A Review of the New Movie: “Rogue One”

Ask anyone who’s seen all the star wars movies, its been awhile since we were pleased with the new releases. While the Original trilogy is an irrefutable classic that kickstarted the Sci-Fi genre, the prequel trilogy grounded a huge, steaming pile of dung into the fan’s face. The Prequel trilogy, excluding the third, seemed like it had forgotten what made the original movies fun, and instead of a high stakes war and epic action with enough politics which provide background, poor writing, even worse acting, politics that are somehow more boring than real life politics, and good old Jar Jar removed the spark that gave life to a franchise.

The Force Awakens, while by no accounts a bad movie, in fact if you exclude outside factors it could be considered fantastic, but fails in two regards. For more gardcore fans, we were already angry at Disney making all outside movie Canon suddenly no longer part of the story, This outside canon is what saved the Prequel trilogy from failing completely, as the comics, TV shows and much more made up for the lackluster movies. When Disney made these comics non-canon and cancelled the Star Wars the Clone Wars TV show, we expected a exlempirary replacement, which we got in the Force Awakens and the Rebels TV show. Both then utterly disappointed, as the first season of Rebels was abysmal, and near painful to watch, and the Force Awakens simply copied the Plot of the original Star Wars movie New Hope, and with the villain being so cringy, I laughed at parts where I think he was meant to be intimidating, but came off more as a whiney edgy teen.

So while walking into the movie theater for Rogue One, despite the lackluster examples displayed above, I still held out a little hope. It changed hands from director JJ Abrams to British film director Gareth Edwards, and follows the rebels of Rogue one, on a suicide mission to capture the Death Star Plans, with the promise of “No Jedi.” So, was this another sorrowful disappointment in the Star Wars franchise, or does it live up to its name sake as the staple as king of the Sci-Fii genre?
Plot: “Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire,” ran the opening scrawl of Lucas’s original 1977 film. “During the battle, rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star.” From such slender source material, the Rogue One writer’s (four are credited) spin a surprisingly solid tale in which the heroes and villains of yore are mediated by murky shades of grey. Musically, an attention-grabbing opening stab (rather than John Williams’s traditional triumphant fanfare) leads us to the black Icelandic sands of Lah’mu, where Orson Krennick demands that Galen Erso return to help the Empire create its “peacekeeping” super-weapon. From the outset this movie is telling you the story of the rebels that are briefly mentioned in a new hope, who sacrificed everything, so our titular heroes in the original trilogy could destroy the Death Star.

Characters: Of the main cast of Rogue one, there is not a single character I disliked or found obnoxious, though as Nathan Currier says “some of the characters just felt useless.” While this does not necessarily mean they’re useless in combat or the such, just that some characters that if they were not in the story, such as the Blind Monk, Chrut Imme, and his bodyguard, and heavy weapons expert, Baze Malbus. While both were probably some of the funniest and coolest characters in the entire movie, it felt like they played little impact besides killing things, and were just there to fill out a character list. It would have been nice to see their characters expanded upon, and explain for example why an assassin has such a close and personal relationship with a Blind Monk who appears to have some form of connection to the force. Despite this small gripe, there ultimately better in the movie than out of it. Them, along with the sassy reprogrammed imperial droid, who is a “cooler” C3PO, provide a lot of the heart and soul to the movie, and comedic banter kept most of the movie audience dying of laughter.

This heart and soul is primarily needed due to the two main characters and the main villain, while not bad characters, being very serious and boring on their own. The main villain, Director Kringles, or whatever, suffers from boring, idiot villain syndrome, and is most definitely the most disappointing thing about this movie. Thankfully, his screen time is limited, and the secondary villains of Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader pick up more than just the slack. Towards the end of the movie we see Vader ignite his lightsaber in a confined hallway, with rebels being cut down as they scream for their lives and beg for someone to save them as Vader menacingly, and methodically, walks down the hall at a brisk pace, a trail of corpses in his wake.
The main characters of Jinn Erso, while not the most brilliant or original, is nonetheless a enjoyable character. She has a very nice character arc, and she never gets overalls talkative and never ruins the pace of the movie.

