Rogue One Review (Spoiler-Free)
Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story came out this weekend, and I was fairly excited to see it—not nearly
as excited as I was for The Force Awakens
last December—but I’ll cut right to the chase: I was pretty disappointed by Rogue One.
The opening scene is fantastic, and right away it’s
established that this movie looks, sounds, and feels like Star Wars. However, the first act jumps around quite a lot,
bouncing from planet to planet and character to character, with Jyn Erso
(Felicity Jones) as the main protagonist out of a band of rebels. I didn’t find
her particularly likable, nor did I care about most of the rebels. The only two
I really liked were Donnie Yen as a blind warrior who believes in the force and
Jiang Wen as his friend with an awesome laser gun. A character I didn’t expect
to dislike so much was the droid K-2S0,
who functions as the comedy relief, as per every Star Wars movie. It sounds like most people loved every scene with
him in it, but I found myself cringing at nearly all of his dialogue. It just
felt like a lesser version of C-3P0.
The second act is slow, meandering, and actually felt
lacking in action, but it ramps up in the third act with huge-scale action
sequences that were very well done, and yet, because I didn’t particularly care
about most of the characters, I didn’t find myself that invested in the action.
One of the few issues I had with Force Awakens was the number of times it had to throw in unnecessary
references to the old films. The number of references to the original Star Wars films in Rogue One is as bad, if not worse, than Force Awakens, and a few of them, which I’ll talk about in the
spoiler section, completely took me out of the movie. Of course some of them like
the Death Star and Darth Vader were inevitable, given the story is set before
the events of A New Hope, but I’m
talking about references specifically placed in the story simply to appeal to
fans.
On the positive side of things, 99 % of the visual effects
were spectacular, with the look of the old films being recreated so faithfully
some shots you’d swear were pulled from the original Star Wars (and apparently a few shots were), but it also demonstrates
new things not yet seen before in a Star
Wars film. The action, too, is very well directed, easy to follow, and on a
technical level, extremely exciting, especially in the third act.
I think my main issue with Rogue One was the untapped potential. This was an opportunity to
tell a very different story in the Star
Wars universe, but ultimately it felt like just another Star Wars movie. The story was
meandering, uneven, not particularly strong, and there was lots of room for
innovation within the Star Wars
universe, room to show us more new things, but instead it falls back on heavy
doses of nostalgia, and I found myself wishing for a more unexpected story.
This movie is almost exactly what I was expecting, and yet, it’s sort of
inherent with it being a prequel to A New
Hope. We pretty much knew how it was going to go for these characters
before the movie even started.
That brings up another issue: I’m uncertain how general
movie-going audiences will respond to Rogue
One, because it connects so strongly to A
New Hope, that casual viewers who don’t have keen knowledge about New Hope might not enjoy it as much (I’m
still hearing people wondering if this is the sequel to The Force Awakens, which it isn’t, for the record), but I think hard-core
Star Wars fans are going to get a lot
more out of it. For me, being somewhere in the middle of casual Star Wars viewer and hard-core Star Wars fan, the movie was just that:
middling. I didn’t think it was particularly bad, but it didn’t evoke much
emotion or even reaction from me like I was hoping. Perhaps upon a repeat
viewing I’ll find more to like about it, but right now, I’d say it’s just
slightly above Revenge of the Sith as
the best Star Wars prequel, and very distant
to the original trilogy and The Force
Awakens, in terms of entertainment value.
That’s my spoiler-free review on Rogue One, now I’m going to
get into my thoughts on specific scenes, characters, and events, so if you
HAVEN’T seen Rogue One yet, STOP READING here.
If you have seen Rogue One, proceed.
Rogue One: Spoiler Thoughts
I’ll start with all the positives and then go into the
negatives, and I’ll try not to repeat anything I said in the spoiler-free
section. This won’t be a definitive list of things, just everything I can think
of off the top of my head right now.
Positives:
-The opening scene:
I was surprisingly okay with the lack of an opening title crawl. Having the “A
Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy, Far, Far Away” remain was a wise decision. Mads
Mikkelsen as Galen Erso was great, as was Ben Mendelsohn as Orson Krennic, a
great villain, and this first scene with them was a strong start for the movie.
Krennic’s Death Troopers looked awesome, the look of the Erso’s home felt very much
like Luke’s home in Episode IV, and
all-in-all, it was among my favourite scenes in the whole movie.
-Darth Vader:
many fans are wishing they got more Vader in this movie. The reason I’d say we
got enough is because it was still satisfying to see him, but they didn’t ruin
him, which could’ve happened. He’s makes two epic entrances, has one excellent
bit of dialogue with Krennic, and one brief but unforgettable action scene, the
likes of which has never been seen on film before, and that’s all I needed.
Could we have used a bit more Vader? Sure, but for me, it was an apt dosage,
and he looked great.
-Scarif Space Battle:
from a technical and visual standpoint, this is the best space battle I’ve ever
seen in a Star Wars film. The Force
Awakens was sorely lacking an epic space battle, and this more than made up
for it.
