It is easy to like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story because it really wants you to like it. There’s a lot of hyperbole surrounding its release already, including a review from Variety hailing it as the first “Star Wars movie for grown-ups,” and fans and critics alike espousing its virtues as a love letter to the fandom.
But for a film that is meant to be so many things to so many people, it is shockingly thin on substance. The truth is, what Rogue One truly succeeds at is repackaging a familiar experience so expertly that it feels unique.
(Spoilers for the film below.)
Wait, I can hear you say. You’re talking about “The Force Awakens”. No, I’m not. Episode VII did have those same hallmarks (story echoes, trope replications, characters we have already seen), but it benefited from its place in the timeline of the universe—being set in the future forced the creatives involved to conceive of the differences that a new trilogy of films would have from its predecessors. To that effect we have new organizations, equipment, and context that demands that the audience engage with a new status quo. The First Order is similar to the Empire, but it isn’t the Empire. The Resistance is close to the Rebel Alliance in its affiliations, but born of a different political era. But Rogue One is situated within a story that you already know. It handles its material with enough panache to make everything seem fresh and new, but this is nothing that fans haven’t already seen before.
This is not to say that Rogue One is a bad movie; there are many aspects of the film that are exceptional and worthy of recounting. Gareth Edwards is a director who clearly speaks the language, and the film is a gorgeous meditation on the imagery of Star Wars, the way that these films have used the visual to tap into its audience’s subconscious for decades. The actors give their all with what they’ve been allotted, and the way that the latter half of the film uses war movie constructs to give audiences a battle on an entirely different scale is totally impressive. It is also effecting because the stakes are known—more than known, they are essential to the story’s mythology. There is no way to avoid having emotions about the content of Rogue One because they are built-in from diving headlong into a key piece of narrative that was seeded in the very beginning of the first film.
But the problem with labeling something “gritty” and “grown-up” is that these are lazy monikers that we often attribute to anything that delivers on tragedy and violence, regardless of the specificity of their use. Having a rough battle sequence and character deaths does not make a movie “grown-up,” and grit has never been a guarantee of quality. It might be refreshing to see in a Star Wars film, but that does not make Rogue One more worthy of praise than any other Star Wars film.
And that is a problem because all the heaping praise avoids the fact that this is a very awkwardly constructed film whose themes are as muddy as its character work. It’s unclear if heavy reshoots are to blame (though a quick look at the trailers confirms that not only were many scenes divulging Jyn’s personality cut from the film, but that the entire third act was reworked completely), or if Rogue One simply forgot what makes war films so affecting—getting close to characters who are likely to die before the end credits.
Rogue One’s ensemble is a deliriously talented crew, but they are given a pitiful amount to work with in terms of history or personality. There are literally two conversations in the entire film meant to build this disparate group into a working unit; one when Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is talking to Chirrut (Donnnie Yen) and Baze (Jiang Wen) in Saw Gerrera’s prison cell, and another when Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) tells Cassian off for lying to her about his mission from the Alliance to kill her father. These two moments—along with a single fight sequence on the planet Jedha where Chirrut and Baze prove how adept they are at combat—are really all that the audience gets by way of their forming into a group of comrades who are willing to face insurmountable odds together. It’s not enough for a true ensemble tale, and even more confusing because the movie is never clear on whether it is actually meant to be an ensemble tale… or a tale about Jyn Erso alone.
Jyn from the trailers for Rogue One seems like an utterly different person in the theater. Gone is the snappy misfit who has no interest in authority and mouths off to Mon Mothma. In her place we have a nice woman who is without a family and maybe looking for a new one? Rogue One is completely uninterested in explaining Jyn’s motivations to the audience, or at the very least is intent on confusing us about them. On one hand, Jyn seems to be helping the rebels for her father, a man who was manipulated into working for the Empire and helping them to develop the Death Star weapon. (I could say she was doing it for her family, but her mother might as well not exist for the fact that she is never brought up again after her death.) On the other hand, by the end of the film we have Jyn giving a rousing speech about hope, and the soundtrack seems to indicate that Jyn is truly on board for the cause now. It’s a shame because the film misses out on the more interesting possibility—that Jyn is playing the Rebel Alliance into helping her get vengeance for her family. That kind of morally complex motivation is exactly what the war movie genre is great at showcasing.
Many of the best characters in the film we lose before properly getting to know them: Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker, how do I love thee? How much did I miss you in the rest of this movie?), who kicks it in the opening act after displaying very little extremism for an extremist. K-2SO, who is the most entertaining of the bunch, but gets even less respect in the character integrity and background department—we should hardly be surprising, seeing as he’s a droid and Star Wars famously ignores droids outside of their ability to provide amusement. Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), whose defection from the Empire is barely even considered from a narrative standpoint. Chirrut and Baze, who get perhaps more focus than the other secondary characters, but still both die without getting the emotional through lines we expect from central characters. We know practically nothing of their complete history together, their purpose of guarding the temple on Jedha, how their people were involved with the Jedi Order. We just get a mantra, spoken by Chirrut and finally Baze, to make up the entire emotional crux of their part in the story.
Then we have Cassian, who we know has done bad things on the behalf of the Rebellion because he tells us and shoots his informant at the start of the film. But we never get wind of what exactly he’s been doing for the Alliance, we just know it’s bad and he’s done it and we should feel bad for him because he feels bad. This would have been fine with another film still coming, to better expand on his history. Without that possibility, we lose a character who is playing at a depth of emotion that we have to guess around.
We also have Orson Krennic, the man behind the Death Star project, and while Ben Mendelssohn does an excellent job in his role, nothing can cover up the fact that his entire character could be cut from the film and nothing would be lost. His machinations are irrelevant to the outcome of the story, and all his whining and posturing do not make the incoming reality of the Death Star seem more fraught or threatening. He merely exists to snipe at a characters who we already know and want to see more of.
On that note, a moment for Grand Moff Tarkin, whose CGI use was both jarring and exceedingly creepy. I know that the filmmakers got permission from Peter Cushing’s Estate, but there is something disturbing (and unethical?) to knowing that you can appear briefly in a Star Wars film and it means that you might have you face grafted onto a CGI frame long after your death. Not only does the film not need to show us Tarkin at such length, but no amount of computer advancement can change the fact that a CGI simulacrum cannot act as Cushing could. The whole move is alarmingly disrespectful and makes all of Krennic’s scenes even more discomfiting to squirm through.
The same goes for Princess Leia, whose face did not need to be seen at the end of the film. One shot of her hand on the plans would have been entirely sufficient.
There is another hole in this film, and it is female-shaped. The fact that Rogue One managed to have fewer speaking parts for women in it than Force Awakens did is appalling. The fact that no one in Jyn’s core team is also female is equally ridiculous. The fact that the entire group Cassian presents to Jyn who have volunteered to go on her impossible mission are all men is insulting in the extreme. Sure, a few female pilots show up once the full Alliance forces enter the fray at the end of the film, but until then it is literally one woman leading up a band of men. What the movie ends up accidentally implying by this omission is that no female operatives have ever done horrific things on behalf of the Rebel Alliance. Only men who Cassian can vouch for. At least with the Empire there has been a xenophobic and sexist precedent built into the organization to account for the lack of women in their ranks. With women like Leia and Mon Mothma at the forefront, the Rebel Alliance has no such excuse.
Even with all these problems (and more), there are plenty of things in Rogue One that are exciting. Jimmy Smits is still a gem as Bail Organa, and the appearance of Darth Vader was a treat in this context. The difficulty of the mission was hammered home with every extra step that the plan garnered. Hearing pointless stormtrooper banter again was oddly endearing. But the theme of Rogue One remains a mystery. Is it about one person changing the course of galactic history? Is it about the need to trust others in order to accomplish your goals? Is it about how the people who win wars are usually the ones who have given up the most to their causes, done the hard work that others were unwilling to do? All of these are possibilities, but Rogue One refuses to single out a message because it’s too focused on ending with the sight of something familiar.
