Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
The march of the Star Wars franchise continues with this side story, a direct prequel to A New Hope that ends about five minutes before that film starts, timeline wise. It’s the tale of the quest to get a hold of the Star Destroyer plans, making it an exceptionally loose adaptation of the first level of the 1995 Dark Forces video game on PC and Mac. Don’t play the Playstation port though, it’s a bit shabby.
Rogue One mainly concerns itself with Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso, who finds herself busted out of an Imperial prison camp by Rebel Intelligence Officer Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his reprogrammed Imperial droid K-2SO (laconically voiced by Alan Tudyk). Jyn’s hauled in front of Mon Mothma and other assorted bigwigs and strongarmed into helping them make contact with exiled extremist Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who happens to be the guy who raised Jyn after her mother was killed and weapons designer father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) was taken by the Empire. Now word has reached the Alliance of a message that Galen has smuggled out to Gerrera, and they must know its contents. They hope Jyn can give them a foot in the door.
So, off they go, trying to contact Gerrera on some Imperial occupied backwater pursued by Imperial forces headed by Director of Unusually Large Weapon Installations, Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and the weapon Galen’s designed, which of course is the Death Star. This fully armed and operational battle station shows off its hitherto unseen lovetap alt-fire mode on said backwater planet, but not before Jyn hears her father’s message – he’s hidden a small vulnerability in the design that, well, I’ll assume you’ve seen A New Hope, so let’s skip that.
However, to exploit this they’ll need to get a hold of the Death Star plans, which will entail breaking into the very high security Imperial Archives facility, which sounds like a suicide mission. This is your last call for spoilers. Last call for spoilers. It is a suicide mission. Everyone dies, but they manage to transmit the plans to a waiting blockade runner, replete with princess and small bin-shaped droid.
And so ends the factual part of this review. I commence henceforth with the bloviation.
Rogue One is one of the most poorly written big-budget films I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a very boring film, for a number of reasons, apart from when it’s being a very irritating film, for a number of reasons. Here are a few of each.
Primarily, the reason I find it boring is that sadly they’ve borrowed heavily from their Marvel stablemate’s obsession with throwing loads of characters into a film without having the first idea about what to do with any of them. It’s bad enough that your lead character sleepwalks into being the most committed rebel of them all because otherwise there’s no bridge to the last act, but the rest of the cast barely have a character, let alone character motivations.
Diego Luna’s normally a dependable hand, but here he’s saddled with a character that’s supposed to be ruthless but also sympathetic, but the underwritten, monotonic performance makes him a bland nonentity, which I suppose marries well with Felicity Jones’ equally characterless turn. Also, why must all female leads in Star Wars films speak in clipped, received pronunciation tones? You’re acting against a Space Mexican, so I assume other accents were cast-able? When the most charismatic performance in your film comes from a mildly amusing sarcastic robot, perhaps you should rethink things?
As for the rest of the gang, well, lets just say this. They could all be written out with either no change to the script, or very minimal changes. Does that sound like a solid basis for a film? Particular mention must be made of Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang’s roles, which appear to have been inserted because firstly, we must appeal to the Chinese market, and secondly, because although there’s no reason to have a Jedi in this film, but we want a Jedi in the film, so let’s just put one in and not call him a Jedi. You may think I’m being cynical, but not half as cynical as this film. Ironically, despite them very obviously being parachuted into the script, they’re probably better realised and more human than the leads.
Again showcasing Garth Edwards’ career-long problems with characters, we’re told multiple times in the early going about what a badass Forrest Furnishing’s character is, leading me to expect he’s going to play some strong role in the film. More fool me, instead he mumbles a bit, then despite ample opportunity doesn’t flee from an oncoming wave of destruction for no reason whatsoever. None. He spouts the sort of line that would be said if he were to stay behind to hold off an oncoming force, but there’s no point staying to punch an explosion.
While the script is plagued throughout with horrendous character and plot issues, it seems that rather than spend any time addressing them it’s been decided instead to litter the film with nods and easter eggs relating the the original trilogy in an orgy of lazy fanservice. I think the point I realised that this was going to be a film primarily targeted at 33-38 year old manchildren was when we walk past two boys from the Cantina scene of A New Hope, which shows that it’s not a film that’s secure enough in its own world to not have to keep driving home the point that it is a Star Wars film, in case you missed that somehow. If it had any identity or charm of its own it wouldn’t be so noticeable, but this film uses the franchise as a crutch so blatantly it’s rather annoying.
In the wake of this film, some have started asking questions about the future of actors in this brave new world of CGI resurrection technology. I would answer these questions with a few of my own. Namely, are you blind? Are you going to special screenings where vaseline is daubed in your eyes on entry? Are you unfamiliar with humans, and how they look? The tech on display is little better than dead-eyed virtual Kevin Spacey in the Call of Duty game a few years back, and that was before I upgraded my video card.
I would barely, barely, accept the pseudo-Carrie Fischer monstrosity at the end as just another of the endless throwaway references to previous films that litter Rogue One, but pulling the stunt with Peter Digi-Cushing as Ground Muff Tarking who is, if not a plot critical character, certainly a featured one is, well, let’s charitably say brave. I wonder who looked at this as a tech demo and thought this pallid waxwork automaton was good enough to splash on multiplex screens, and I hope they get the cataract surgery that they so clearly require. It is baffling to me that anyone found this acceptable, although apparently they did, when the only positive thing I can say about this exercise is that it found my personal peak, or perhaps trough, of the uncanny valley. Thanks, Disney!
Between this and The Force Awakens , the recycling of content with recycled digital actors shows a worrying trend towards backwards-looking and navel-gazing for the Star Wars films, which means we may be getting a nominally new movie every year that’s just picking over the bones of the previous work. I’d previously mocked George Lucas’ notion that the Star Wars universe was exclusively about Darth Vader’s story arc, but on current evidence he might be proven right.
Speaking of Vader, he’s really the only returning character who’s handled correctly, in short action scenes joining with the wider action in being the only redeeming feature of the movie. Pretty explosions and all, but very difficult to care about given the soulless puppets carrying out said action.
In a franchise that banks on nostalgia, Rogue One was at least more successful in triggering that for me than The Force Awakens was. Tellingly, not for any of the films, or even the novels, but for the video games. They did the comic relief robot schtick better in the Knights of the Old Republic games, and the space battles were more engaging when controlling the X-Wing rather than watching it. More defined and likeable characters, too.
Now, I’m under no illusions that anyone with a passing interest in this hasn’t seen it already, but I’d still recommend against watching Rogue One. Almost as bad as Captain America: Civil War.