SOME SPOILERS PRESENT🚨 Directed by Gareth Edwards, Rogue One takes place days before the events of A New Hope, and follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and other rebel alliance fighters as they attempt to steal the plans of the Empire’s greatest weapon, the Death Star, engineered by her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), and director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn).
It’s been four years since the release of this Star Wars spinoff film, and for many people this is still considered one of the best Star Wars films in recent years. And I can definitely agree with them on that. Despite having a simple premise and enduring a lot of drastic production changes by the studio, Rogue One is an awesome film that gives us new perspectives on things in the Star Wars universe as a whole, while also delivering a risky yet satisfying adventure.
While the focus is certainly the quest for the Death Star plans, which later become a major plot point for A New Hope, it is also a very gritty war film, with Rebel forces going up against the deadly empire by any means necessary. Some of those means paint the rebellion in a different way than we are used to, which I really liked. This is explored more in other Star Wars media like Rebels, Solo and The Last Jedi, but I’m glad that it was Rogue One that introduced this new side of the Rebel Alliance, especially with it having a radical faction led by Clone Wars veteran and extremist Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker).
Our characters consist of a rag tag group of individuals, including Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) a spy for the Rebel Alliance, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) a reprogrammed imperial droid (who is very funny), Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) an empire defector, Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) a blind warrior that believes in the Force, and Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) Chirrut’s friend and heavy gunner. Each with their own reason to fight the empire, they all have really great scenes, and overall were very well acted and memorable. I liked Felicity Jones as the lead, and she felt like a character that had a lot of weight on her, having grown up in a harsh galaxy after the empire took her life away.
The interactions she has with other characters like Saw Gerrera made it feel like there was such history between them, and I love how that is something all the characters have as well, despite this being their first appearance. This is very difficult to pull off in most movies without making it messy, especially since there were some major changes made, but it all works out. You feel for all these characters, even when they meet their fates, especially at the battle of Scarif.
Other familiar characters also returned, some reprised by the same cast members from the other movies, which was awesome. Also one thing I want to say, regarding the way Saw is portrayed in this film: Forest Whitaker seriously nailed the role of a mentally and physically damaged version of the man Saw used to be, and I found all his scenes to be really gripping every time he was on screen. Of course this is mostly due to how I’ve known him in Clone Wars and Rebels, but this was such a dark turn to the character that I didn’t expect, but I feel was pulled off beautifully.
The empire is still a menacing presence, similar to the original trilogy, but I feel that now they felt like more of a threat than in the original trilogy, thanks to updated effects and narrative.
Ben Mendelsohn as Krennic was good as the main villain and certainly had some memorable moments in this movie, however he isn’t the only villain.
Grand Moff Tarkin appears as well… kind of. Peter Cushing, the original actor of Tarkin, died many years ago, so instead they had another actor, Guy Henry, take his place. They gave him a superimposed digital likeness so that he looked exactly like Tarkin. Don’t worry, it was done respectfully and performance-wise he was good. My only issue was that since he had a lot more screen time, the digital effects were very noticeable the longer he was on screen, and I will say it hasn’t aged all that well. Disney has certainly upgraded since then in terms of digital superimposing, but here, while it wasn’t the worst, it certainly wasn’t the best, and part of me believes that had they had time to polish it, the result would have been better.
And of course we also have the return of Darth Vader, reprised by James Earl Jones, who makes perhaps one of the best cameos in all of Star Wars history, hell maybe even in movie history. He only really has two scenes in the movie, one being a dialogue scene where James Earl Jones does a great job with the voice again (despite sounding older). The other is the now famous hallway scene where Vader takes on rebel soldiers, eliminating them all in the most badass and terrifying manner that we have ever seen before. It was so unexpected, but so damn satisfying, and remains as truly one of the most iconic scenes in modern Star Wars history.
The story overall is good and a lot of fun, but I think everyone agrees that the third act of this film is the strongest. Yes, there are a lot of great scenes full of good action, humor and stellar effects in the first two acts, but I feel most of the greatness of this movie is entirely in the third act with the battle of Scarif, an epic space battle above the planet’s atmosphere and a bloody war against troopers and Empire vehicles on the ground. It is very intense and the stakes are surprisingly high, despite us knowing what the end result is.
That’s the risk with most prequels, that you can’t always have major stakes, yet here they absolutely nailed it, making sure viewers felt emotionally invested. And next to The Last Jedi, this film has some of the best cinematography of all the Star Wars films brought to us by Greig Fraser. So many gorgeous shots with such brilliant practical effects and CGI (apart from Tarkin). The worlds felt so alive, and you could really feel like this was a war-torn hopeless galaxy everywhere the film went and, as I mentioned as with Scarif, they all felt very intense. We never got to see how much the Empire had an effect on other worlds in the original trilogy, so it was great to see that explored as well.
And the music is awesome! I think it goes without saying that, next to the work of John Williams and Ludwig Göransson, Michael Giacchno’s score from Rogue One was absolutely stunning and I love hearing it. He and John Powell’s work with Star Wars music is hugely underrated and I’d love for both of them to do music for Star Wars in the future because they delivered some fantastic soundtracks.
There were a lot of risks with making this spinoff, and yet I feel it really came through on a high note since so many people really loved this movie. This was one of the rare occasions where a film ended up being really great despite having interference from the studio. While this would unfortunately affect future Star Wars films, I am glad that Rogue One was able to exceed expectations and deliver us a solid and surprising Star Wars film that we never knew we wanted. I’m going to give Rogue One an A.
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