And while seeing Princess Leia get her hands on the Death Star plans is a rewarding thing, it should not be the emotional pinnacle of a film where so many good people have lost their lives.
So Rogue One was a fascinating Star Wars film, but calling it the only one available for “grown-ups” is a trite assessment in my book. A story requires more than constant violence and circumspect morality to get that label. And for the record, Star Wars films have always featured these elements—this is merely the first time our attention has been called to them. For a first attempt at drawing out those ideas, Rogue One does an acceptable cursory job. Let us hope that the next attempt—if there is one—will go further.
Emmet Asher-Perrin still can’t believe that not a single person in Jyn’s group was another woman. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Yes, we call this genre. Rogue One definitely repackages Star Wars’ unique contribution to the Space Opera genre. In unique and creative ways that are designed to entertain. It also slides in some tropes from MilSF, as well as some straight up war movie tropes. I’m not seeing the problem. Its the way the ingredients come together that determine whether the experience is worthwhile or not. Repetition is its own form of pleasure.
RE; Jyn’s motivations.
They completely change as the situation changes. First, her motivation is to stay out of prison. She’d rather think her father is dead. She definitely does not want to see Saw Gurrera again. But she has to, or the Alliance will dump her right back where they found her. Her motivation is necessity. But then she sees her father’s message. She can’t pretend he is dead any more, and it affects her deeply. The message is directly to her. In Hero’s Journey terms, this is her Meeting with the Mentor moment, and she Crosses the Threshold into an active participant in the story. Prior to that, she was more along for the ride. She had Denied the Call, but was being forced to come anyway. This is a very common use of the Hero’s Journey in Hollywood scriptwriting.
AFTER she Crosses the Threshold, she has actual motivation; she wants to fulfill her father’s legacy, and not let his sacrifice be in vain. She chose not to care about the Empire in the beginning, because it was painful to think about. Now, she can look at the monster and do something about it. I thought he motivations were abundantly clear.
This I agree with whole-heartedly.
Your assessment is on point. This movie only works if you can imbue the characters with depth through your imagination, as in a fairy tale. But no film should require us to do so much emotional heavy lifting, especially when these problems could easily have been fixed.
These films have never really been all that great at character development beyond the obvious and superficial. The world building has also always been rather sparse. The technology and government really does not make a lot of sense if you really think about it. This was fine with the original trilogy since it was groundbreaking in so many other ways.
Unfourtunatly as time has gone on those holes have become very obvious, and the film making is basically the same as every other big budget Superhero movie. The thing is those movies actually attempt to build complex motivations and moral questions. Captain America Civil war is a good example of this.
Since the plan seems to make a new Star Wars cash cow every year, I don’t expect much of a change in terms of story and writing as long as they keep making money. These are honestly just kinda fun movies to go see once a year, and be entertained, and when you think about it, that’s OK to.
The movie worked for me because I was easily able to fill in the blanks and grew attached to the characters anyway (oh…I cried!). That said, I would have loved more character moments and emotional backstory, because it would have been gratifying to actually see it (and who knows if my speculations were even the intent!). It felt like they skipped ahead to keep the action pace on track, but an extra 10 minutes of set-up wouldn’t have hurt.
“On the other hand, by the end of the film we have Jyn giving a rousing speech about hope, and the soundtrack seems to indicate that Jyn is truly on board for the cause now. It’s a shame because the film misses out on the more interesting possibility—that Jyn is playing the Rebel Alliance into helping her get vengeance for her family. That kind of morally complex motivation is exactly what the war movie genre is great at showcasing.”
Acting selfishly only because your family is involved is a boring, played out trope at this point. There isn’t anything morally complex about it. The willingness to sacrifice for the greater good? Now that is interesting. Hollywood rarely makes great (or even good) war movies because it struggles to understand that (as does the blogger, evidently). The gripes about lack of depth for the ensemble aren’t unwarranted, but much emotional depth comes from the decision to lay their lives on the line for a rather faint hope. The bigger issue is that the movie muddles their motivation, suggesting they feel compelled to keep to their course because they’ve done bad things, not because it is the right thing to do.
The decision to shift focus from Jyn was a wise one, even if it resulted in uneven editing. Of course that will lead to the movie being labeled problematic, but that is the sort of “when all you have is a hammer” analysis Tor.com is infamous for.
Totally Agree with #1,2 & 7.
Maybe the reviewer should watch the movie again? I enjoyed it more the second time, which I didn’t think was going to be possible…
Tarkin was essential to have if the story was going to make any sense, and I don’t think anyone else is creeped out about face-swapping technology (get used to it). I also disagree regarding Leia, as it makes for a perfect segue into A New Hope (although her chubby cheeked face wasn’t as well reconstructed as Tarkin’s angular features).
Just about the only thing I agree with this review is that there should have been more female characters…
For a movie which I did not want to see made, they did a terrific job pulling off what I thought was impossible: making these stand alone stories seem like a good idea!
And then I got the best Darth Vader (live action) action sequence of all time as the cherry on top!
Emily makes some interesting points in this article, and there are lots of valid gripes to have that they could have done a better job developing the characters, but at the risk of inciting a sticky debate, I think her argument against the all-male Rogue One crew is a bit of projecting your own opinions onto something. The volunteers that go along with Jyn at Cassian’s recruiting are all assumed to be from Cassian’s line of work, which is clearly along the lines of a Special Forces or Marines unit. Using some US military statistics, although the overall US military is ~15% female, the Marines have only 6.8% female, and I couldn’t easily find statistics on the Special Forces, but I can almost guarantee the percentages are even lower. At least in the current history of humans on Earth, it actually isn’t all that likely that there would be many women in a crew of this size.
Now, you can make a very strong and valid argument that the situation in the US military should not necessarily be reflected in the Star Wars universe, and I’d agree. However, it’s not particularly unrealistic or necessarily unfair – IF it was intentionally done to reflect our current human situation. You could probably argue that there should have been a lot MORE diversity in non-human participants in the group, and more racial diversity among the male humans pretty easily. However, while there is still a meta-conversation to be had about representation of women in fiction and casting biases, I don’t think the story itself handled the issue so egregiously as to be worthy of being called out to the extent in this article. The team never questions Jyn’s ability or authority on the basis of her being a woman, there are women sprinkled throughout the military and civilian forces of the Rebellion (even in the prominent leadership roles), and there is the type of easy acceptance of Jyn as a capable human being irrespective of her gender (without hitting you in the face with the “tough chick” trope) that I would think should be praised rather than picked apart.
Also, while there is still a long ways to go, Rogue One is demonstrably and by a good margin the most diverse Star Wars film to date. We have prominent (if not always central) roles for Asian, black, Middle Eastern, and female actors, rather than just a single female (IV, V, VI to some extent), single non-white human (V, VI, I, II, III, VII), and roundly white British humans for the rest of the cast.
A lot of this seems to be criticism of reactions to the film rather than criticism of the film itself.
That being said, I agree that the lack of character depth is my biggest issue with the film. I would have really liked to know these characters a lot better.
I agree that Leia looked weird, but I thought Tarkin looked really impressive. I’m not sure that I’m a fan of films continuing to do this type of thing, but I thought it worked in this film’s context. That being said, Tarkin didn’t really NEED to be in this film other than that Krennic had to die and someone had to give the order to fire the Death Star.
I’m sure I’ll like this film less the more I nitpick at it, as I did with Force Awakens, but I was entertained, and that was what I needed more than anything else.
One of the things that this film does is make the desperation of the Rebellion more compelling than the first films. It also makes the rebellion look more like, well, what such an organization might really look like from the inside. The original trilogy was very black-and-white, with the empire this big evil monolith, and the Rebels the plucky little people who just want a Happy Ending to the story. This group, though. They are hopeless to an extent, coming from hopeless situations like Cassian apparently did, and there is clearly supposed to be a wide variety of motivations implied.
I think it could be a safe guess that no less than half of this group are, like you suggest with Jyn, playing the Rebellion to get revenge/respect/retribution. They just happen to be both anti-empire and opportunistic, in the same way that bounty hunters are just opportunistic. Honestly, if you look at Ezra, Kanan, and Zeb, they are very similar in that way, at least at the beginning of their stories.
