Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Rogue One is a film set for the most part entirely within the scope of the opening crawl of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. It was conceived of as the first major Star Wars release under the title of what Disney would call “A Star Wars Story.” These were planned to be a set of anthology releases, in parallel to their “saga” films, that would ostensibly let filmmakers explore stories set in different times and locales to the main numbered episodes. But for a spin off, Rogue One sticks pretty closely to the events and characters of the Original Trilogy. This, for many, is the main attraction of the film: revisiting the story world of the original films, complete with cameos and appearances from several characters both minor and major. It’s a gambit that, for the most part, works extremely well, but reveals both the advantages and a few limitations of the approach of building on the backstory to the Original Trilogy.

It’s interesting to compare Rogue One to The Force Awakens, not only as the first two Disney Star Wars films, but also for the ways that each film represents a different take on a return to a galaxy far, far away and their indebtedness to the previous Star Wars films, A New Hope in particular. I wrote about how, in The Force Awakens, the first spoken lines, “This will begin to make things right,” have been interpreted as reinforcing the popular sentiments against the Prequel Trilogy. The Force Awakens hearkens back to A New Hope by playing almost as a remake of that film, attempting to ape its tone and basic plot points. In some ways, Rogue One goes one further, literally taking place in the time period of the Original Trilogy. But in other ways, for all its literal indebtedness to the Original Trilogy, Rogue One has a very different tone and structure than A New Hope. Despite traveling so close in time back to the origins of Star Wars, Rogue One interestingly offers some of the more inventive and daring visions of Star Wars universe thus far on screen.

The difference of Rogue One from the Original Trilogy includes both subject matter and form. For Star Wars fans for whom viewing each episode takes on a kind of ritualistic pattern, the fact that Rogue One opens without the familiar title crawl and plunges us right into the story is deeply disorienting. After the opening title, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…,” the music opens with a sudden chord sting and we see a small moon framed on screen left. Then the camera pans up through the rings of a Saturn-like planet, a small Imperial shuttle cuts across the rings, making its way down to the spartan planet surface. A child runs toward the camera as the shuttle approaches. The shuttle carries an Imperial officer, clad in white, flanked by black armored troopers—Death Troopers, they’re ominously called—who is here to bring the child’s father, a brilliant scientist, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) with them. Galen Erso attempts to protect his daughter and wife by lying to the officer, Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), but his ruse fails and his wife is killed. Due to his importance to the development of the Empire’s new secret weapon (which we know and learn to be the Death Star), Galen is taken by Krennic. His child, sent to hide in a nearby cave, is rescued by a friend of the parents, Saw Gererra (Forest Whitaker). “My child, come. We have a long ride ahead of us,” Saw calls down to her in her hiding space, inviting the audience on the journey as well. The music swells, and the film’s title appears on screen, after which the film jumps forward to the main time period of the rest of the film, just before the events of A New Hope.

The child is now grown. Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is in an Imperial prison. The pre-title opening sequence serves to set up the stakes of the film, while also functioning as an origin story for Jyn, establishing her trauma and emotional investments. The project her father Galen is working on is the Death Star. Jyn is rescued by a Rebel spy, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), and his droid, K-2S0 (voiced and motion capture by Alan Tudyk). Cassian brings Jyn to the base of the Rebel Alliance amidst the familiar ruins of Yavin 4. There, Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) and the Alliance leadership inform her that they need her help to bring in a defecting Imperial pilot (Riz Ahmed) in the hands of Jyn’s old guardian, Saw, who is now a break-away Rebel extremist whose methods are considered too brutal for the rest of the Alliance.

