Rogue One: a Star Wars Story (2016) - Written Review

Rogue One: a Star Wars Story is the latest installment in the Star Wars saga, and acts as both a spin-off to the main series and also a prequel to the 1977 original. Directed by questionable choice Gareth Edwards, Rogue One has had a steady build-up of hype and anticipation for its December release, and, for me at least, doesn't live up to it.

The first thing to note is that the movie being sold is not the movie you get. Or, at least, the movie I was sold isn't the one I saw. Rogue One was sold as a gritty war movie with loose ties to the original trilogy and a radical departure from the main Star Wars saga, with the potential to go to some dark places the main films wouldn't dare touch. The result is a movie that's very clearly being made as a Disney nostalgia cash machine directed by Gareth Edwards, and it really should've been better.

Now, to talk about Rogue One's plot at all, I'm going to have to actually explain the plot of the movie. I'm going to avoid spoiling anything too major for the film, but the beginning of the film has been kept largely out of the marketing and is crucial to talk about if I want to explain my criticisms of Rogue One.

So, the story begins with a flashback to fifteen years prior as Galen Erso, the designer of the Death Star, is kidnapped by Imperial Officer Director Krennic to finish his work on the killing machine, leaving his daughter Jyn behind in the care of Forest Whitaker's character. In the "present" day, Jyn is broken out of Stormtrooper custody by rebel Cassian Andor and his re-programmed Imperial droid K2SO to help them find Forest Whitaker, whom has been sent a message by Galen via a rogue Imperial pilot explaining how to stop the Death Star. They visit Whitaker's character, and Jyn sees the message shortly before the city around them is destroyed in a Death Star test. Escaping with the Imperial pilot and two Jedi temple guardians, Jyn, Cassian and K2 are sent to find Galen and recover the Death Star plans in order to put an end to the Empire's rule.

This is just the first act of the movie and way too much just gets thrown in there from minute one without much context or even a linear structure. It's not so much choppy as it is convoluted, as they include this whole back-story to Jyn and Forest Whitaker's relationship that isn't really shown on-screen and feels tacked-on for no reason. An obvious solution would be that Jyn was already with Forest Whitaker (I can't remember his character name, sorry) and that's how Cassian met her, as the whole her being in an Imperial death camp is a plot point that goes absolutely nowhere. It's a simple solution that clears up the clumsiness of this opening act. It also might have been a good idea if the two Jedi temple guards (I can't remember their names either) were already rebels working with Cassian, whom he assembled to try and find Galen Erso. I find it bizarre how overcomplicated this opening act is, but I haven't even mentioned how slow the Death Star is when destroying the Jedha City (so slow that the characters could've probably stopped for lunch on the escape route), how awkwardly the title card shows up and Grand Moff Tarkin...oh boy, what did they do there?

Yeah, Rogue One makes the slightly risky decision of including Grand Moff Tarkin, played by Guy Henry with a...questionable CGI likeness of Peter Cushing placed over him. Now, I love that they had the guts to try this effect but give it about two years and it'll be dated. It looks a bit fake now - although I guess it's the uncanny valley effect - but Tarkin looks so cold and lifeless. Thankfully the lighting in all of his scenes manages to hide the worst of the CG, but it certainly isn't as bad as a certain cameo near the end of the film.

While I'm talking about the villains, let's talk about Ben Mendelsohn as Krennic - the main antagonist of the film. He's great! The way he's worked into the plot as this Imperial officer with ideas above his station is fantastic, and his scene with Vader pretty much sums up why he's not even referenced in the Original Trilogy. And Vader himself is just awesome to see on the big screen again. His big scene near the end is pitch-perfect, from the lighting to the music and if there were more scenes like that in the movie, Rogue One would be pretty damn badass. Sadly though, Vader is nothing more than a glorified cameo. It's perfectly understandable, but one couldn't help but wonder if the third act might have been more tense with Vader on the battlefield beating the living daylights out of the rebels. As it is we're left with Stormtroopers who only manage to shoot people when the plot demands it. Oh well, I guess Revenge of the Sith is going to be the only Star Wars movie where the Stromtroopers actually do their jobs properly (and yes, I know their all clones at that point, but they might as well be Stormtroopers!).