Also, I think Krennic was put into the film because they decided “Peter Cushing” couldn’t take a whole role on his narrow pixelly shoulders. It makes much more sense for him to have overseen it from the beginning.
Oh, well, I loved Rogue One, so it seems they succeeded with me. I fell right in, like a sucker!
I think all future Star Wars films should feature non-caucasian women in all of the speaking protagonists’ roles, so as to avoid any criticism about the demographics of units that go on suicide missions in other galaxies.
Have people forgotten creepy digital Orville Redenbacher? Not the first time a corpse has been propped up to sell a product.
@15, that Orville Redenbacher is so, so awful. Tarkin, on the other hand, was pretty good. I’m not sure I would have noticed had a couple early reviews I read beforehand flagged it. And while you could have written around Tarkin, his presence primes the viewer for Leia’s appearance at the end. Of course Leia wasn’t necessary at all, but her appearance and final line, coupled with Jyn’s speech to the rebels and the new title of the first movie, were the perfect way to link Rogue One to Star Wars.
I believe the author of this piece is trying too hard.
*************SPOILERS************************
I must have understood the film very differently because I thought Jyn *was* doing what she was doing to find and rescue her father, and then after that, to get revenge on Krennic.
“We also have Orson Krennic, the man behind the Death Star project, and while Ben Mendelssohn does an excellent job in his role, nothing can cover up the fact that his entire character could be cut from the film and nothing would be lost” Again, I understood Krennic as Jyn’s antagonist, who caused her mother’s self sacrificing death and ruined her father’s life, and that Jyn’s motivation was partly to defeat him personally and partly to help the rebels. I thought Ben was very specific and well motivated, a good character, as was Jyn. I know all tastes are different but am a bit baffled by your points. I’ve seen many war movies, and good ones, with about the same or even less development as this bunch. When K2 SO fizzed out I was genuinely moved; and when the defector died too I felt sad for him.
How gender diverse could they really show the rebellion as being and still match up with the rebellion shown in A New hope.
I’m stunned. I almost can’t believe that anyone would use The Force Awakens – which I do like – as an example of how to better create something new for the audience. “New equipment”? Decades later, and they’re still using slightly different spins on the exact same equipment as A New Hope. At least Rogue One has an good excuse for that, and I find its feat of making a story feel fresh withing a well-worn time period much more impressive and rewarding than TFA‘s feat of using a new time period to make things feel much like they used to. That’s almost the entirety of TFA.
On the point of Jyn, I agree that she is not the most well-sketched lead character. But as far as the rest of the team goes, Rogue One has a big story, and lots of people in it. I don’t know how much more individual attention any of them could have received, but I found them relatable and easy enough to understand. Simple dimensions of motivation? Sure. Works for me.
But I can more or less get the “characters not interesting” perspective, even if it isn’t my own. On the other hand…
That sounds just about like what Star Wars is at its core. Rogue One made me feel kind of like I did when I watched A New Hope for the first time. Even if it’s true that Star Wars has moved towards riffing on itself more than its original influences over the years, this is the one film that I would least direct that criticism towards.
UK comedy duo Punt and Dennis have a game with WW2 movies called something like “spot the dead guy” (look is up on YouTube, well worth the watch). I had fun playing this game with Rogue One (“you’ve got call sign Red 5? Oh dear.”)
i also enjoyed all the little cameos and Easter eggs, like having Red and Gold Leaders. Slightly spoiled by knowing none of the female fighters pilots survive (“I think we know.”
I did not like Tarkin. CGI’d actors still look creepy, and retconning him into middle management taking credit for other people’s work rankles. It does Cushing’s portrayal a marked disservice.
I found the whole film oddly dissatisfying. I think between then, web comics creator Scott Kurtz and Emmet Asher-Perrin sum up where the film went awry.
I enjoyed it, but I went in (after avoiding all information bar the trailers to an almost pathological degree) expecting Star Wars: Where Eagles Dare. I expected Jen Orso to be the Shaeffer character, brought in as an outsider as they feared their agents had been compromised by Imperial Intelligence. I expected carefully crafted plans with plots and misdirections nestled within themselves.
What we got was poor communication skills, barely any planning and a bunch of knee-jerk Rebellion actions that got in each other’s way, all covered by a career cribbed from better movies about Dunkirk and D-day…
and for those trying to justify the lack of female characters: the French Resistence had about 20% female combatants, and political dissidents sent to the Concentration Camps rated at about 15%
I kinda feel like the title of this post should be changed:
Rogue One Really, Really Wants You to Like It—And That’s A Problem
I Really, Really Want You Not to Like Rogue One—Is That A Problem?
Please don’t chalk this up to nerd rage or anything of the sort – I enjoyed the movie, yes, but I’m nowhere near *invested* in it like I am MCU movies or Wheel of Time or that sort of thing. It was a fun movie. But after reading two posts in two days by the same author, trashing the same movie and making the same points quite frequently, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a chip on the shoulder or something.
I won’t go piece by piece and refute anything – others above have done so for various things, and quite well I might add, but I will mention that I did have to nod my head a bit at @17 Chris S. – this almost seems like a personal grudge.
Rogue One, a techies spoiler-free review.
First, go see it. Cool sci-fi action flick with passing plot. Which, for me pretty much describes all Star Wars movies. The new droid is cool and will be a favorite future Christmas gift. The mix of ensemble cast with heroine centered plot paired well . I will probably go see it again in the theater.
Disney has done a bang up job in updating the social sensibilities to a modern era, now having another heroine as the central character. My only wish is that would do so with the tech sensibilities. The tech out-datedness was a big unbidden distraction for me. I’m not making this up:
1. The death star blue prints are on a VHS cassette. I’m not kidding. The cassette carousel tower in the Security Command center is so tall one can fall to ones death falling from top-to-bottom. Presumably the tower must be this tall to hold all the VHS data.
2. No motion detectors or security cameras outside the Security Command of the Empire. The rebels were able to sneak up on the Empire’s most secure facility undetected. All the while in the beginning of the movie the lowly rebel *home* of a single individual does have technology that detects a single Empire ship coming, allowing the home owners time to prepare to meet the Empire soldiers.
3. A single scientist was key to the entire death star. Right. Come on. That’s not how science works. The mad scientist trope should have been put out to pasture with the Hadron Super Collider that graduated no less than 1,000 PhDs students every year during its constitution. And that’s just a super collider, not a death star.
3. The Storm Troopers can’t hit anything. Okay, they can keep that, that’s funny.
Time for Star Wars to update the tech used to meet modern day tech sensibilities. I found the obvious tech anachronisms a constant unbidden distraction.
I think that ‘Rogue One’ must have killed the article author’s pet kitten or something as I am otherwise baffled at her vehement dislike. It was by no means a perfect movie,but I think it far exceeded The Force Awakens in nearly every way, it certainly felt much more like a ‘real’ Star Wars movie to me, and all of the call backs to the original movie were fairly subtle and in this case made sense as opposed to being slavish imitation as with TFA. The CGI characters were a bit awkward, but I think Tarkin *had* to be in this story in some capacity and I think they actually did a pretty good job with him and I think not having the Leia cameo would have been a lost opportunity. This was really an ensemble war movie and as such I felt all of the characters got to shine as needed and were fleshed out as much as they needed to be for this kind of movie. Take the words of Elsa to heart Emily: Let it go!
@23 he wasn’t key to the whole Deathstar. He was “key” to the power system for the laser. And even that, he admits in his message they would have been able to do that without him just slower
If you had read James Luceno’s Catalyst you would get the family and Krennic, The movie starts where the book ends. Star Wars Rebels has announced one character already will appear in the second half of this season, I bet more will be on the way.
Having Leia and Tarkin wasn’t necessary… in the same way making this a Star Wars movie wasn’t necessary either. Come on, linking it to ANH and the broader SW universe it’s part of its charm. Else just make it GENERIC SPACE OPERA ADVENTURE: THE MOVIE.