It should be clear from this description that Rogue One lacks the clarity and simplicity of storytelling that characterizes either A New Hope or The Force Awakens. The story is hard to sum up in a few lines, other than “the Rebel spies steal the Death Star plans” concept that producer John Knoll (a longtime George Lucas collaborator and ILM veteran) used to pitch the idea. The plot is convoluted in many ways and accordingly relies on viewers being at least semi-familiar with the setting of the Star Wars films. This crutch simultaneously rewards audience members for their knowledge. For instance, fans of animated The Clone Wars show will recognize Saw Gerrera from Season 5. Rogue One also recalls the spin-off novels and comic books of the Expanded Universe, offering a more in-depth glimpse into the world of the films. In bridging the Prequels to the Original Trilogy, Rogue One recalls the 1996 Star Wars multimedia project, Shadows of the Empire, particularly in the way that it mines the connective tissue of the original films in order to flesh out their backstory. Ironically, despite the emphasis on linking the film to the Original Trilogy, Rogue One is functionally a prequel, with Jimmy Smits reprising his role as Bail Organa. But at the same time its main appeal is ostensibly to fans who grew up with the Original Trilogy and enjoyed the EU novels of the 1990s.

If Rogue One relies closely on A New Hope to tell its story, the genres it draws on most explicitly, war movies and spy movies, actually distinguish the film from the Skywalker saga. While George Lucas drew on old World War II-set films for inspiration in the making of A New Hope (with films like The Dambusters), Rogue One goes further. It’s very much a “men (and women) on a mission” film, like The Dirty Dozen, as characters pick up new allies and skills along the way, each contributing to the mission with their special talents. Its war-time setting on the battlefields and among enemy occupied cities and planets means that it’s also exploits the confusion and competing loyalties of those settings. Characters have to navigate their own loyalties and beliefs in completing their mission, coming together to achieve victory.

One way that Rogue One is particularly fascinating is in its exploration of the politics of the Star Wars films. We’ve gestured a few times in this retrospective towards the way that the new Disney films, especially the sequels The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, lack a clear concept of what the relationship between the First Order, the New Republic, and the Resistance is. The Disney films retreat to a simple good versus evil framing. In some ways this fits with the Original Trilogy’s mythic aims, but Rogue One interestingly expands and explores the details of the Rebellion and the Empire, the competing factions within each group and how these inner conflicts can either help or hinder the aims of the larger group. It muddies the waters, so to speak, showing nuance and conflict both within and without the factions of the Galactic Civil War.

Appropriate to its title, Rogue One, explores the theme of going rogue or rebelling. Galen Erso is openly collaborating with the Empire so that he can covertly design a weakness into the Death Star, in the hopes the Alliance can destroy it. Krennic and Grand Moff Tarkin (more on him later) vie for the control and fate of the Death Star within the Empire. Bodhi Rook, the Imperial pilot, is a defector from the Empire. Rogue One makes it clear why the Rebel Alliance is named as such; it’s not a coherent and stable rival government, but a group of aligned figures and planets working against the Empire. Some of its members still remain part of the Imperial Senate, including Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) and Mon Mothma, as does Princess Leia, Bail’s adopted daughter. Saw Gererra split with the Rebel Alliance when his methods became too extremist. It seems fitting that his name vaguely recalls the Communist guerrilla leader, Che Guevara.

The film’s evocations of terrorism and the reminder that rebellions are messy and violent is an idea that is rarely explored in films of this type, but Rogue One doesn’t shy away from having both its heroes and villians resort to violence, assassination, and ambushes to achieve their ends. For instance, in the scene introducing Cassian to the viewers, Cassian kills his informant rather than let him get captured. And in one of the film’s stand out sequences, Saw Gererra’s rebels ambush an Imperial squadron in the crowded city streets of Jedha City. It’s a scene that recalls guerilla tactics used by insurgents in near east wars, from the Algerian War to contemporary Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. What makes it especially striking is placing the Empire in the role usually occupied by America. Of course, the audience isn’t meant to see Saw and his group as uncomplicatedly good guys—they use “extreme rendition” and “enhanced interrogation techniques” as shown in the film’s oddest sequence in which abizzare creature known as a Bor Gullet tortures Bohdi. Nevertheless, it’s unusual to see such a frank and anti-imperialist (in the broader, non-Star Wars sense) approach to war in a popular series.

