Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The curious nature of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is that it has a visual language all its own while constantly playing fan service to George Lucas' seminal film. Dropping the usual scroll of text at the start that catches up anyone who isn't devout to the series, Rogue One's first act is a jumbled mess of storylines. What emerges is a so-so action film about the mission to steal the plans of the Death Star that reveal how to destroy it.

You may wonder if we already know the outcome, why would we want to know about this mission? That is the central question screenwriters Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy had to answer. Sadly it appears they focused on ensuring fans would not find fault in how the film aligns with Episode 4 and not on giving us rich characters or clear motivations that drive them. The film has plot holes large enough for an AT-ACTs to walk through. The logic of the film is often flawed. For example, a key member of the Rebel team is told to have gone insane from being questioned by an alien species only to be cured by one sentence spoken to him. 

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) leads the scrappy group of rebels. Her father (Mads Mikkelsen) is the weapon designer behind the Death Star. Their relationship could make for a tense dynamic as Jyn must decide to trust that her father is a Rebel at heart while things get increasingly dire. Their biggest foe is a power-hungry Imperial (Ben Mendelsohn) whose pet project is the Death Star.

Rogue One continually plays to fan service, inserting dialogue that will only matter to die-hard Star Wars fans. It does this often enough to be distracting but even worse is the film's lack of character motivation. This is a film that assumes we know why anyone would be fighting for one side or another. Past that, why characters do anything is a mystery. The relationship between Jyn and her once surrogate father turned Colonel Kurtz crazy (Forrest Whitaker) is never clear for example. 

As the film races along to a pretty exciting finale that focuses on the sacrifice of war, the lack of memorable characters becomes all too clear. I admire Garth Edwards' attempt to make the first Star Wars film that feels like a war film. There is great novelty in many of the visuals found within Rogue One. There is also the sketches of what could have been some of the best characters within the Star Wars universe. Wen Jiang as a gunslinger, and martial artist Donnie Yen as a blind samurai could have been new fan favorites if we understood why they are even in the film. Sadly we do not aside from black and white, good versus evil rules.

Rogue One is sure to please fans. This may be the closest thing to a fan film ever made. However I wish the film had found time to explore its heroes rather than merely sketching them. I think there could have been some amazing things here about sacrifice. The film could have deepened the Star Wars universe by making a harrowing tale of those who make smaller achievements in the larger war. In the end, I cared nothing for these characters. They never felt fleshed out or worth investing in. 

2/5