Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The Disney-era of Star Wars is well and truly underway following the success of last year’s The Force Awakens, and it continues this year with Gareth Edward’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first in an anthology of spin-offs that focus on background events and origin stories in the rapidly expanding filmic universe.

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is separated from her father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) at an early age when he is taken by Imperial military officer Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). She finds help from Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whitaker) and manages to stay out of Imperial sights. Years later, the Empire is building a new superweapon, the Death Star, and Jyn is recruited by the Rebel Alliance to join a team who are out to find the design blueprints of the weapon.

As the first major theatrical spin-off of the series, Rogue One is arguably the most hyped about movie of the year. Billed by many as a war-film of sorts, it’s a direction we haven’t seen the series go in before, and strikes a very different tone to The Force Awakens or indeed any of the others. Where space opera sized characters, love-triangles, story twists and endless metaphors about family have dominated previously, Rogue One focuses-down to the nitty-gritty land skirmishes, insane aerial battles and internal politics of the Rebellion that work behind the scenes in the main saga.

Rogue One is in essence the opening crawl of A New Hope, at least that’s what it is intended to be. At the forefront we have the story of Jyn Erso and the team that steal the design schematics of the Death Star. There’s a lot of back-story and character development that falls flat here, primarily because the film moves so quickly that it gets caught up in the rush and the characters don’t have time to breathe. Where these crucial character moments are expedited through the hyperbolic nature of the core films, this instalment aims for more subtlety in style and direction, thus it really can’t hope to build well-rounded characters in the time given and material covered.

Whilst it’s over two hours in length, Rogue One still manages to pack more than its fair share of content into the running time. If we’re not constantly planet hopping, we’re filling in canonic plot holes with new context. If you boil it right down, you could argue the whole film exists to explain the Death Star’s crucial design flaw. Slotted-in at the tail end of the nineteen year timeline-gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, the film feels too grand in scale for a contained spin-off, and in many ways there’s not enough meat in the plot to sustain the construct of such a huge summer blockbuster.

Jones manages to do a lot with Jyn when the film slows down enough to give her the opportunity, though at times she gets lost amongst the frantic action and the various other ensemble members vying for the audience's attention. Luna’s Andor has charisma, but like Ahmed’s Bodhi is inclined to blend into the background too much for a core supporting character. Yen and Wen’s characters are the unlikely buddy-sidekicks of the film who work efficiently as a fighting unit, and Alan Tudyk’s K-2SO whilst sometimes a little too forced, is one hell of an upgrade from C-3PO. Forest Whitaker and Mads Mikkelsen are both not given nearly enough screen time, and finally we have Ben Mendelsohn who is really just the archetype evil villain.

Rogue One however does look beautiful and takes advantage of well designed sets and practical effects almost as effectively as The Force Awakens. There’s X-Wings, Y-Wings and TIE-Fighters galore, as well as various Imperial Walkers on the ground, and plenty of idiotic-as-ever Stormtroopers to be mown-down. There are a few moments of fan service just as in last year's instalment, although not as numerous, and the main sequences are tied together with a fantastic score by Michael Giacchino that weaves in just the right amount of Williams’ iconic soundtrack. One of the biggest issues with the film is *possible spoilers* the  use of CGI to bring a character back from the original films (and effectively the actor back from the dead) who I didn’t really think needed to be in the film at all.

Rogue One feels like a slightly-unnecessary, heavily bloated chapter in the greater Star Wars universe that doesn’t do enough with its characters. However it does manage to differentiate itself from the main saga, and has been made with enough love and devotion to the canon to make it worthwhile viewing for Star Wars fans.