie to play in China?

There's been some bizarre talk online about the diversity of the cast, and...I mean, the movie is the most diverse Star Wars movie yet released. We've got a white girl, Hispanic man, blind Chinese guy, big Chinese guy, British-born Pakistani guy, and two people who, combined, form a full black guy (75% Whitaker, 25% James Earl Jones). I am totally cool with that, considering Star Wars is a diverse galaxy and it would be unreasonable to expect humanity to be all white. But the internet is the internet, so expect that sort of nonsense rhetoric about how straight white males are getting left behind by inclucivity.

The Verdict
I would recommend it, with some caveats. Don't go in expecting a light-hearted space adventure film. This is far closer to being a war film, though it still bears a lot of the Star Wars tone. While it may not always work, and while there are a few too many callbacks to keep me firmly rooted (my immersiooooooon!), I think it's a worthy entry to the series that proves Disney is willing to take risks, even if it's not risky enough.

No more posts until the 26th!