Save the Franchise! Save the Dream! – A Rogue One Movie Review –

Save the Franchise! Save the Dream!

–      A Rogue One Movie Review –

Hope, the main theme of Rogue One: A Star Wars story and the feeling of all the fans entering the cinema as it was being shown, was well placed on Gareth Edwards, the director of the movie.

Rogue One managed to capture the Star Wars feeling without making the jedi or sith a central part of its plot, which is pretty respectful upon itself. However, its greatest accomplishment, in my opinion, was the changing of the portrayal that we’ve constantly seen for the Rebel Alliance, and the Galactic Empire (but to a lesser extent, I’ll analyze exactly why a bit later).

First of all, let’s talk about the main character, Jyn Erso, played by Felicity Jones. I’m going to try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, so I’m going to be a bit vague. Now, Jyn and her group signal both the strengths and the weaknesses of this movie.

She has a less than optimal relationship with her father, Galen Erso, through which she managed to meet at a young age rebel Saw Garrera. Now, the movie begins with a flashback to Jyn’s childhood and then immediately jumps into the action, as she and Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, receive their mission from the Rebel Alliance.

On the first planet they land, they meet Chirrut Îmwe, played by Donnie Yen, and Baze Malbus, played by Jiang Wen, and Bodhi Rooks, played by Riz Ahmed. They are accompanied by a reprogramed imperial droid, K-2SO, portrayed by Alan Tudyk, the comic relief of the group. All of this, in the first 30 minutes of a 133 minutes long movie.

This has provided little time for the viewer, especially a newcomer to the franchise, to actually develop any sort of feeling towards this characters, as they seem underdeveloped, especially in the first act.

However, it’s this same variety of characters that makes this movie so special, as you can finally see the Rebellion for what it truly is, a tenous alliance of the underground resistances, paramilitary organisations and underworld groups that existed beforehand.

Not only this, but the first act revels that the Rebellion isn’t just the whimsical group that wants freedom for all and would never do a bad thing in the world, as we are shown how Cassian, one of their top intelligence operatives, has a heavy conscience from what he did in almost 20 years of serving the Alliance, or how orders are given and black ops initiated. In general, a very nice departure from the usual black/white portrayal of  good and evil in the series.
As for the Empire, there’s clearly less effort put into it (this was after all, a movie about the Rebellion), but it didn’t go unnoticed. Factions were shown to exist in the Empire, with different people having different aspirations that have to be reined in from the top leadership (Darth Vader, in the specific case I’m referencing).

Some scenes (too few, in my opinion) show stormtroopers interacting as normal humans would, eliminating some of that silent mass of evil people feeling we kept getting fed. It would’ve been nice to hear some of them talking about family, to hear some officers doubt the Death Star and its destructive/genocidal power, or even just a Tie Fighter pilot being scared as his ship is crashing down.

In conclusion, the Rebellion finally got the more underworld/black ops portrayal it deserved, while the Empire got the short end of the stick, which is a shame, frankly, as the potential is immense. However, as both the ending and the tone of the movie have proven, Disney didn’t try to censor it one bit. This film shows entirely how the war would actually be, dark, gritty, dirty and not without huge amounts of sacrifice. This is to be appreciated, and I hope that future portrayals of this 2 political players on the galactic arena are even more fleshed out in future instalments.

Talking about the characters, I’ve got no complaint as to how they were portrayed by their respective actors. I fully believe each of them did a great job in capturing the emotion of their character in a believable, human fashion, especially at the most critical moments of the movie.

What I can criticise however, it the amount of characters introduced, which forced the film to start building them from scratch. As I’ve mentioned before, this makes me not care very much about the characters per se, unless I happen to care about their mission (bad decision for someone who isn’t a fan and doesn’t know about the Alliance). That’s not to say that they are bad characters, or that you don’t manage to feel anything for them by the ending, but there are no memorable ones.

There’s no new Han Solo, or Princess Leia, or Grand Moff Tarkin, or Luke Skywalker. Everyone which is memorable is either not created specifically for this movie or absent all together and mentioned as an easter-egg. This might be by mistake or by design, this being a movie about a greater cause and about an entire army, not a group of A-team heroes that never get hurt no matter the odds. Regardless, I believe this is a bad design decision (if it was such) or a mistake which should’ve been avoided.

They did, however, fulfil their job of portraying a rag-tag group of commandos perfectly, so they sort of even out at the end, especially when considering that Disney said that they do not want to reuse the characters for any other movie and that a sequel is excluded from the plans, it being a stand-alone movie.

The soundtrack of the movie was, for the first time ever when it comes to a live-action Star Wars film, not created by John Williams. They reuse some of the old themes, for which he gets credited, but the main composer was Michael Giacchino, who was a CV ranging from Lost to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. He did a spectacular job in my opinion, as he adapted the themes of the old Star Wars, which always had a bit of mysticism and spirituality in it, to the gritty and real world of fighting an oppressive regime that outnumbers, outguns and outproduces you.

Everything was more action packed than any other Star Wars movie before it, but that’s how it should’ve been, as no other Star Wars movie decided to throw in this much action in its screenplay, and the soundtrack adapted to it perfectly, with an exception of about one or two tracks, but the rest fit in neatly enough for the first to be ignorable.

In conclusion, I believe this is a movie that is obligatory to be watched by any Star Wars fan out there (or any sci-fi fan, for that matter), but they should keep an open mind, as it’s different from the Star Wars we came to know while growing up. Not bad different, just different, dare I say, even in a good way. The music is great, even if the characters are a little lackluster here and there, and the portrayals of the organisations was finally a bit more fleshed out, showing their human sides a bit more. Overall, an 8.5/10 and a sure buy for the deleted scenes, when it’s released on blue-ray.

Review by Mihnea Savulescu, brought to you by Hollywood Multiplex