@22 – Kalvin & 24 – dulac3: Yes, particularly since it’s the second article bashing Rogue One in a few days that Tor.com publishes by the same author. Overkill.
@26 – levellersteve: I loved how the novel dovetails into the movie, but I saw the film with lots of people who didn’t read the book and they still got a lot out of it.
I really enjoyed the movie. It was not the movie I was looking for to bring my seven year old daughter to, but I did not know that before hand. I was just happy one of my children wanted to go to a Star Wars movie. My older son has no interest in Star Wars – I obviously did something wrong parenting the first one. Spoiler – my daughter did fine, but I don’t think she understood much of what was going on. Visuals were great, plot made sense, character motivations were (mostly) consistent and also made sense (looking at you Fantastic Beasts).
However, the movie had problems. I didn’t count, but it felt like we visited 20 planets in the first 5 minutes. Pretty sure some of those could have been cut. Darth Vader’s castle was a bit much. My first thought at Tarkin was some serious make-up pancaked on somebody who looked a lot like Peter Cushing. Leila, smack in the middle of the uncanny valley, made me realize both characters were CGI. It didn’t stop my enjoyment of the movie, but I didn’t buy Jyn’s motivation – It was whatever it needed to be for that particular scene. I had very little emotional response to all of the main characters dying. I’m not sure how much of that was that, as many people have said, they were not that well developed, and how much that I realized pretty early on, they would all have to die for them not to be rather important people during the original trilogy. I did not see Emily’s complaint about only men volunteering, but fair point. What I did notice is that the only non-human aliens seem to be admirals. And lastly, I think they tied the ending in a little too tightly with the start of A New Hope. We knew Leia was lying when she said the Tantive IV was on a diplomatic mission, but the end of Rogue One turned a plausible cover story for a covert operation into a ridiculously obvious, last minute lie. With this ending, the Empire was completely justified in boarding the ship and had no idea Leia was on board. If not for narrative continuity, they would have vaporized it. From the Empire’s and Senate’s point of view, it was a getaway ship for a bunch of terrorists that attacked the Imperial Archives.
Even so, I want to see it again. Preferably on a bigger screen than my town cinema.
I haven’t see the movie yet, but am planning on it. My expectations for Star Wars movies have always been light, poppy action takes on the sci-fi genre. As others have pointed out, the worldbuilding and depth of moral/philosophical themes were never the series’s strong point. And that’s OK, as the series is light entertainment.
Just give me a reasonably good story, and I’ll be happy. I don’t care how many women or different ethnic backgrounds are shown in it.
When I see labels like these, it’s usually a signal that a happy ending is not likely. Our culture does have a strange expectation that stories are going to have happy endings where the heroes win and those who die did so as a noble sacrifice. I don’t mind seeing more stories move away from that expectation.
Thank you for this review–despite the fact that it makes the one I was going to write on my own blog redundant. I wanted more character development and a bit less video game visuals.
Although I broadly agree with the comments in this and your other review, I do take issue with two points.
“The truth is, what Rogue One truly succeeds at is repackaging a familiar experience so expertly that it feels unique.” You say this like it is a bad thing. Or cheating. But this was one of the great strengths of the original Star Wars movie, and has also been used by others such as, for example, Shakespeare. Though I think one of the key differences is that original movie drew from a wide and disparate selection of sources, whereas this one predominantly uses war movie tropes (with varying levels of success). YMMV as to whether you think this is better, worse or equally good.
My other comment would be that you point to two conversations as being central to the workings of the group. For me, the central and most powerful was neither of these, but rather Cassian telling Jyn that he’d done questionable things, and if they stopped now it would all be for nothing. That was a much stronger statement than anything Jyn or anyone else said. And I actually liked the fact that we didn’t see any more of his background than the initial killing to set it up. Again, because it was drawing on familiar stories, we didn’t NEED any more than that. From the introduction we knew what ‘box’ to put him in (and appreciated it was one not previously used in a Star Wars movie). It set up the inner conflict when he was taking aim at Galen, and gave context to his speech. Obviously you’d want more if this was an in-depth character study. But that’s not the type of film it was trying to be (nor any Star Wars film really). To be successful, you needed enough information about each character to understand why they make the choices they do, and to care when they die. For me, it succeeded in this. (Actually, the one exception – and it kills me to say this – was Jyn herself. Maybe because they were sort of trying to give her more, but didn’t fully commit to it.)
I don’t think the film set itself a particularly high bar in what it was trying to achieve in the way of depth, subtlety, social commentary, etc. But I wasn’t expecting that and don’t have a problem with it. Certainly, even with what it was trying to achieve, there were some flaws. But taken overall, I had a good evening at the cinema. Which is what I was looking for.
I didn’t think the movie was more grown-up than other Star Wars installments. Instead of mostly background figures dying, we had a lot of foreground figures dying, too. But that doesn’t make the story necessarily more mature.
Jyn did seem to act differently at different times. The speech about hope at the meeting of Alliance leaders did not seem to grow organically out of the way she had behaved up to that point in the movie.
And I don’t think the CGI was really up to creating a believable Tarkin and Leia. I would have preferred him to have less screen time, or shot from the back. And Leia did not need to appear full face for us to get what they were trying to tell us.
More female characters would have been good, but the movie also had to fit in with A New Hope and the rest of the original trilogy, which portrayed a Rebel Alliance where female soldiers were definitely thin on the ground, and an Imperial Army that was all male and all human.
Emily: Yes, yes, yes I completely agree with your whole article. There were some bright spots, but overall the characters were so cardboard superficial that I couldn’t even muster sadness for them when they died (and I cry really easily at movies TBH). It just felt like “Oh, okay. Of course the director is going this route to try and play things up after we learned nothing about these Ppl and they didn’t grow at all with any depth or reasoning. Guess he’s going to make sure no one else can milk his creations? I suppose I’ll wait for comic book back stories of substance then.”
It was a complete waste of intriguing character concepts and great actors.
Doubly agreed on Peter Cushing. It felt supremely gross everytime “he” was on screen. I didn’t like the implication at all. I wonder how the other actors felt, knowing they too have apparently signed their likeness over to the Disney Corp complex with no regard for art of acting, or respect for one’s determination of one’s own body. (Estate agreement is not the same as Peter’s own agreement.) Ugggh.
The characters in this story are paper thin puppets following whatever the plot demands them to do without any sense of their own self. People who defend the film are repeating we the audience do not need to know these protagonists on a personal level because they all die anyway. That’s excusing the lack of characterization, development, and interactions. What they do express is hardly not worth mentioning. There is a lot of shorthanding going on here that fans deem necessary but if you dare apply the same storytelling method to any other fiction oh god
@28 – snowkeep: No, the Empire was not justified in boarding the ship. They’re an evil dictatorship, a tyrannical government.
I…don’t really get the dislike or some of the complaints, honestly. The film showed us Jyn’s motivations and exactly when they started to evolve due to events depicted onscreen. Cassian’s character was as defined as it needed to be for this movie (not a study in character development, but a Star Wars movie.) Krennic was the Erso family nemesis and also a bridge since CGI Tarkin couldn’t carry the entire depth of the movie. Also, he was the hapless doofus who couldn’t stop his top scientist from sabotaging the Death Star (we know that you couldn’t pull that crap on Tarkin.)
I understand the point about women’s involvement in speaking roles being lesser, there’s no reason there couldn’t have been a few more women in Cassian’s little band, sure. But other than that, the review seems more like a reaction against positive reviews. I don’t particularly like that, it seems too contrarian. If the movie wasn’t your cup of tea, fine. YMMV. But reacting against the fact that others really liked it just seems a bit…petty?
I don’t mean to be rude, as I really like Emily AP and I think most of her analysis in many situations is spot on. We just disagree here. Which is ok, she’s still great. Just wrong about this movie. :-)
Rouge One must have interrupted someone’s Life Day.
