"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" is directed by Godzilla's Gareth Edwards and tells the story of a team of rebel fighters tasked with retrieving the plans for the first Death Star eventually destroyed by Luke Skywalker in "A New Hope". The film stars Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen and Alan Tudyk among others, while also featuring the return of the legendary James Earl Jones as the greatest cinematic villain in history, Darth Vader.
Now, bare in mind before I begin that these reviews are just my opinion. I don't claim to know the gospel truth as to whether a film is good or not, all I can do is offer my view as to the quality of a film and try to explain my thought process the best I can. In saying all this, I do acknowledge that I am in the slight minority with regards to my thoughts here. Now, with this in mind, please do not lynch me in the streets for what I'm about to say...
I detested Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Now, I love Star Wars! I bloody love it! I have a poster from the original movie taking up half of the wall space in my bedroom, and I absolutely adored last year's "The Force Awakens", so believe me when I say that I have no bias in any way against this film, I'm just calling it like I see it. The major problem I had with Rogue One is that it did not make me invest emotionally in any of the new characters introduced, and for me that's unforgivable. Compare this film to The Force Awakens: coming out of the cinema, everyone knew the names of the new characters in that movie. Rey. Po Dameron. Finn. BB-8. Kylo Ren. I knew their names because the film made me care about them, thus creating more investment in the product as a whole. With Rogue One, I'd struggle to name a character outside of Felicity Jones' Jyn Erso. This is inexcusable considering the talent the filmmakers had at their disposal. The film was simply packed with too many characters, meaning that each member of the ensemble didn't get sufficient opportunity to shine, therefore preventing the audience from connecting with the characters in any way, despite the best efforts of most of the actors involved (a list which doesn't feature Felicity Jones, in my opinion watching her performance here was akin to eating a pack of crackers after five days without water). For example, it would have been so easy to cut both Riz Ahmed and Jiang Wen from this film, as both of their characters do nothing but take time away from Donnie Yen and Alan Tudyks respectively superior performances. In short, I find it super surprising that Disney wasn't able to effectively manage the ensemble cast of this film, especially considering the company's effective and economic use of its characters within the MCU.
The film also had a major problem with its over-reliance on nostalgia, something I criticised in the summer with relation to the Ghostbusters reboot. The filmmakers seemed determined to shoe-horn in as many cameos as they could into Rogue One, which did nothing but remind me of better films that I'd rather be watching, with the most frustrating and downright pointless example coming about halfway through the movie where we get a shot of R2D2 and C3PO bantering as Jyn Erso leaves Yavin-4. Don't get me wrong, this isn't only Rogue One's burden to bear, as this type of thing is plaguing most blockbusters right now, but Rogue One was meant to introduce us to give us a new perspective on Star Wars and this reliance on the old while trying to dedicate to the new felt cheap and lazy to me at least. Yet still this wasn't the biggest problem I had with this film...
*Spoiler alert*
When the Fast and Furious franchise brought Paul Walker digitally back to life at the end of Fast 7 I thought it was a really cool way to honour a man who had given a good portion of his life contributing to that franchise. It was done tastefully and was meant more as a way of paying tribute to the man rather than serving the film's selfish storytelling needs. This was most certainly not the case with the fucking CGI version of Grand Moth Tarkin. This shits all over the legacy of Peter Cushing. For starters, it didn't look realistic whatsoever and anytime the character appeared on screen it felt more like I was watching a cut scene for a bloody video-game rather than a multi-million dollar motion picture. Beyond that though, this is immoral. Peter Cushing is dead, and to put his likeness on the screen and to try and pass it off as the same entity for me is nothing short of sacrilege. It left a really bad taste in my mouth, and like I said the quality of it was so bad that it only served to take me out of the movie. My final criticism is a simple one: every Star Wars film up until this point has had at least one iconic or defining moment, with notable examples being the Dual of the Fates sequence in The Phantom Menace, the big reveal at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, and Rey and Kylo Ren's battle at the end of The Force Awakens. I would severely struggle to name one defining moment from Rogue One and, while a bad film that doth necessarily make, it certainly doesn't help in raising its stock in the eyes of this opinionated film-lover.
Despite my clear dislike for Rogue One as a Star Wars fan, I can't dispute the fact that for the most part it is well crafted. Edwards proved with Godzilla his competence in filming action, and the low positioning of the cameras here does help bring a sense of both the scale and the destructive power of the Empire that you could perhaps even say was missing from the original film. The sound effects were also appropriately loud and layered, adding a much needed layer of frantic chaos to the battle scenes which, to the film's credit, did feel more grounded in gritty combat than a traditional Star Wars film. I also loved the way Rogue One used Darth Vader. He comes across as an absolute monster, and there is a scene he is featured in right at the end of the film's third act which is more akin to something seen is a horror film than in a supposed Disney-anchored outing. Because of all this, I can't say that Rogue One is necessarily a terrible film.
However, these positive factors don't take away from the fact that Rogue One fails to establish an emotional connection with its audience, which is a downright damning failure when you consider that its sole purpose is to give deeper emotional residence to the 1977 original. You could point to many causes for this (the muddled narrative, Felicity Jones' bland performance, the failure to commit fully to the new characters) but at the end of the day evoking emotion is about more than just the separate components of a movie, it's about its core and it is about the film's soul. What annoys me above everything else is that Rogue One is the first film in the Star Wars franchise (the prequel trilogy included) that I felt no passion or heart behind it and for me that is inexcusable. Overall, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is unnecessary filler which neither commits to giving its audience a fresh take on a galaxy far far away nor does it truly allow us to revisit the elements we lived in a worthwhile and satisfying way.
Score: 6.0/10
On another note, I want to take this opportunity to quickly pay tribute to Carrie Fisher. A pioneer in a redefining a woman's role in big-screen action films, Fisher was never afraid to simply be herself in the public eye. She is an icon in every positive sense of the word, and she will be truly missed by all.
