Rogue One.
Or: Why it's not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be.
First off, this film is a Star Wars story, but not one centred on the Skywalker family. So there is no great need to compare it to the Episodes. Star Wars films have a bigger budget and more time spent on them. It is the story of (spoilers, bloody expect them) how the Death Star plans were stolen just before the events that take place in Episode IV – A New Hope. It centres on Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) but involves a whole host of people who join together to steal the plans.
One issue I had with the film is the lack of character development. Apart from Jyn, not much is known about any of the other characters. Cassian gets given a tiny bit more development than the others, but even then it's not more than just hints about his past. There's a little bit said on each other member of Rogue One, just to give you a bit of an idea about who they are, but not really enough to get an understanding about their involvement in the story.
This leads on to an issue I had with understanding character motivations on my first viewing. Because I knew very little about each character I just didn't understand why each individual joined the group. They would appear on screen, something would happen, and then suddenly they were willing to do almost anything to help the Rebellion. But then on a second viewing I realised that that was kind of the point. They had nothing to lose, and they knew how bad the Empire is, so they were willing to give up their lives to help take it down. One word that gets repeated a lot throughout the film is "hope". This is presumably to remind you that it precedes A New Hope, but the characters mention hope and destiny a lot in this film. It started to get a bit wearing and preachy.
On my first viewing, Jyn just randomly goes from wanting nothing to do with the Rebels, to suddenly leading a huge suicide mission to help destroy the Death Star. It was only during the second time I understood she is doing it to try and clear her father's name. If she was able to get the plans her father said showed the key to taking down the Death Star, it would prove he was (kind of) a good guy. She also hates that the Empire destroyed her family, and this is her way of getting back at them.
Something I've heard a few people talk about is the way that Cassian kills a fellow Rebel at the start, without much of a thought. On my second viewing, I paid attention to this scene, because I agreed how out of character it seemed. Cassian definitely takes a couple seconds after killing the guy, where he looks down at the body, before making his escape. He felt guilt for what he had just done. The man had a broken arm so was not going to be able to escape, he would have been captured by the Empire and they would have tortured him to find out about the Rebels. Cassian couldn't let this happen, so felt the only thing to do was kill the man. It was a horrible thing to do, but he saw no other option. This is further evident in the scene where he fronts the group of Rebels who join Jyn in the Rogue One group. He says something along the lines of that they are a group of people who have done horrible things for the Rebellion, including murders and assassinations. He feels regret for what he has done, and this probably includes the murder at the start.
Another thing I found confusing was Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) – the pilot loses his mind, then suddenly is alright. He is sitting in a cell, a drooling wreck, completely unaware of what is going on around him. The next scene he is running out of the hideout, and then having a full conversation. Seeing as he is told before his torture that he will go insane as a side effect, it is very strange that he gets better so quickly.
Seeing as I titled this review "Why it's not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be", I better start saying what I liked about it. Firstly, it's funny. Really funny. People forget how funny the original Star Wars film was, and this film harks back to that. Secondly, it is so much more realistic than Force Awakens. Something that annoyed me about FA was the way that Rey just seemed to know how to do everything. And I mean everything. The reason I don't like Superman, and in fact find him boring, is because he can just do whatever he wants and there doesn't seem to be much of a threat against him. I got the same feeling with Rey. Oh, the ship they're on is broken, she can probably fix it though – ah yes, she knows exactly what to do on a ship she's never been on before. But in RO, the characters are flawed. They do heroic things to make up for what they'd done in the past.
Also the acting in this film is really good! Diego Luna, who played Cassian, really impressed me. Aside from The Terminal, I don't think I've ever seen him in a film before. He did very well and made the character one of my favourite Star Wars characters. There were a lot of Easter Eggs in the film too. Thankfully it didn't try and ram them in your face, screaming "HEY FANS! Remember this bit yeah?!" It was just the occasional line or background character that was relevant to other Star Wars films. My favourite being K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) starting to say the immortal line “I have a bad feeling about this”, but Jyn and Cassian stop him. I liked this because that line is in every Star Wars film, and the fact that he didn't get to say the whole line was their way of saying "Don’t compare us to the Episodes, because we’re not the same."
So, what shall I end on? Let’s go with Darth Vader. This seemed to totally divide viewers. He doesn't spend much time on screen, but then it’s not as if we really expected him to. If he was involved in the story a lot the characters wouldn't have gotten so far! It would have been very cool if he was involved on the fight on the beaches at the end though. He was in the advert for about one second, so was actually in the film more than I expected. He lives in a big spooky Lord of the Rings style tower on Mustafar, and tells a joke. But wait! He tells a couple jokes in A New Hope. And Anakin Skywalker tried to make a few jokes. So stop whining about it. And what about the final couple minutes where he tears through a ship full of Rebels; that was just fan service wasn't it? Yes, and I loved it. I don't care if it was fan service – I am a fan, and it serviced me good.
I loved this film. I think even more so than Force Awakens. I believe people are scared of saying that because when FA came out, everyone said it was their film of 2015; and then a couple months later people realised it wasn't that great if you took the nostalgia goggles off. Rogue One was obviously not made to be a new Episode, and as far as I'm concerned it really shined being on its own.
Follow me on twitter, I'm bound to start getting funny there at some point.