-New stuff: even
though I think Rogue One had too many
unnecessary call backs to the original films, it still featured some new stuff
that I really liked, and in fact, it felt like there was more new tech and creatures
in this than in Force Awakens. I
liked the Death Troopers, as mentioned, as well as the new ships and the new
locations.
-Some of the
references: yes, some of the throwbacks were pretty good. The two characters
who show up on Jedah that we later see at Mos Eisley in Episode IV fit right in, Chirrut mentioning “Guardians of the
Whills” was a nice reference to George Lucas’ original name for the force, and
using the same pilots for the Scarif Battle from Episode IV was an effective connection between the two films.
-Music: a small
positive, but I liked the music. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it, I thought
it was adequate, especially considering 1) this is the first Star Wars score not by John Williams, 2)
Michael Giacchino had four weeks to put the score together, and 3) it had to
blend old themes with new themes in a way that didn’t sound jarring. So a
valiant effort all around, but of course could’ve been way better/more
memorable.
Negatives:
-Opening title: Even
though I didn’t miss the crawl, having it would’ve helped to orient more casual
viewers, which was the whole point of it originally anyway. And while the
opening scene was good, the actual title itself didn’t look that great when it
popped up afterwards, it could’ve been improved (the font as well as the
accompanying music).
-Mad Mikkelsen: once
again, this great actor is underused. It happened in Doctor Strange last month, it happened again here. Please,
Hollywood, don’t make this a thing. More Galen Erso would’ve been nice, and
likely would’ve made his death more impactful.
-Saw Gererra: I
straight-up didn’t like him. I don’t know him from The Clone Wars, just this movie. I didn’t like his voice, I didn’t find
him intimidating or funny or even vaguely interesting, he was just weird. It
felt like they plucked him from the imaginary set of Battlefield Earth 2.
-Tarkin and Leia:
I joked that we’d probably see Tarkin and Leia in cgi long before I saw this
movie, but I never thought they’d really go this far with it, and it absolutely
did not work for me. Was it a bold move? Hell yes. Is it better than past
attempts at cgi people, like in Tron
and Terminator Salvation? Absolutely.
But had they reduced the number of lines for Tarkin and maybe had him move
around less and not face the camera so directly, I could’ve bought into it, but
when he turned around and started talking and moving, all I saw was plastic
Tarkin, and I don’t remember a single line he uttered because it was so jarring
and took me right out of the movie. To a lesser extent, I had the same reaction
to Leia. Having her as the last shot of the film didn’t work for me, either,
but again, I bought it until her face moved as she talked. It just didn’t look
real, and felt unnecessary to show to that extent.
-Darth Vader: he’s
both a negative and a positive. The negative side of it: his screen time could’ve
been handled better. Like Gareth Edwards’ last movie Godzilla, Vader’s presence isn’t felt at all prior to the first
time he’s shown, and then it’s barely felt after we see him in his one scene,
until he pops in for a minute at the end. For the hard-core fans, at least, you
think they could’ve done a little more with him. And on a nitpicky level, I
thought his eyes were a little too red, and his line “Don’t choke on your
aspirations” would’ve worked had it not been the only joke he made out of an
entirely serious conversation.
-C-3P0 and R2-D2:
it was nothing more than a cameo, so I can’t say this a major negative, but it
felt so shoehorned in just to continue the tradition of making it so those two
characters have been in every Star Wars movie. It felt like an interruption
more than a fun moment.
-Everyone dies:
it’s not that I didn’t like that everyone died in the end. It was ballsy and makes
sense, I guess, at least as far as why they wouldn’t be in the original
trilogy, but the problem I have with that is, they could have easily made it so
(theoretically) after they succeeded in stealing the death star plans, maybe
one of them who lived could have just said “I’m done” and left the whole
conflict between the empire and rebellion? It did feel neater, continuity wise,
to just have everyone die, but it felt to me like everyone died all within ten
minutes. I would’ve liked to have seen the deaths more spread out, maybe have
someone die way earlier before the final battle, just something a little
different than everyone straight up dies all right at the end.
-Kassian’s death:
when he got shot and fell down, he should’ve stayed dead. I was really
disappointed to see him come back shortly after to sit with Jyn on the beach
and hold her hand. She should’ve been there by herself and died alone.
-The final scene:
look, I completely get the excitement about the ending of this movie. It really
is mind-blowing to see the rebels fleeing with the plans and Vader coming in
and slaughtering all the rebels, but here’s my problem with it. All the
protagonists of this movie, Jyn, Kassian, etc., are dead. The movie is pretty
much over, for me. I don’t care about the nameless, faceless rebels. I’m not
emotionally invested in anyone now. We know where the plans go to. The movie is
over. When Vader stepped out and turned on his lightsabre, I thought the movie
would cut to black right then and there. But it keeps going, and yeah it’s a
cool scene, but it almost felt like it was from a different movie, and was pure
fan service. I’m not hating on it, it just once again felt a bit shoe-horned in
there to make it a memorable ending.
That’s all I can think of right now. Again, to sum up, an
okay movie. Not bad, but not that amazing.
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