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Revisiting Star Wars: "Rogue One"
This week, in preparation for the premiere of The Rise of Skywalker, I'm rewatching all of the live-action Star Wars films. Some for the first time in years. As I go along I'm collecting some of my thoughts on how each film has changed in my own estimation, and how well I think they hold up overall in the story as it stands.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a film I've watched pieces of many times, and one I've seen all the way through only a couple. I should also add a disclaimer to this because this rewatch happened on the heels of a massive cleaning spree where I moved most of the furniture around my apartment and did four loads of laundry, so I had to pause at the end of the first act to take an hour nap. This is, in an of itself, not a hugely terrible thing, as Rogue One has an extremely well-defined three act structure... and the first two acts are kind of messy. Like, it's a fun mess, but chunks of this movie are kind of a mess.
When I first watched in the theater, I was actually pulled out of the movie by how messy the first act was. It jumped around too quickly and too often, trying to cover a cast that was too big and on too many different locations. This is a problem that persists to some degree throughout the whole movie, but once Jyn and Cassian land on Jedha it mostly smooths out. Honestly, I do commend them for having several, very different locations throughout this movie and not just settling for the familiar Yavin 4. Jedha feels very different from Tatooine and Jakku despite being a desert planet, and Eadu looks nothing like the other remote bases that have propped up in Star Wars before. The real MVP is Scarif, which is easily one of my favorite locations in the franchise. It has a fun, beachy vibe that is a stark contrast to the massive third act battle that takes place there with such a massive death toll. What design work there was was sufficient, since they wisely decided to let the locations themselves take precedent, making the worlds seem large and expansive to match the stakes of the story.
I have mixed feelings about the decision to tell this story in particular. I don't think it was a massive plot hole that needed to be explained in any way, and I think the premise worked to the disservice of the characters, whose arcs largely had to fade into the background in order to service the larger plot. Jyn and Cassian have shades of development but they feel underdrawn, and while I did cry when most members of this large ensemble died (possibly as an after effect of exhaustion) it was largely because of the legwork done in the novelization and spinoff material to fully flesh out their characters rather than anything in the film itself. The most successful character, ironically enough, is probably K2-SO because he "popped" more than any other character in this movie. Of the human characters, Chirrut feels the most appropriately unique to have a place in this story.
That's not to say I dislike this movie by any means. I've rewatched it too many times over the years for that. I mostly think it has a lot of very strong parts - including good actors who aren't given nearly enough to work with - that doesn't coalesce as well as it should outside the stellar third act. Like, it's so tightly executed that you can handwave how contrived the situation ultimately becomes. Because you know these characters can't survive, the movie works its ass off in the eleventh hour to make their journeys worth your while. If anything, the weakest part of the third act is probably - controversial hot take alert - the Darth Vader hallway scene. It feels like fanservice as it's worst in that it completely ruins the tone that had been set up, and feels so at odds with everything in the movie up to now. The handoff to Leia's ship was executed fine, but that whole sequence should've been much tighter to allow the audience to linger on Jyn and Cassian - the film's actual main characters - for a few moments longer.
While the locations and design were sublime, the special effects felt like a throwback to some of the issues The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones had. But this film came out fourteen years after the latter, so the choice to go with certain effects is a bit baffling. Instead of casting a Tarkin look-a-like and maybe even modifying his voice, they create a CGI human character that is only a few shades above the Polar Express. I didn't really notice this when I first saw the film in the theater, but as time passes it becomes more and more noticeable. It's honestly a shame George hasn't gotten a chance to meddle with that specifically. It'd actually be warranted. Leia has a similar issue but her appearance is so brief you can hardly notice, and ironically enough all the aliens in this movie look great. None of them have that weird texturing issue that Jar Jar had, and it's clear that Lucasfilm has solved at least that aspect of the special effects equation... for now.
This film does not have any deleted scenes available, which I am honestly salty about. The very first trailer had a lot of footage that did not show up in the final movie, and the comic adaption along with production photos hint at scenes like a one-on-one conversation between Jyn and Mon Mothma that I'd really love to see someday. Honestly, I lowkey hope the reason they're keeping that footage in the vault is that they're planning on using some of it somehow in the upcoming Cassian Andor show. It would certainly make a finale more of an event!
