Editor’s Note: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is currently playing in wide theatrical release.
“Rebellions are built on hope,” one character states forcefully during the inevitable “rally the troops” moment in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the spinoff/prequel not just to Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV), but the first film set in the Star Wars universe where the central story arc doesn’t revolve around a Skywalker, the family that seemingly brings both peace and chaos to the galaxy through their connection to the all-powerful Force. But Star Wars isn’t Star Wars without at least a tangential, if not marginal, connection to the Skywalker clan. Set between Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: A New Hope, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story expands on A New Hope’s opening crawl involving the stolen Death Star plans and the Rebellion’s last best opportunity (or hope) to strike a decisive blow against the seemingly unstoppable Galactic Empire. By its nature, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is far from an essential, necessary story in the Star Wars canon, let alone one eagerly demanded by Star Wars fans, but under director Gareth Edwards’ (Godzilla, Monsters) stewardship, it often feels as close to essential and necessary as any Star Wars prequel/spin-off might.
Jyn’s arc feels underwritten… All too often, Jyn’s journey takes second place to the info dumps necessary to move the plot along from point A to point B.
With a grim, pre-hope setting, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story may have tapped, however unintentionally, into the current national mood, not because it’s overtly political (it is and it isn’t, given that it centers on a galactic conflict between not just between warring collectives, but two ideologies, two ways of life, two sets of values: liberal democracy versus fascist totalitarianism). Regardless of their political convictions, moviegoers will read whatever they want from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and a heroine, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), who, abandoned by not one, but two father figures, has little affection, let alone interest, for either side of the galactic conflict. She’s seemingly content with her cause-free, personal rebellion until Rebel Alliance soldiers led by Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) break her out of an Imperial prison with the promise of reuniting with her father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), an Imperial scientist forced against his will to work on the Death Star, or Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a rebel leader ostracized by the Rebel Alliance for his “extremism” (his volatile, impulsive behavior suggests he’s embraced some of the Empire’s cruel, ruthless tactics, including torture).
While Gerrera continues his fight against the Empire from a system of caves on Jedha, a planet sacred to the now disbanded Jedi Knights, outside its main city, Andor hopes to locate and stop the long-rumored Death Star with the help of an Imperial pilot-turned-defector, Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), held by Gerrera and his men. Broken by the war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance, Gerrera only sees a trap (Admiral Ackbar sadly doesn’t make an appearance, but a close relative does). Even Jyn’s reappearance in his life does little to shake Gerrera from his paranoid delusions and deep-seated trust issues. As a character in the Star Wars universe, he’s certainly unique, far more rounded and multi-dimensional than most of the characters we’ve encountered over eight films, but he’s far from a central character. He practically embodies the concept of fan service (he’s best known for his appearances on The Clone Wars). Gerrera and Rook aren’t alone, however, in showing the physical, mental, emotional consequences of war: Andor has made morally and ethically gray choices in defense of the Rebel Alliance. {The Rebel Alliance may be pure in motive, but not in action.) For all that moral and ethical grayness, Rogue One: Star Wars Story belongs to Jyn Erso and whatever personal and/or geographical journey she happens to be on.
By its nature, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is far from an essential, necessary story in the Star Wars canon, lbut under director Gareth Edwards’ stewardship, it often feels as close to essential and necessary as any Star Wars prequel/spin-off might.
There’s no denying, however, that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is also a conscious attempt at brand extension and/or expansion, bringing elements of the Star Wars universe drawn from other media or properties into the cinematic iteration of that universe (it feels more “real” when it’s on film than when it’s on TV, comic books, or other ancillary media), but it’s also a closed loop, one with a finite end point: The plans for the Death Star, however they’re obtained, must reach the hands of the Rebel Alliance, specifically a certain princess (last name, Organa, first name, Leia), before hiding inside a droid purchased by naïve, adventure-seeking farm boy. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) doesn’t make an appearance, but a certain older, long-in-hiding Jedi gets a shout-out near the end of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Unfortunately, Edwards and his screenwriting team, Chris Weitz (Cinderella, The Golden Compass, About a Boy) and Tony Gilroy, working from a story credited to Gary Whitta (After Earth, The Boo of Eli) and visual effects innovator John Knoll, do little with Jyn’s character besides burdening her with unresolved father issues. She repeatedly proves that’s she good in a fight, equal to any man or droid, but when she’s not fighting, she’s brooding over lost father figures and personal grievances.
A kinder, gentler view of Jyn’s character arc might see it less as a screenwriting deficiency than an acknowledgement that the scars of war, of living during wartime, never fully, truly heal. That’s certainly heady stuff, especially for studio-made, mainstream entertainment like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but it’s often in studio-made, mainstream entertainment that we find not just our greatest escapes, but our deepest meanings as well. (It might be commerce, but it’s also art). Whatever the reason, Jyn’s arc still feels underwritten, a possible by-product of the studio-mandated reshoots earlier this year. All too often, Jyn’s journey takes second place to the info dumps necessary to move the plot along from point A (Jedha) to point B (Yavin 4, the Rebel Alliance’s home base), from planet to planet, environment (desert) to environment (rain-swept world), until Rogue One: A Star Wars Story moves toward the expected, third-act climax involving the Death Star plans and an Imperial archive located on a lush, sun-filled world seemingly divided between beach and ocean.
Ultimately, story, action, and spectacle trump character as Jyn, Andor, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), a reprogrammed Imperial droid with a wicked sense of humor, Rook, Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), a blind, Force-sensitive martial artist and his companion/protector, Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang), put their doubts, differences, and instinct for self-preservation aside for a truly epic-scaled battle that unfolds on the ground with the Magnificent Five, in the air above between the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire, and in space hundreds of miles above a planet’s surface. Edwards’ claim that he wanted to put the “war” in Star Wars was certainly no lie. The third act could have been lifted from a World War II film, albeit with far more advanced technology (minus the resurrection of a character from the original trilogy that crosses into the Uncanny Valley, never to return). Edwards proves remarkably adept at cross-cutting between multiple planes of action without letting the action devolve in chaos, controlled or otherwise. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story might just have the best battle scenes of any film set in the Star Wars universe, but the emphasis of story and spectacle over character comes at a cost: We feel less than we should when the end credits make their inevitable march across the screen.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is far from an essential, necessary story in the space actioner canon, but it might just have the best battle scenes of any film set in the Star Wars universe. Still, the emphasis of story and spectacle over character comes at a cost: We feel less than we should when the end credits make their inevitable march across the screen.