After Saw’s demise, the remaining factions of the Alliance must ultimately set aside their differences in methods and scruples to refocus on their goal. In marshalling a force to go to Scarif and retrieve the Death Star plans, Cassian notes that “we’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion.” Ultimately though, Rogue One comes down on the side of the greater good and self-sacrifice, but its willingness to even lend any attention to moral and political philosophy sets it apart from most blockbusters. This notion of sacrifice is established through numerous characters, from Galen and Saw, to Chirrut, Bohdi, and Jyn. Each must make a decision to put their lives on the line and make the ultimate sacrifice for their ideals. It’s nearly unheard of for a popular film to present protagonist’s sacrifice and not undo it right way. It gives Rogue One a feeling of heightened stakes beyond the usual fantasy or science fiction film.

The other aspect of the Star Wars universe that Rogue One fleshes out and expands on is the role of religion the galaxy and its connection to the Force and the Jedi. In fact, while the term “religion” is used to refer to the Jedi and Sith in A New Hope, it’s rarely referred to in that way, as Anton pointed out in his piece on the Navajo Star Wars translation. While none of Rogue One’s protagonists is a Jedi, one of its main locales, Jedha City, is the location of the Temple of Kyber, a focus for pilgrims who follow the teachings of the Church of the Force and home to the Kyber crystals that power a Jedi’s lightsaber. While the Empire is ransacking the temple, using the Kyber crystals to power the Death Star’s superlaser, Saw Gererra leads ambush attacks on the occupying force. In Jedha City, Jyn and Cassian meet and recruit Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) and his companion, Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen). Chirrut is a blind Force adept and temple guardian, and his mantra of “I am one with the Force. The Force is with me,” serves as a guiding clarion for the members of the Rebel team. Chirrut even refers to himself as one of the Guardians of the Whills, a strange and unexplained reference to the “Journal of the Whills” in Lucas’s original drafts of Star Wars and in the original novelization.

Chirrut’s portrayal by Hong Kong superstar actor and wushu champion Donnie Yen gives Rogue One some of its most exciting action moments, wedding Hong Kong wuxia action to Star Wars, much as Darth Maul did in The Phantom Menace. Chirrut’s fighting ability is introduced as he wipes out an entire stormtrooper squad almost single handedly: he jokes, “The Force protected me.” Baze, who enters with his railgun and wipes out the last of the troops responds, “I protected you.” The relationship between these two old partners, last defenders of the temple, one irrepressibly hopeful, the other grimly resigned to fate, provides the film with some of its most human and emotional moments.

Ultimately, Rogue One turns on the personal as well as political, with Jyn having the classic arc from disaffected loner to rallying hero. It is the private sacrifice shown by her father Galen that drives her single-minded obsession with hope, a term here that isn’t merely a wish, but a recognition that movements and history are guided by the determination and faith of individuals in each other, beyond even their own limited life.

Given the fact that Rogue One is a prequel and we know what happens after, it means that none of our heroes are fated to survive the film. Some have criticized this, but I think it gives their actions a desperate pathos. It’s something that few other contemporary blockbusters have attempted (perhaps The Matrix sequels come closest) in having the heroes victory not result in their own survival. I certainly have little fear that Rey or Finn will die in The Rise of Skywalker, but Jyn and Cassian were fated for death from the get go.

In the final moments, Rogue One again ties their personal actions to wider political and real-world historical events. While witnessing the blast of the single-reactor superlaser upon Scarif, Jyn and Cassian hold each other on a beach, clarifying the link between the Death Star and real world superweapons like atomic bombs. Scarif, with its beaches and atolls, visually recalls the Pacific Islands that the USA tested their weapons on in the 1950, particularly Bikini Atoll. It’s nuclear annihilation.