People liked a Star Wars movie? For the crime of being likeable. Oh the humanity. Your whining that fans liked it is rather sad.
Recommendation to you is get over yourself and move on.
But SD Whale, what movie is that you mention? Rouge One sounds like part of a makeup franchise?
Why all the hate for the author Emily?
Without applying a critical eye, the next film will merely be good instead of great. There’s a constant tension in art between the artist making the art they want to see, and the artist compromising that to pander to the audience.
For all it’s flaws, The Force Awakens was clearly the Star Wars film Abrahms always wanted to make. Hence some of the more over the top elements rooted in teenage fanboy enthusiasm (“There’ll be a Death Star! But it will be a planet! And it will be able to destroy 5 worlds at once! Through Hyperspace!!”). This singular vision meant he was willing to make decisions that would be unpopular in certain sections.
While there are many artists involved in making Rogue One, it’s clearly done by committee. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because Deadpool was done by committee, but one that clearly knew some of their choices would be wildly unpopular, but not only made them but fought for them.
Contrast this with Rogue One. After making the choice to be “gritty”, every choice seems to be rooted in what people will like. Even the most shocking moment, on reflection, is just a “Han shot first” action (Lucas amended the scene in A New Hope as the original was “too dark” for a children’s movie) to demonstrate how grown-up and dark this movie is. Outside of that moment, I don’t think there’s anything that truly dares you “yes, we went there. Do you still like us?”.
It’s those twists and turns of plot the make the viewer question what they are seeing, that even make the veiwer doubt the protagonist themselves (I refer you to Where Eagles Dare, the WW2 movie that should have been the template for this movie) that make a movie grown-up.
The Makers of Rogue One didn’t take those risks. They chose to tick all the superficial “grim and gritty” check boxes. As a consequence, the movie is enjoyable, but not great. A couple of years down the line, when people have some perspective, I suspect it won’t displace Empire as people’s favourite Star Wars Movie. I suspect it won’t even reach top 3
Your Milage May Vary. If you got more enjoyment out of the movie, then fair play to you. I was just expecting a little more than what I got
Wil, I have no hate for Emily, but I do think that she, and other reviewers, are trying to pass of their own personal dislikes (to which they are completely entitled) as objective criticism. Add that to the fact that she published two separate articles bashing the movie on Tor.com, within a few days of each other, and it seems like a bit of overkill.
Moreover, Emily and other reviewers are not telling us why they didn’t like the film, but why we shouldn’t like it ourselves (not that they’ll change my mind) or why we liked it too much.
Agree with everything, I think you are my clone.
I still very much enjoyed it.
Everyone here reads books I’m assuming? OK. If you put this story in a novel it would be ridiculed completely. I don’t know how any self respecting bookfan can enjoy trash like this, actually be entertained by the simple plot without mystery or complexity. In a movie about a newly formed ragtag team of vagabonds how does nobody do anything interesting or have their own selfish plans? There was nothing that created a spark of interest. Considering that the goal of the whole mission was known before, and the outcome, it needed some other level of intrigue to the story. Instead it amounted to ‘go here, plug this in here, destroy this so we can send this. But to send this we need to plug in this.’ Eurghh. That’s video game level storytelling. Unfortunately people seem satisfied with this in their blockbusters.
I don’t really understand how people can say that the characters were cardboard or underdeveloped or something. Each one clearly had a past, each one clearly had their own personality, each one clearly had their own measure of character development, and it was all done in such a way as not to require hitting the audience over the head with a clue bat. Is subtlety really so unknown these days? Is understatement really no longer understandable? Is the teasing hint no longer the bread and butter of fandom?
MaGnUs, an article like this should stand or fall on the strength of its arguments. Plenty of people posting here have either agreed with Emily or engaged with her arguments to explain why they didn’t work for them (and thus why the movie did work for them).
To call into question the motives of the author before a commenter has even engaged the arguments suggests that either the commenter thinks it’s beneath them (which begs the question why they are even posting) or else they feel unsure of the strength of their reposte, so seek to weaken the author’s standing before making their own arguments.
So Emmet Asher-Perrin may have been disappointed (or have had a much stronger negative reaction) to the film. Does that make her arguments any less valid? So she tries to present her arguments objectively. Does that make them any less valid? Especially when you consider art criticism by its very nature is essentially subjective, so no critique can be truly objective. So she engages (as do many critics, especially on-line) in a conversational tone, trying to encourage you to see it from her point of view. Again, does that make her arguments any less valid?
Finally, I’ll agree that she doesn’t explicitly state why she found the film disappointing (creepy Tarkin excepted). Yet I can tell exactly what parts she didn’t like. As some other posters have pointed out in defence of the film, we don’t always need things to be spelt out to us
Ten minutes less action wouldn’t have hurt the film, and the same ten minutes given to making the characters stand out as individuals — making you get to know them and care about them — would have improved the whole thing tremendously. If people are sacrificing themselves for an ideal, I want to know who they are and why they’re doing it; I want to see them getting to know each other and finding what they have in common other than being shot at by the same bad guys. And if there was any humor in the whole movie besides one or two of the droid K’s lines, I must have missed it. I also felt that Krennic, in particular, could have been much scarier; if you saw Animal Kingdom you know just how scary Ben Mendelsohn can be, whereas Krennic was just a somewhat bad-tempered project manager. The CGI on Peter Cushing was really good — I kept thinking it was old outtakes — but Leia, no… and none of the Alliance characters seemed to care that the entire Rogue One team had been killed! Not one word about “Oh, we’ve lost some good people, we’ll honor their sacrifice and go on,” or something like that. So overall, for me, a big letdown.
Emily is allowing the hate to flow through her.
I don’t think I’ll waste my time reading anymore of her articles.
Rather late to this commentary, I know, but here goes…
Finally saw Rogue One last night with my daughter – both my sons had already seen it with friends.
We both loved it. I wanted to skulk around and wait for the next showing and ‘sneak’ in I liked it so much. The CGI didn’t bother me much at all nor did it pull me out of the experience; I knew very well that Peter Cushing was dead. Thought Leia looked convincing enough.
Loved Vader’s one-Jedi wrecking crew scene and agree that it fully shows why those rebels’ faces blanched when they heard that familiar breathing. How he missed the rebel with the plans? Probably lost to the dark side of the force while killing the others; losing himself as he lost control of his emotions.
I didn’t find this terribly ‘dark’ or ‘gritty’ and I am glad it didn’t become “Where X-Wings Dare;” if anything, the end reminds me more of “The Dirty Dozen.” This is a chance for them all to do something that justifies all the unsavory things they’ve had to do; the bad choices they’ve had to make. Their own redemption story/arc.
I liked how Bodhi Rook, the imperial pilot defector, was ignored honestly. No one trusted him & he thinks his chance @@@@@ redemption, as suggested to him by Galen Erso, isn’t happening and that he’s truly lost. It makes his desire to help get the team in and his pleasure and doing so so much more poignant.
Loved the team of Chirrut Imwe & Baze Malbus and how they were struggling to keep their faith, especially after the loss of the temple. Baze repeating Chirrut’s chant at the end and finally meaning it was very affecting.
My daughter and I also were distraught over K-2SO’s end. His line to Jyn Erso when she gives him the blaster was very touching.
I do agree that they could have used Forest Whitaker more, maybe in flashback to when he abandoned Jyn but that may simply be because I enjoy him so much as an actor. Saw Gerrera as a character, however, was definitely a cautionary tale when you fight for a cause too long and let yourself forget why you are fighting for it.
So I guess I disagree with Emily. That’s ok. I’m sure she’s fine with it. She’s as big a Star Wars fan as the rest of us are. I will keep reading her essays on all things Star Wars and the like and comment and agree or disagree as I wish. Remember what Yoda said: “Only the Sith deal in absolutes.
Kato
@44 – WillMayBeWise: I have the right to disagree with the way she posits her arguments, with the way she tries to make us see the film as she sees it. Also, with the necessity of posting two separate negative articles about the film by the same author in a couple of days.
@48 – Kato: Agree with you in everyhing.
