One Man’s Review of Rogue One

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

         This is my personal, initial, and early feelings after seeing “Rogue One” last night. I realize that my feelings can and will change on multiple viewings of the film and that other people are going to have different perspectives than me.

The Good

         There is a lot to like in this movie. Rogue One, first and foremost, is an experiment. Disney is asking themselves: “How can we make a Star Wars film that doesn’t follow the normal rules of a Star Wars film”. Rogue One subtracts opening crawls and fancy transitions from the Star Wars formula and adds captions to show setting and flashback sequences. Let's be clear on this: I think experimentation is a good thing. This particular experiment both succeeded in some ways and failed in others.

        One way it succeeded were the action sequences. The Battle of Scarif harkens beck to everything we loved about The Battle of Hoth and The Battle of Endor. The third act of the film, for me, was the act that screamed “This is Star Wars”!

The Bad

         A lot of people are saying the tone of the movie is too dark. I disagree with this statement. I think the real problem stems from the characters. For a movie that is supposed to be about “Hope”, these characters don’t seem to have a lot of it.

         To me, good Star Wars characters should be Memorable, Likable, and Iconic. I thought that Rey, Finn, and Poe were perfect examples of this type of character in The Force Awakens. The characters in Rogue One however are only semi-memorable, likable-enough and not-so-iconic. I doubt it’s the fault of the actors, but more likely the script they had to work from. The characters in this film seemed like they weren’t quite sure how they fit into the Star Wars universe. There seemed to be a lack of confidence in these characters. The notable exceptions to this is K-2SO and Krennic. I thought they were both- Memorable, Likable, and Iconic.

The Ugly

         The worse part about Rogue One for me is that it sometimes falls into the same traps as the Prequels, especially in its dealings with classic trilogy storylines and characters. The question some people are asking is “What is the point”? and “Did this really need to be made”?

         The plot of this entire film fits inside of the opening crawl to the original 1977 Star Wars film. At some points this film answers questions that weren’t even asked, such as, “How did Princess Leia end up with the Death Star plans”. Sometimes these answers seem to be excuses for the original trilogy, such as, “The Death Star was so venerable because it was purposely built that way,”

         The additions of Vader and Leia (and Dr. Evazan / Ponda Baba) into this plot can be seen as gimmicky fan-service (which is sometimes okay).

Final Thoughts

         I guess time will tell how significant and memorable Rogue One will be. I think Disney should continue to experiment in breaking from format. However, as a lifelong Star Wars fan I think I am always going to like the episodic format better than any prequels or break-from-format films. In short, Force Awakens, just feels more Star-Warsy to me than Rogue One does.