Review: Rogue One

The latest entry in the Star Wars film franchise, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016), gives the audience the story of the opening crawl to Star Wars (1977). This story gives us new characters as well as background on long-established characters, many of whom had Expanded Universe stories that have since been deemed "Legends" and are no longer part of the official Star Wars canon. The film also provides the audience with some tying up of loose ends and a small amount of fan-service that thankfully comes nowhere near the amount of fan-service J.J. Abrams gave us in The Force Awakens (2015).

The film brings back the characters of Red Leader, Garvin Dreis, (Drewe Henley) and Gold Leader, John "Dutch" Vander, (Angus McInnes). This is a logical move given that the events of the film take place roughly ten minutes before the beginning of Star Wars and it is unlikely that there would be many, if any, changes in rank amongst the Rebel fleet. The film is also notable for the appearance of Blue Squadron. The Red Squadron in Star Wars was originally written as Blue Squadron, however due to filming before a blue screen, the color was changed to red so the blue markings on the X-Wings would not appear as stars in the film. Also notable in Rogue One is the death of Red 5, which explains why Luke would later be known as Red 5 when there was a fleet already in existence. But what is one of the most interesting pieces of fan-service in this film is the display of death sticks[1] being stored in a Rebel soldier's helmet.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the special effects. The CGI in the film is often used to emulate the effects used in Star Wars during the production of the film in 1976. A striking example of this is can be seen when a Star Destroyer is destroyed. The entirely CGI ship appears as a plastic model breaking apart (the original Star Destroyers themselves were built from pieces of plastic model sets). However, the CGI in the film also serves as the most controversial aspect of the film. Rogue One uses CGI to resurrect Peter Cushing to reprise his role as Grand Moff Tarkin. The film also creates a young Carrie Fisher to reprise her role at the end of the film. The noticeable difference in appearance of these two characters, in part due to the level of CGI technology and the prior knowledge of the death of Peter Cushing and the appearance of Carrie Fisher at the time, brings the viewer out of the realism of the film. Similar to how Kracauer describes the juxtaposition of a real ocean and the fabricated set of Elsinore in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, the unnatural movements of Tarkin's mouth and facial expressions next to a living human serve as a reminder that the character is in fact CGI. [2]

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, aside from being a film created without the input of George Lucas, seems to detract from Lucas's original concept behind 1977's Star Wars. Originally, Lucas had intended to create a film that would come across as a foreign film. For example, if we watch a film by Akira Kurosawa, we see references to a rich culture that we may know little to nothing about, but they appear in the films and we are able to follow what is going on even though we may not know the specifics of a samurai. In Star Wars, Lucas added a lot of references to things such as the Clone Wars and the Kessel Run, but these are never explained in the film. By making a film that shows the sequences of the crawl, Rogue One detracts from the mystery of the story of the 1977 film. Granted, this same argument can be made about all of the Star Wars films, but there is the difference that Lucas himself detracted from the mystery, thus making an artistic choice of what to explain and what to keep mysterious, pre-existing culture.

All this aside, Rogue One is a promising start to the "Star Wars Story" films after what was generally a disappointment from The Force Awakens. With less pressure in continuing the Skywalker story, the "Star Wars Story" films should allow for different styles of films and stories to be set in the Star Wars universe, something that was originally explored through the Expanded Universe and the fan films that have been lovingly embraced by George Lucas himself. However, it is unclear as to how these new films will affect the original six films. For example, I have not watched Star Wars since I saw Rogue One, but I imagine there will be things that will be hard to not think of, such as how Captain Antilles knows that Vader knows that they were, in fact, not on a diplomatic mission since they were just seen leaving the Rebels', "first victory over the evil Galactic Empire," the battle of Scarif.

[1] Obi-Wan Kenobi was offered death sticks in a bar on Coruscant by Sleazbaggano in Attack of the Clones (Lucas, 2002)

[2] Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film p. 36

Submitted by Michael Levy