@49 – MaGnUs, I fully concede you capacity and ability to have an opinion, and to post it here. i’ll post out claiming it as a right makes you sound defensive and maybe a wee bit entitled. You find the style Emmet Asher-Perrin choses to present her arguments distasteful. Fair enough, YMMV. But you’ve failed to present a cognisant argument for why having two articles that show why she found Rogue One disappointing is a relavent comment on the strength (or lack of) her arguments in this particular article. I have the capacity and the ability to post a comment pointing this out
@48 – Kato – I agree with a lot of what you said. I was pretty upset with K-2SO’s end. We’ll just have to disagree with “Where X-wings Dare” (love that title, btw)
Did you see it in 3D or 2D? I saw it in 3D, which may have impacted how effective the CGI actors were (assuming you saw it in 2D). I remember watching Attack of the Clones first in a digital cinema and thinking Yoda was seamless with the analogue actors, but when I saw it again at a cinema showing it on celluloid, Yoda seemed to jar slightly. Maybe that’s why we perceived it differently. Or maybe you saw it in 3D and I’m just inventing a reason out of thin air as to why our Milage Varies.
And what did you think of the way they juxtaposed Vader’s fortress on Mustafar with the Data Centre on Scarif? I loved the way everything about those two was opposing, and how they didn’t hit you over the head with it, but inserted a scene between so the transition wasn’t abrupt. Consider The panning establishing shot of Mustafar. The Point of Veiw raises from the ground to the sky, everything tinged red, lava speckled with dark rock flowing down from the forbidding windowless black fortress whose stark angles jut out from where it sits, perched atop the stark, barren peak. The only light is from the molten rock as black, rolling, turbulent clouds obscure the sky. Contrast this with descending Point of Veiw establishing Scarif. Blue skies with wisps of white cloud pass to show blue water flecked with white foam falling into the basin where the sun sparkles off the gently rippling waves and the windows of the Data Centre. Rooted in the centre of basin, the building is all curves, reflecting the lush organic greenery of the atoll it’s constructed on.
The lava flows away on Mustafar, but here it flows toward the Data Centre, inviting, reflecting how everyone fears who lives in the fortress, but desires what lies with the Data Centre. The contrast only growing more acute as the Rebellion’s actions cause it to ripped apart by conflict and ultimately annihilated.
So you could say I liked that part.
The only thing I didn’t like about Scarif were those waterfalls flowing in toward the data center. Which made no sense, unless it was built that way, as a decorative feature. Because if that water weren’t being pumped back out to the surrounding lagoons, just where was that water going? The only even remotely useful purpose all that moving water could serve would be for some sort of cooling; perhaps for a reactor that generated a lot of waste heat.
I’d assumed the Data Centre used them as cooling and also that hydroelectric generators were hidden in them (much like the lava flows on Mustafar were used as a source of geothermal energy).
Also I’m not sure my use of basin is entirely correct. In some of the panning shots from the beach we see seascapes beyond the foliage. That suggests behind the establishing Point of View shot, there aren’t cliffs surrounding the basin, but spits of land curving into the ocean.
It may be a side effect of it being rendered using CGI, or may have been deliberate by the film makers, but the artful way the water, beaches and fertile land is laid out in that establishing shot, and the glimpses from the windows of the Data Centre suggest that the entire location is an Imperial construct. Both myself and my wife were reminded of the artificial islands in Dubai. (Google image search Palm Islands Dubai or The World Archipelago if you ever want to marvel at the hubris and ambition of humankind)
I think this is one of the few times I’m going to have to say I truly disagree with the majority of this review. I finally got a chance to see Rogue One and I unabashedly loved it. I walked out of that theater feeling more jazzed and excited than I have in years. Compare that to the lead brick I felt like I had in my stomach after seeing The Force Awakens…(yes, over time I have grudgingly come to accept and enjoy the movie, but it was definitely a let down for me on opening day).
“The truth is, what Rogue One truly succeeds at is repackaging a familiar experience so expertly that it feels unique.” – on one hand, you could probably say that about Star Wars as a whole (monomyth and all that) but honestly, I know you meant it kind of sarcastically, but that IS one of the main things that is wrong with The Force Awakens. But I think it works for Rogue One because Rogue One ACTUALLY TAKES PLACE during that period, and is about that story. Whereas in TFA I wanted to see something NEW! I wanted to see Luke DOING THINGS.
As for one of your other point:
“But the problem with labeling something “gritty” and “grown-up” is that these are lazy monikers that we often attribute to anything that delivers on tragedy and violence, regardless of the specificity of their use. Having a rough battle sequence and character deaths does not make a movie “grown-up,” and grit has never been a guarantee of quality. It might be refreshing to see in a Star Wars film, but that does not make Rogue One more worthy of praise than any other Star Wars film.” – I actually agree with this sentiment 100% (by the way, I don’t know if anybody else saw the ‘gritty’ Cars 3 trailer??? I got a laugh at that, but come on!). And again, this is actually a huge problem I had with TFA – I didn’t really care for all personal tragedy and destruction of everything the previous movies had established. Wheras, this is a movie taking place during the actual war so…in context it actually makes sense. (And in truth I didn’t even think it was that gritty…yes, more serious in tone, the stakes were higher, everybody dies….but I still felt like they accomplished something).
I actually do agree with you that Jyn’s personality was reworked from the trailer (although I thought that ‘I rebel’ line was stupid so I’m kind of glad it got cut) – but since I purposefully kept away from most coverage of this movie, I think I had very few actual expectations or prconceptions, and so to me, the development and motivations made sense. And I was actually excited to see a lot of other women faces in the crowd (especially the older woman X-wing pilot! I want to know what her story is and she must be good to have survived all this time).
Regarding the ensemble, I actually kind of loved that you don’t really know everything about them – but it was obvious they ALL had stories. I liked the mystery – and I want to know more! I am sure the EU will fill those gaps for us. And I had tears in my eyes at several points – even when the DROID got killed. I CRIED OVER A DROID! (Funnily enough, I actually thought of one of your articles when Jyn gave him a blaster, since droids with blasters is kind of one of those taboo things, battle droids aside). But I also teared up at Chirrut, and at the defected pilot.
Regarding the CGI faces – honestly, I was stunned at how well they did Tarkin (the voice wasn’t perfect) – although I can understand some of the squeamishness and the possible precedents for this. And no, maybe he wasn’t needed in the movie…and maybe Krennic wasn’t needed in the movie. But I don’t know, how do you tell what is needed? Sometimes in life, and in stories, there are extraneous characters (and there is such a thing as a universe feeling too small when it only has the same few people in it). And I think especially for Tarkin it makes sense that he was there (if anything, I thought Vader’s initial scene was fillery – but OMG HE HAS A LAVA PALACE ON MUSTAFAR BECAUSE OF COURSE HE WOULD – my inner Star Wars nerd freaked out because the lava palace has been part of concept art since ESB days – and is even cracking dumb puns like RotS novelization Anakin. However, his final scene was an awesome treat to really see WHY Darth Vader was so fearsome). As for Carrie Fisher – I saw this movie AFTER I heard of her death and I cried – but honestly, it seemed like a very fitting tribute that she got the last word (“Hope”) and I think that IS a really perfect way to end the movie and a good honor to all those who lost their lives in it.
Actually, one nitpick I do agree on is I did find Cassian’s speech a little odd – when he did make it sound like that they were volunteering almost because of a sunk cost fallacy – although I don’t think that’s what they were actually going for. I would imagine they were going for something like realizing they actually have a shot at making a difference and a real victory, and not just petty skirmishes/revenges.
One final thing I’ll say is that I was really impressed with the sheer amount of detail that went in to the sounds, the music (they used to Death Star motif AND Imperial Attack!!!), the sets, the costumes and references (Temple of the Whills! The obsolete T-15!) that just really seemed to show a lot of affection for the source material.
@23 – ah, but in ANH, they specifically refer to the ‘tapes’…which honestly always kind of made me laugh as it’s dated.