But then we have our leads. Felicity Jones is massively miscast as Jyn Erso, speaking in such a posh accent that every time they mention her street-level upbringing it's difficult to take her seriously. It's particularly weird that she doesn't sound either like Mads Mikkelsen as her father or Forest Whitaker as her adoptive father, and she just sticks out like a sore thumb. I'm sure Jones is a good actress but she's miscast, and her character Jyn Erso is just really, really bland. She barely reacts to any of the stuff that happens to her in the film, and it's hard to believe she brushes off everything and gets on with it. I know people will try and compare her to Rey in The Force Awakens, but I actually bought Daisy Ridley as the character and Rey genuinely felt like a proper person to me, even with the whole mystery box aspect to her. Jyn is just...really, really boring.

Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, is just as bland. I think he's meant to be this good-willed Rebel who's thrown into a war he doesn't want to be a part of, and they play on this whole idea that although he's meant to be a killer, he isn't at heart, but none of it goes anywhere and he's just really flat throughout the film. Diego Luna gets one moment in the film to shine but it's so brief and underplayed they might as well have not bothered.

The supporting cast, however, are very strong. I really liked Riz Ahmed, Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen as the rest of the crew, even if I honestly can't remember any of their character names without looking them up. Alan Tudyk is very quippy as K2SO, but if I'm honest I didn't find him very funny. Some people in the cinema were laughing their heads off at his comments but I just thought the jokes were so obvious I didn't find them funny. Maybe that's just me.

Now, for some reason Disney chose Gareth Edwards of all people to direct Rogue One. Gareth Edwards, famous for making the Godzilla movie that featured Godzilla for about five minutes at the end. Yeah, Edwards proves he isn't a very capable director with this film. The aerial combat sequences are bland and uninspired, without the energy JJ Abrams invested into The Force Awakens, and the big fight where the tortoise walker things came in was built up as this big moment and they just stood there! Edwards is so transfixed on doing shaky-cam ground-level action with the characters that he forgets he has all of these spaceships and giant walkers not too far away from him. He's been given the biggest playground ever to make of what he will, and the big action sequences just felt underwhelming. The ground-level stuff certainly wasn't bad, but the continuous shaky-cam only worked about 50% of the time. There's a wonderful gritty look to this film, but the planets visited don't look nearly as stunning as they do in The Force Awakens. The colours are really de-saturated, which makes sense for the tone of the film but looks a bit bland in comparison to previous Star Wars films. Edwards also doesn't do anything particularly inspired with the actors, and lacks the imagination JJ Abrams put into Episode VII. And yeah, I know I'm praising JJ Abrams a bit too much here but this is coming from someone who isn't actually a fan of a majority of Abram's filmography, so the fact that he can wow me so much and Gareth Edwards can't surely shows something.

Now, the music was originally composed by Alexandre Desplat, who is a brilliant composer and made perfect sense to score this darker and more gritty Star Wars flick, but due to the extensive re-shoots (apparently to make the film more Star Wars-y), Michael Giacchino was called in to re-score the movie with only four weeks to write the music that had to be more in line with John Williams' original score. The result is Giacchino's blandest score to date. So much of the soundtrack is bland John Williams background noise that often doesn't match what's happening on-screen. It's like Disney need to remind us that it's a Star Wars film with the score, and Giacchino sadly doesn't do anything particularly memorable. That's not to say the score is bad, and listening back to it the main theme is actually quite good, and the music for Vader's scenes is awesome, but as I said everything else is just background noise.

The production design on this movie though is just...stunning. Just seeing all of these classic Star Wars ships and walkers on the big-screen with seemingly no technological drawbacks is just jaw-dropping. Seeing the big AT-ATs from Empire Strikes Back march out from the fog, and the smaller walker-thing from Return of the Jedi chase after Jyn and co is just awesome. It's so great to see all of the Star Wars iconography on the big screen, even with the excessive amounts of fan-service in the film.

To conclude, Rogue One is a movie that's definitely got more good than bad, it's nowhere near as good as it should be. The main two characters are bland, the first half of the movie is way too convoluted and the film can't quite chose between being a darker Star Wars spin-off or just simply a prequel to A New Hope. When the movie pulls all of the stops out for the finale, I just didn't feel engaged enough to really care when the film pulls out these big twists (and for a nice bit of irony homage's the climax of Joss Whedon's Serenity), but I can't deny that the film is very enjoyable. It just makes a lot of questionable decisions and results in a film that's....good, but nothing special in the Star Wars canon. Here's hoping the Han Solo Star Wars story is a bit better.