Bill’s Rogue One Review – Its Got The Mythos But A Very Different Vibe

TL;DR: Let’s be really clear – more than anything else, Rogue One is a PG-13 sci-fi war movie. Sure, it’s not Saving Private Ryan level, but if you were to cut out some of Ryan’s flying limbs, guts, and blood – it’s not entirely that far off. It’s definitely still in the Star Wars Universe – with [most] of the bits and pieces that you know and love.

Rating: 4 Stars out of 5

The Drinking Rules: Every time you see a character from another one of the films, take a drink. If a character says a catchphrase from an earlier movie (in whole or in part), take a drink. When you hear “Red Leader Standing By” and your inner 10 year old reflexively cheer – finish the glass.

Disclosure: I am a lifelong Star Wars watcher and passing fan. It’s not my primary fandom, and I haven’t read all the myriad expanded universe material. Yes, I can quote the originals by chapter and verse, mostly loathe the prequels, and enjoyed Force Awakens. So, let’s jump into this.

The Full Review:

The story starts 4 years after Episode III and 15 years prior to the events in Episode IV, with Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones) as a young girl living on a remote farm with her parents. It seems her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), is a former Imperial weapons scientist. The Empire has been in the process of building a super-weapon (which is of course the Death Star), and those efforts have stalled, and they need his help once again.Galen isn’t interested in helping them out, but as the trailer has already shown, the project’s Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) insists.Galen sends Jyn on the run to prevent the Empire from using her as a pawn.Galen is taken away in an Imperial shuttle, and Jyn is forced to find her own way.

Time now jumps 15 years into the future, with a grown Jyn now a prisoner at an Imperial work farm. The rebels have received a message from Galen, who is still working on the Death Star project, alerting them to its existence. In the end, viewers know what needs to happen ahead of Episode IV, somehow the plans will need to be found and retrieved, and it’s that quest that makes up the arc of the film.

The motley band of characters that come together for the hunt are not classic “good guys” like Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan from the later Episodes. Even Han, while a smuggler (and he DID shoot first, no matter what retconning George Lucas tries to pull), is at worst a PG-bad guy. By the time you get into PG-13 turf and beyond, you’re talking about genuine rebel resistance fighters. They’ve done and continue to do bad things for what they believe to be a good cause – they bomb, they kill, they steal, they assassinate. Think somewhere between the moral compasses of the crew of Firefly and the crew of the Betty from Alien: Resurrection.

There are various guest appearances of characters and creatures aplenty, and they didn’t feel too gratuitous. Sure, there’s a bit of fan service happening, but there’s not really any time spent on side tangents, the various characters are just part of the scenes organically.

There are a few characters who are played by actors who have either passed away, or are much older than they were at the time of Episode IV. With computer effects being where they have evolved to, those characters can still be realized – one of which has a decent number of scenes and dialogue complete with close ups. The tech isn’t perfect, and you can tell that the uncanny valley is in full effect here, but it’s getting there. I’m sure in 5 years we’ll look back at it and go, OMG that’s horrid CGI, but at the moment, it’s tight.

One other aspect I’m still not sold on is the score by Michael Giacchino. It’s fine, and it has some of the cues from the classic John Williams‘ originals, but they’re echoes of the old music. Even just a few hours after seeing the film, I really can’t recall any main themes at all. Yea, there’s music. It fits the scenes. But there’s nothing like the emotional connection which existed with the Imperial March, Rebel Fanfare, Binary Sunset, or Duel of the Fates – the ones which once you heard them the first time, you never forgot them.

Alan Tudyk deserves a special shout out as K-2SO, an imperial droid that is both so very much alike and different from C-3PO that it’s kind of a trip – you really do want to see those two droids have a conversation and see what would happen. K-2SO, like 3PO, has no particular filter, so whatever he’s thinking, he tends to say off the cuff. But where 3PO was a protocol droid, this 2SO is a military droid. His dry humor probably lends as much to the fun (and heart) of the film as any other character.

There is a general distance from the characters that one feels watching the film. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t spent decades with these characters. They’re new, so we’ve only got a short time with which to connect with them. As noted earlier, they’re not the nicest or most loving of sorts, so that additionally makes it hard to really emotionally bond with them or what they’re getting themselves into. Perhaps what makes it so stark is that when we do see more familiar characters on-screen we start gushing over them, and that makes a bit of a barrier to making new connections.

Another San Francisco critic complained bitterly that the film’s foundations are so much a war movie, but I have to believe that he missed the concept from A New Hope that the rebellion has for nearly 20 years been on a losing side of a very long guerrilla war.  The long-time fighters are not full of bright eyes, positivity, and optimism. They just don’t want it all to have been for nothing. That have not yet realized that there’s still a random farmboy/Jedi-in-waiting out there to be tapped to be The One to save the Galaxy. Right now their only hope is to keep on fighting.

On reflection I think it’ll take some distance from first viewing to really put it into it’s final position in my personal Best to Worst listing, but it’s up there – my initial kneejerk is probably to put it in third position – under Episodes V and IV, but above VII and VI.