The movie is by no means a depressing drag, however. It’s a Star Wars film full of adventure and action. The film culminates in the Battle of Scariff, the “first victory” alluded to in the opening crawl of A New Hope. The Battle of Scariff is among the best battles in any of the Star Wars films, offering action across three fronts, crosscut like the end battles of The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi, with ground troops facing off against AT-AT walkers in shallow beach lagoons; Jyn, Cassian, and K-2S0 infiltrating the archive facility; and the united Rebel fleet facing off above the planet. The space battle in particular is thrilling, with large scale capital ships of Mon Calamari cruisers versus Star Destroyers, and squadrons of X-wings and Y-wings. In fact the squadrons are the very ones that will undertake the attack run on the Death Star in A New Hope. The film even uses old footage from A New Hope of Red Leader and other Rebel pilots cut into the film in new contexts. It’s a simple attempt to try to tie the film solidly to the original film. But the new visions are perhaps even more memorable, as when a Hammerhead Corvette smashes into a disabled Star Destroyer, pushing it into the planetary shield generator and allowing Jyn to beam the plans to the Rebels in orbit.

If Rogue One’s heroes are fated to die, then it is in the supporting characters that continuity with the rest of the series is created. In perhaps the single most shameless act of fan service in the series, Darth Vader slashes his way through the Rebel Cruiser, like a horror movie monster, as hapless Rebel troopers pass the Death Star plans to those on Tantive IV. It’s unnecessary to the film, but undeniably exciting for fans who have wanted to see Darth Vader in his prime, establishing why exactly everyone in the galaxy is terrified of him.

But Vader isn’t the only character from the Original Trilogy to show up. Sure, Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba, the rogues from the Mos Eisley cantina who will hassle Luke and Obi-Wan, cameo on Jedha, but the character from A New Hope who plays the most central role in the film is Grand Moff Tarkin, realized by a combination of a body double and CGI creation, recreating the voice and visage of the late Peter Cushing. It’s the decision in the film that is perhaps the most jarring and controversial, and for some a deal breaker that leaves everything else that’s great about the film secondary. Morally and ethically, the virtual resurrection of dead actors will become a greater and greater issue as the technology becomes more and more advanced. It’s worth noting that Cushing’s estate approved of it, but that’s not a blank cheque.

What the digital recreation of Cushing, and in the film’s final moments, young Carrie Fisher too, speak to is more the theme of recapturing the past and fan obsession with fidelity. For a continuity obsessed fanbase, it’s not enough to recast another actor in primary roles so central (as reactions to the next Star Wars anthology film, Solo, proved to some degree), even if you can recast minor characters like Mon Mothma (as Rogue One does, though keeping the actor from deleted scenes of Revenge of the Sith). People want the original, but it is a kind of facsimile, speaking to the impossibility of return I noted in my review of The Force Awakens. Like digitally de-aging De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci in The Irishman, digital actors become another tool in a filmmaker’s arsenal, or for placating fans. But it’s also an example of how Rogue One in this sense keeps with the tradition of Star Wars films pushing visual effects forward. It’s a technical marvel, even if it isn’t perfect, and in line with Lucas’s pioneering of motion control, CGI, and digital cinematography.

When considered as a fan film, I initially thought Rogue One a lesser film than The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi. But upon multiple viewings its uniqueness has grown on me. For me, having accepted that none of the new Disney films are quite what the Lucas produced films are with different priorities and thematic interests, Rogue One is perhaps the most interesting, with the most rewatch value. I revel in its world-building and its technical prowess. I appreciate its attempts to show us new things about the old and familiar, including its thematic interests in the hard work and violence inherent in political struggle. Rogue One may be a fan film, essentially a work of fanfic writ large, but count me a fan!

9 out of 10

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (USA, 2016)

Directed by Gareth Edwards; screenplay by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta, based on characters by George Lucas; starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Jiang Wen, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Forest Whitaker.