The flow and visual design: I consider the flow of a movie and it’s plot and the visual design and aesthetic one in the same, and in both regards I was breathless. The environments are all varied and beautiful, from a holy city, surrounded by a arid desert, with long buried Jedi statues sticking their heads above the sand, to a rocky planet, covered in a blanket of darkness with heavy rain soaking the eire landscape, to the epic space battle near the end of the movie and the tropical planet by with AT-ATs ripping apart the foliage. The movie never settles on one backdrop, and the story and plot always appears to be moving and never stagnate. This does cause some character development to be left in the dust, it’s more than made up for with a very entertaining movie. The movie also nails the Star Wars sense of humour, with character banter, especially the reprogrammed imperial Droid, always chip in at the perfect time for hilarious jokes. They all feel fluid and don’t feel hamfisted, and it simply feels like these are people getting to know and like each other.
Another thing that must be praised is the work on Grand Noth Tarkin and other returning characters from the original movies. As you may have guessed, most of these actors are either long dead or very old to be playing their younger counterparts. However, it was very well done to have Carrie Fisher look like Leia and on a Grand Moff Tarkin look alike is so well done, that I needed to look for imperfections. At first I simply thought they got similar looking actors, but their team did a beautiful job at recreating their original look.

Choreography and action: Despite having a lack of Jedi, which some would be fearful over, the movie still has some of the coolest action scenes of the entire franchise, if not of cinema history. First of all, the Warrior Monk has some positively awesome fight scenes, where he fluidly smacks down several Stormtroopers, and has a cool bow caster to boot. The best thing about these fight scenes is that they forgo the flashy over the top fight scenes of the prequels, and focus more on the original’s more grounded approach. Every impact can be felt, every blow feels real and like something that an actual fighter would do. The best example is the Monk brilliantly beating down a group of Stormtroopers, using disabling blows and quick, fluid strikes to bring down the targets. When the staff connects with one of the troopers helmets, you see it crack, sending shards of the Plastoid armour flying. The movies explosions, which are not overused like most action movies, look amazing. One prop to this movie is its reliance on more traditional style of makeup and props, versus going an all SCGI approach. The ground combat is fantastic, with each shot flying about sending a spray of hot plasma, sending men and women alike flying from some of the impacts. Truly were the movie shines is the space battle, which I do not want to spoil but all I can say it it is one of the best fleet battle scenes in any movie, as the intensity builds up and you see characters forced to use different tactics to defeat the larger Imperial force.

Quotes from students:

Sammi ball: “IT WAS SO AWESOME”

Anonymous: “The scene with Darth Vader at the end made me squeal with excitement.”

Nathan Currier: “I personally loved it. It was much better than Force Awakens, but I think they’re too afraid to do their own thing and not rely on nostalgia.”

Zoe Wejko:”It’s probably one of the coolest movies I’ve seen, but the ending was really depressing.”

Anonymous: “Don’t quote me, but personally it’s probably the best Star Wars movie of the bunch.”

Overall, Rogue One is a fantastic nostalgia trip, which succeeds in capturing the old feel of the originals but doing their own thing with their own plot. The creators of this movie clearly put love and care into it, as easter eggs and homages to previous movies are scattered everywhere. The movie has solid characters, mostly excellent villains, and some of the best action and battle sequences I can think of. I would recommend this movie to even non-Star Wars fans. The ending, I personally believed to be fantastic, but as people like Zoe said, it was quite depressing. But props to Disney for taking such a risk, especially after they took almost no risks with Force Awakens. Things Disney really needs to work on for their next film, as it’s still a problem in this film is that they lack of a creative villain that they created themselves, as every villain not from the original trilogy falls flat on their face, and I personally hope they take more risks. They have stuck to the safety of the original trilogy, to afraid to make the mistakes of George Lucas with travesties such as the Prequel trilogy, but doing so they limit themselves and their ability to expand upon the Star Wars universe. They could do so much more, but for now, this is nonetheless one of my favorite movies to come out in the past few years. I will not give a rating, as I see that as pointless and trivial. Ultimately, you will make your own opinion. Read what I’ve said in the review, form your own opinion, watch the movie, then you will either like it or you won’t. For me to put a meaningless arbitrary number would derail you from allowing yourself to decide on your own. All I can give is my opinion: SEE THIS MOVIE.