#that's why in the first comic Cassian says “they killed *her*” rather than “it”

[oatshow]

A follow-up to my Kenari-Bear comic, some more made-up/headcanon stuff mixed in with an idea I've had for a while that could be boiled down to "Museums and galleries have so much stolen cultural art in them and Luthen's is no exception"

[andrewsallreviews-blog]

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - A new look at the Star Wars universe

I just got home from seeing Rogue One, and my god, that is a Star Wars movie. The acting was superb, the story was well written and well executed, the music felt reminiscent of John William’s music, but also unique to Michael Giacchino.

So, into the real review.

The movie starts with the classic “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”, but there is no classic crawl that takes places after it. The title doesn’t even appear. Suddenly, you see a landscape. Black, almost ash like, with very little nature. This is the section that gives you the backstory behind our lead character Jyn Erso, and her father, Galen Erso (Played by Mads Mikkelsen). The Empire has found them, being led by Galen Erso’s old friend, Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn).

This section has a few cliched moments in them. Kidnapping of father, death of mother, ect. But it is a good set up. As Jyn hides in a small room under a rock, Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whittaker) finds her, a friend of the Erso’s. Star Wars fans will recognise that name from four episodes in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The title suddenly appears. Simply coloured in the classic Star Wars yellow, just showing “Rogue One” and stars behind it. The music played at this point is the most reminiscent of William’s music, with a few notes played from the title music, which gives off a feel of Star Wars, while not being exactly the same. This does allow for the movie to seperate it from the main saga. The same effect comes from the lack of the opening crawl. This properly illustrates that this is not Episode VIII, but rather a story set in the Star Wars universe. I know a lot of people were pretty disappointed when it was announced that there would be no crawl, but I already had assumed that It wouldn’t happen, way before the announcement.

We then find Jyn, grown up, now played by the wonderful Felicity Jones, locked up in an Imperial prison. This section is where it is messy for a bit. The location jumps around so much, it’s a little too fast paced. We go from Jyn’s prison cell to Yavin 4 to the Death Star to Jedha within 5-10 minutes. It’s a little confusing at times and, a little annoying. However, this is done to properly set up the characters.

In this sequence, we see all kinds of characters. The audience is introduced to another main character, Cassian Andor, as well as K-2SO (played by Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk respectively). We also meet characters from the original and prequel trilogies, including Mon Mothma (reprised by Genevieve O’Rilley from her single scene in Revenge of the Sith), Governor Tarkin (despite Peter Cushing’s death in 1994, he is revived through the power of CGI), and Bail Organa (also reprised by Jimmy Smits from the prequels). 

I have to mention the CGI used to recreate Tarkin. It truly is remarkable what can be done with CGI nowadays, and this isn’t the first time we have seen this sort of thing done before. CGI has been used like this in a few films, but one that really comes to mind is Tron Legacy, used to deage Jeff Bridges. While that was only deaging, this is full on recreating a man. This is absolutely remarkable technology. I only saw one flaw in this and that was that it looks majorly strange when he talked. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but there was something about it. Otherwise, it was absolutely amazing.

This all sets up the story to find the plans for the Death Star.

Something I really liked about this was that it explained why the Death Star had the weakness like the exhaust port. WE FINALLY HAVE AN ANSWER!!!!

This movie showed a bit of the Rebellion’s dark side. Unlike in the original trilogy, where the rebellion appeared as wholly good, Rogue One shows that the Rebellion was a side in a war, and they have their own atrocities. This really appears in Cassian, who, in my belief, was the best written character in the movie (more on that later). Cassian has a small character arc that involves the disobeying of orders due to his morals. This plays out more as he explains that he has done stuff that has made him have to say to himself that “it was for a good cause”. This shows that the Rebellion was not wholly good, but rather as complicated as any side in a war.