I'd originally hoped to watch Rogue One and A New Hope back-to-back, but exhaustion has prevented me from doing so. I'm excited to get back to the main part of the Saga, but I have to commend this film for taking the first, small steps in expanding on what a Star Wars film could be.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a film I've watched pieces of many times, and one I've seen all the way through only a couple. I should also add a disclaimer to this because this rewatch happened on the heels of a massive cleaning spree where I moved most of the furniture around my apartment and did four loads of laundry, so I had to pause at the end of the first act to take an hour nap. This is, in an of itself, not a hugely terrible thing, as Rogue One has an extremely well-defined three act structure... and the first two acts are kind of messy. Like, it's a fun mess, but chunks of this movie are kind of a mess.
When I first watched in the theater, I was actually pulled out of the movie by how messy the first act was. It jumped around too quickly and too often, trying to cover a cast that was too big and on too many different locations. This is a problem that persists to some degree throughout the whole movie, but once Jyn and Cassian land on Jedha it mostly smooths out. Honestly, I do commend them for having several, very different locations throughout this movie and not just settling for the familiar Yavin 4. Jedha feels very different from Tatooine and Jakku despite being a desert planet, and Eadu looks nothing like the other remote bases that have propped up in Star Wars before. The real MVP is Scarif, which is easily one of my favorite locations in the franchise. It has a fun, beachy vibe that is a stark contrast to the massive third act battle that takes place there with such a massive death toll. What design work there was was sufficient, since they wisely decided to let the locations themselves take precedent, making the worlds seem large and expansive to match the stakes of the story.
I have mixed feelings about the decision to tell this story in particular. I don't think it was a massive plot hole that needed to be explained in any way, and I think the premise worked to the disservice of the characters, whose arcs largely had to fade into the background in order to service the larger plot. Jyn and Cassian have shades of development but they feel underdrawn, and while I did cry when most members of this large ensemble died (possibly as an after effect of exhaustion) it was largely because of the legwork done in the novelization and spinoff material to fully flesh out their characters rather than anything in the film itself. The most successful character, ironically enough, is probably K2-SO because he "popped" more than any other character in this movie. Of the human characters, Chirrut feels the most appropriately unique to have a place in this story.
That's not to say I dislike this movie by any means. I've rewatched it too many times over the years for that. I mostly think it has a lot of very strong parts - including good actors who aren't given nearly enough to work with - that doesn't coalesce as well as it should outside the stellar third act. Like, it's so tightly executed that you can handwave how contrived the situation ultimately becomes. Because you know these characters can't survive, the movie works its ass off in the eleventh hour to make their journeys worth your while. If anything, the weakest part of the third act is probably - controversial hot take alert - the Darth Vader hallway scene. It feels like fanservice as it's worst in that it completely ruins the tone that had been set up, and feels so at odds with everything in the movie up to now. The handoff to Leia's ship was executed fine, but that whole sequence should've been much tighter to allow the audience to linger on Jyn and Cassian - the film's actual main characters - for a few moments longer.
While the locations and design were sublime, the special effects felt like a throwback to some of the issues The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones had. But this film came out fourteen years after the latter, so the choice to go with certain effects is a bit baffling. Instead of casting a Tarkin look-a-like and maybe even modifying his voice, they create a CGI human character that is only a few shades above the Polar Express. I didn't really notice this when I first saw the film in the theater, but as time passes it becomes more and more noticeable. It's honestly a shame George hasn't gotten a chance to meddle with that specifically. It'd actually be warranted. Leia has a similar issue but her appearance is so brief you can hardly notice, and ironically enough all the aliens in this movie look great. None of them have that weird texturing issue that Jar Jar had, and it's clear that Lucasfilm has solved at least that aspect of the special effects equation... for now.
This film does not have any deleted scenes available, which I am honestly salty about. The very first trailer had a lot of footage that did not show up in the final movie, and the comic adaption along with production photos hint at scenes like a one-on-one conversation between Jyn and Mon Mothma that I'd really love to see someday. Honestly, I lowkey hope the reason they're keeping that footage in the vault is that they're planning on using some of it somehow in the upcoming Cassian Andor show. It would certainly make a finale more of an event!
I'd originally hoped to watch Rogue One and A New Hope back-to-back, but exhaustion has prevented me from doing so. I'm excited to get back to the main part of the Saga, but I have to commend this film for taking the first, small steps in expanding on what a Star Wars film could be.