So, they were just staying true to the originals :)
@28 – I actually had a similar thought about the ending. I think the movie perhaps portrayed Vader as a bit TOO close on their tail – there really isn’t any plausible deniability at all, and he says only that the plans had been beamed to the ship, as opposed to physically handed off (which is what we all witness in the movie – unless the idea is that Vader doesn’t actually see this?)
@51WillMayBeWise, thanks; I liked that title as well. ;-)
Love the Socratic handle by the way.
I saw Rogue One in 2D. Never been a big fan of 3D – I guess it just doesn’t ‘work’ for me. I never thought the live action Yoda light-saber duels really worked – the extended ones in particular. Better in the cartoon versions I think.
I did like the juxtaposition of the flow of the lava and water between the two scenes. Can’t say as I noticed that consciously, so nice spotting on your part.
As to the whole YMMV issue, I can’t say it worries me. I like what I like and others like what they like. I enjoy discussing/debating movies/songs/books/comics/cartoons/sports/etc… with those that don’t look at things the same way I do. Doesn’t worry me that others didn’t like what I liked, honestly. As long as people can discuss our ‘disagreement’ civilly it’s all good.
Kato
@55 – Lisamarie: I’m SO glad you loved this movie. :) As for Vader saying they beamed the plans, maybe he just made a mistake.
@57 – it was definitely a nice treat after TFA which was…maybe let-down is a strong word (because there really is a lot I love about that movie, and with time and multiple viewings I’ve been able to appreciate it more on its own terms outside of my own desires for it) but didn’t give me the reaction I’d hoped. But I guess now I can understand how all the prequel haters felt, and in a sense, I can understand how Emily feels about this movie, because for various personal/subjective/individual reasons, TFA didn’t quite do it for me and I felt like the one negative person in a sea of everybody talking about how unbelievably awesome it was – and in many ways I felt the same way about TFA (that it was a bit pandering) as this article feels about Rogue One.
Yes, all of us regulars at Tor.com know how you felt about TFA. :)
Based purely on anecdata, I suspect there is a strong correlation between one’s relative assessments of Rogue One vs. The Force Awakens and opinions on Eps. IV-VI vs. Eps. I-III. As RO is so thoroughly derivative of IV-VI, it probably resonates more with the crowd that wishes I-III were different (or never happened), whereas TFA appeals a bit more to those more accommodating of Lucas’s revisions and Disney’s new directions
I thoroughly enjoyed both TFA and RO, but thought Eps 1-3 were trash. I’m not sure where that puts me on the anecdata spectrum.
@61Sophist, same here, although I don’t consider 1-3 trash; just terribly disappointing.
My reaction somewhat mirrors Lisamrie’s: I left TFA much more excited than she did, or I thought I would honestly. And I left Rogue One even more excited than when I left TFA.
Kato
PS – @37SDWhale’s misspelling reminds me of my friend who introduced me to the X-Men comics. He called Rogue ‘Rouge’ and I had to correct him. Still here that pronunciation when I see ‘Rogue.’ (Sorry for the cross-fandom nerd tangent.) ;-)
Well, I love the OTs, and I love the PTs too (to be fair I think AOTC is a little weak because the romance is just so bad, but I think TPM is a lot better than people give it credit for and I love RotS). I loved Rogue One and I have a love/hate relationship with TFA. (Mostly love now – it’s just taken awhile).
I appreciate the PTs for being different, really, because they ARE telling a different story – the story of the fall of a Republic. I know it wasn’t perfectly executed but I did really enjoy them.
Regarding TFA and Rogue One: I think there are two different approaches to returning to an existing franchise. You can either try to do something totally new, which is exciting but runs the risk of alienating the original fans, or you can just keep redoing the same types of things. It’s probably hard to find the right balance with something so iconic as Star Wars.
In some ways TFA did just revisit a lot of ANH nostalgia and story beats, but in others it forces you to look at the originals in a new way (or at least it did for me because it’s hard to not think about what’s looming ahead). And that can be uncomfortable. And on the other hand, in some ways I feel like TFA didn’t go far ENOUGH to bring us something new (especially about the evolution of the Jedi and understanding of the Force). Yes, it advanced the timeline but at least in the areas I was interested in didn’t seem to advance the plot. Of course, it still has two more movies to finish up its story, so taken as a whole the trilogy may still get us there. And the new stuff it did add just made me really sad, ha.
Whereas for the most part Rogue One didn’t really add anything new aside from fleshing out the details and using some different PoVs. To me it basically felt like Star Wars – but that is sometimes really satisfying if that’s what you want. If I did have any fears for the movie it was that they would try to do something that completely twists how you look at a ANH. Like (extreme example – I doubt they’d actually do this) – ooh, look how dark and gritty the Rebellion is, they had to bomb a sick kids’ hospital to get the plans and Leia personally pulled the trigger! And honestly I’m glad they didn’t go that route because I’m just kind of sick of that kind of thing. I think they did a reasonable job showing some of the grayness of people in the Rebellion and the dangers of becoming the monster you fight, without having to sink to Game of Thrones Level shock value. Or on a less grim level, make the whole thing a reveal that Palpatine had 100% manipulated the entire thing and none of the Rebellion’s victories were real victories based on their own skill/bravery. I guess you might say that showing that the flaw in the plans was engineered all along is a bit of an example of that, but not quite as egregious. For me that kind of twist/reveal is satisfying (I’m aware it’s a rather subjective thing where the threshold lies) since it isn’t one of those ‘everything you thought you knew was wrong’, but just a plausible added detail that explains the flaw.
So I can maybe understand that for some people Rogue One is just kind of shallow. It doesnt advance the story or bring anything super new to the mythos in terms of how the Force works, etc. But I still loved it. And I think it did provide some interesting insight and details into the inner workings of the Rebellion (and Empire) at the time. It’s a narrow slice of Star Wars history, but still a really fun one. Of my two main gripes with TFA, it didn’t do the first one (do something depressing that makes me a little sad when I watch the originals), and while it did do the second one (not really add anything new), I don’t think Rogue One needed to.
@63/Lisamarie: “To me it basically felt like Star Wars – but that is sometimes really satisfying if that’s what you want.” <— Yep, this is the basis for my hypothesis above. Each viewer’s assessment comes down to how he or she weights each movie’s merit as a film vs. it status as a cultural marker or pure entertainment.
Much of the fanbase (probably a majority at this point in time) was introduced to Star Wars via A New Hope, which makes for one hell of memorable start—especially if first seen as a child or tween. IMO most of the scorn heaped upon The Phantom Menace and subsequent releases arose less from their merits as films but instead more out of disappointment that none of them could ever fully recreate that rush from one’s first viewing of ANH. Hopes were raised again when The Force Awakens was announced—no Jar Jar, no Hayden, Lucas won’t be involved anymore to screw it up again, hallelujah!—but despite the familiar characters and clear homages, Disney produced something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike ANH, thus again disappointing many. Now, we’ve got yet another new Star Wars movie that necessarily must look and feel almost exactly like Episode IV, so those who have waited so long—a sizable subset of fandom—finally got a close approximation to their wishes and will likely declare it superior to TFA on that basis.
I’ve been thinking about why I found Rogue One so disappointing, and I think I’ve worked out why. Posting it here as I think this is the best forum for it! :)
I’m afraid in trying to avoid expectations I subconsciously created a slew of them. I had avoided any spoilers, even so far as to avoid the second trailer. Going into the film, I knew the following:
* it covered the events summed up in A New Hope’s opening crawl “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.”
* it was going to be “gritty” and in the style of a World War 2 movie
* it would be more morally complex than the Light and Dark sides shown in the non-anthology films.
* I’d seen the first trailer, but avoided the frame by frame analysis and even the second trailer.
As a consequence, in retrospect I was subconsciously expecting:
* a heist movie that would segue into a space battle
* the first act to set up the characters involved in the heist, like Ocean’s 11, the Dirty Dozen, or Where Eagles Dare.