The massive battle sequences were really well done, specifically the one on Scarif. At this point, it showed that it was more of a war movie than any other Star Wars movies had ever displayed. There was death on both sides, and a display the devastation of war. I think there are only two sequences in the main saga to display something like this, where there was both sky and land warfare, and the death on both the sides of the war, and that is the Battle of Hoth in Empire, and the Battle of Takodana in Force Awakens (even then, less so with the latter). There is only one other thing that displayed the horrors of war better than this movie, and that is The Clone Wars TV series from 2009, but that is an entire other matter. The Battle on Scarif was truly well done, and it was absolutely horrible at times, so I applaud Gareth Edwards on the direction of this battle.

I will, again, applaud Gareth Edwards, this time on the direction of Darth Vader. To me, this was the pinnacle of scary for Vader. Despite only appearing in two scenes, Vader is such an imposing figure. During, what I call the epilogue, which is a collection of scenes at the very end that lead directly into Episode IV, there is a part where a rebel ship is attacked by Imperials above Scarif. and this is some immense spoilers for those who haven’t seen it yet, and want to experience this for themselves.

This scene begins. The rebels have downloaded the plans onto a drive, as they are being attacked. They are running for another ship (which turns out to be the Tantive IV), when the door shuts. The lights go out. There are about 10 rebels stuck in this hallway, one of who has the plans. There is an explosion at the other end of the hall, and just darkness. A few rebels turn to fight whoever is about to come through. Suddenly, a beam of red light appears. Darth Vader is standing in the doorway. It’s a low-angle shot, making Vader appear more imposing. A fight begins. The rebels fire upon Vader, but he just blocks the lasers, and kills the rebels. While this goes on, a rebel is still trying to get a door open to escape with the plans. Vader is encroaching ever closer. The rebel eventually gives up and just gives the plans to the guy on the other side. That guy runs as Vader stabs the last one standing. The rest of the rebels escape onto the Tantive IV, where we see, who is assumingly, Raymus Antilles, give a CGI’ed young Leia the plans, which leads into A New Hope.

It’s quite suspenseful, and Vader is terrifying. It is the best that Vader has appeared ever. 

I only have one major criticism of the movie, and that is that the characters were not very well fleshed out. I could not tell you what Jyn or Cassian would do in certain situations like I could with someone like Obi-Wan or Luke or even Rey or Finn. I couldn’t really tell you if Jyn was a hot head, or if Cassian is funny. As I said earlier, I do feel that Cassian was more fleshed out than others, as his mini arc was based around knowing when to follow orders and when to disobey them based on moral grounds. There are a couple characters I could tell what they would do in situations, such as Chirrut (Played by Donnie Yen), who would believe in the force in pretty much any situation, or K-2SO, who would make some sarcastic remark (I actually really liked K-2SO), and Baze (played by Wen Jiang) would probably shoot at it, but it is all very two dimensional and not very well explored. I feel this is a weakness in the story, as the story does comprise of several different sections, with the characters flying to many different planets throughout the movie (from Yarvin IV, to Jedah, to Edeu, back to Yarvin IV, and the to Scarif), and it needs to be that fast pace to keep the story going, but it feels like there really isn’t a lot of time for the characters to properly develop.

However, I don’t feel like you were meant to truly connect to the characters, as they are one off characters that will never appear again. And this isn’t a bad thing, as there needs to be characters who serve their purpose and then go, but I do like to connect to characters, I like caring about characters, so I would have liked them to have been explored better.

Unlike Star Wars’s previous attempt at comic relief (not mentioning names…*coughJarJarcough*), K-2SO is a welcome character. He is a droid, who, due to his reprogramming, says “anything that goes through his circuits”. This makes him pretty funny and extremely sarcastic at times, and provides some much needed comic relief from the fairly dark story.

Overall, this is a fantastic spin-off film. There is enough roots to connect the movie to Star Wars, and to the Star Wars universe, however, it also feels like it’s own film, which is exactly what spin-offs need to do to achieve their goal. It is familiar, but different enough to not be a main movie. Gareth Edwards did a fantastic job at directing, and the actors performed amazingly. The story worked very well, but the characters could have been better written. If you are a Star Wars fan, then you should really see this movie, because it’s damn good.