* the second act would be the heist itself- queue the mission impossible theme
* the third act was the Rebel Fleet arriving to cover their escape. Destroying the Data Centre in their wake, which would at least delay the Empire in figuring out that anything had been taken, never mind what.
* I was expecting most of the cast to die, like in The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare.
* I was expecting at various points in the narrative to doubt the motives of each of the characters. Jen was The Outsider in the trailers, being brought in (unwillingly by evidence of her shackles) because she had a certain skill set. I had was also expecting the Rebel Command to reveal there was at least one traitor in the infiltration team, and that’s why they’d brought in Jen. Like Clint Eastwood’s character in Where Eagles Dare, as an outsider Jen was the only one they could “trust”. As K-2SO was introduced, I wondered if it might have had a hard-wired subroutine that reported back on any reprogrammed activities it undertook. Or maybe the ex-Imperial pilot *was* a spy (which was why Tarkin knew where the leak had originated) until he got reprogrammed by Saw’s alien pet.
* as per the heist / WW2 spy theme for the second act, I expected careful planning and an escape route. Given it’s Star Wars I expected lots of explosions like the escape in Where Eagles Dare. When I first saw that movie, I remember wondering why they were wasting time with all the electronics. Then came the escape and they led Germans straight into those booby-traps and I was thinking just how awesome that was as a couple of allies managed to take out so many enemies at once.
* I expected the Data Centre to get blown up, and the Rebel fleet to withdraw in good order, largely intact, when the inevitable Imperial Reinforcements arrived. Then Admiral Raddus to give the order to scatter to explain why there’s only fighters at Yavin IV when the Imperials show up.
Looking at those expectations, it was almost guaranteed to disappoint me. But I think three things really stand out:
* Tarkin seems to be the only one with a plan. Everyone else (including Vader) just seems to muddle through. Compare this to Return of the Jedi, when you realise it’s a Xanatos pile-up. About the only people that aren’t following some kind of plan is C3PO and Chewbacca.
* the Rebel “victory” relies on not one, but two senior Imperial Captains, given command of Star Destroyers, making elementary tactical errors.
* the Rebels achieved a Pyrrhic Victory. Yes, they got away with the plans, so technically they won. But it cost them a load of ground troops, all of their capital ships, and all but two under-strength squadrons of fighters. Hardly the victory a small child watching A New Hope had imagined.
So yes, I’ll accept as much blame for being disappointed in the film as the film itself. But still; it could have met more of my unrealistic expectations than it did.
For me, Rogue One was classic Gareth Edwards. Which is to say, a bunch of great parts that are never put together particularly well, populated by flat, bland characters I don’t remotely care about. The only exception being Krennic, who, as you said, you coudl removed form the film and it wouldn’t change a thing.
It reminded me of Edwards’ Godzilla, which also had a bunch of great *moments* that were strung awkwardly together and never became a good film.
There is a reason a standalone Star Wars movie with a set of main characters who die at the end Is among the highest grossing entries in the franchise. The main criticism here seems to be that in the space of a 2 hour 15 minute movie we didn’t get enough glue to bind these characters together for their mission. Oh yes, and I forgot, the movie was made so that audiences would like it. This, somehow, is identified as a flaw. Weak sauce. I’ve rarely read a review where was so obvious that the author had the review already written; she simply needed to watch the movie to arbitrarily designate a few things as flaws. As my daughter, a recent convert to Star Wars religion, would say… whatev.
@67/fullyfunctional – fair play to you if you and your daughter enjoyed it, but a lot of people didn’t. And we didn’t go into the movie wanting to dislike it.
and yes, a lot of people liked it, enough to see it repeatedly, given the box office. Just like Joker, it seems a not-uplifting, unhappy film strikes a cord with people, helping them escape the world for a little while.
For those of us for which those films don’t have that effect, we can appreciate the craft that went into films like Rogue One, but the end result just doesn’t work for us. You might feel we went in prejudging it, but it was supposed to be a Star Wars film. I *wanted* to enjoy it
@67/fullyfunctional – fair play to you if you and your daughter enjoyed it, but a lot of people didn’t. And we didn’t go into the movie wanting to dislike it.
and yes, a lot of people liked it, enough to see it repeatedly, given the box office. Just like Joker, it seems a not-uplifting, unhappy film strikes a cord with people, helping them escape the world for a little while.
For those of us for which those films don’t have that effect, we can appreciate the craft that went into films like Rogue One, but the end result just doesn’t work for us. You might feel we went in prejudging it, but it was supposed to be a Star Wars film. I *wanted* to enjoy it
@69 – I suppose I’m a little weird, but I rememer finding Rogue One very uplifting. I was so jazzed when I walked out of the theater. Yeah, they all died, but they succeeded! They gave their life for a higher cause. (I’m certainly not trying to glorify useless death in battle or that kind of thing).
I actually felt WAY more depressed after walking out of The Force Awakens. Even at the end of Revenge of the Sith, I walked out feeling this little flare of hope after seeing baby Luke and that binary sunset. But I just felt like complete shit after TFA.
But obviously YMMV – not saying my reaction is any more valid than others’.
@70/LisaMarie – you’re not weird, at least as far as the feelings this film gives you. Films don’t, as a general rule, get such big box office numbers without repeat viewings, and people don’t tend to go and see films again that left them feeling miserable the first time.
There’s an episode of Northern Exposure that deals with this, as the local Shaman wants to research the white folks healing stories, but when he asks for the tales the Caucasian people tell each other in their oral tradition, the responses he gets are urban myths that don’t end well for the characters being talked about. Urban myths don’t exactly make people feel good. Eventually he realises that it’s movies that have their own kind of magic to make people feel better, and that movies are the Caucasian equivalent of his healing stories.
Like any magic, there’s an element of science, but ultimately movie-making is an art. Different people feel differently after seeing exactly the same work. I’m glad you enjoyed the film, and that it works for you. I can also see why TFA didn’t work for you – according to Bob Iger, Lucas felt the same. You seem totally on board with how our mileage varies. That’s what I like about Tor.com – we can accept different people have different journeys that means we experience things differently. It just felt (at least to me) like fullyfunctional doesn’t like how the film doesn’t work for others like it does for them, as if that’s a judgement on her, and so decided that something else must have motivated Asher-Perrin to write the article. And that kind of felt like a judgment on me, because I agree with most of what the article says. <shrugs>
YMMV. ;).
@60 – I would dispute the label of Rogue One as a “not-uplifting, unhappy” film. The movie is about a desperate quest, by a somewhat ragtag group of rebels, to steal plans for the construction of a superweapon, in order to find a way to destroy it. We know from the outset that they will be successful, because we’ve all seen A New Hope. The reason the movie exists is to tell a dramatic, exciting story to get there. One by one, the protagonists take selfless actions for the greater good, and while their deaths tug at our emotions, the sadness at seeing their sacrifices are tempered with the knowledge that they are dying for a cause – a goal for the greater good, that we ultimately know will be achieved because of what they gave for it. The scene where Cassian and Jyn die doesn’t make me unhappy. Jyn is smiling as they embrace. They have achieved their purpose. It’s not a “feel good” ending for them or any of the other characters. But the fact they did what they came to do certainly makes the viewer feel like it was well worth the two hours invested in coming to care about these characters. I think Lisamarie may have had the same visceral response to the film that I did.
And with respect, I don’t know what you meant about “this was supposed to be a Star Wars film”. In what way was it not?
As for my issues with the author of this article (which you commented on in your last post), guilty as charged. I confess that while I admire the author’s style and attention to detail, I do feel that many of his/her reviews tend to be written to try to convince the reader of a premise that the author had already formulated before watching the movie. I still can’t get over the title, which claims the movie “really wants you to like it”, yet that claim isn’t really fleshed out in the article itself. The author also suggests that Leia being handed the plans for the death star should not be considered the emotional pinnacle of a film in which so many good people lost their lives. What? That moment is essentially the raison d’etre for every action all those people take…. I just think the review is all over the place, messy and unformed.
But as you said, YMMV. I enjoyed reading your responses.