Alright right off the bat its good, its great actually, its Disney Magic and Star Wars. Also it’s a prequel set immediately before the original trilogy, minor spoiler, actually the end scene of Rogue One directly leads in to the opening of A New Hope. It’s got a whole new cast of colourful and interesting characters; I liked to think that it was made as a how-to-guide for DC comics on characterizing all members of a diverse team. I think there are a few awkward scenes here and there, and a ton of star wars lore Easter Eggs (they drink blue milk!). No reference of Bothans, so that’s a drawback, but Darth Vader makes a force based pun, so I’ll live. Go watch it, it’s pretty, well made, and the characters are fun/unique. When you watch it (do) tell me who your favourite character is, why it is K-2, and why he beat out blind/awesome Donnie Yen.
The Plot
Set between the events of Revenge of The Sith, and A New Hope, this movie chronicles the stealing of the Death Star plans which spawn the entire plot of A New Hope, and the team that pulled of the heist of the Galaxy. By heist I mean sneaky incursion, and by sneaky I mean temporarily sneaky, then a full on assault. Jyn, the main character, does a little Luke Skywalker arc with reluctantly helping at first, to daddy issues, to believing in the cause (okay so switched the order up a bit from Luke but still). Her father is the lead engineer that designed the Death Star (mostly sorta against his will, he doesn’t like the empire, or at least his wife didn’t and happy wife happy life, or apparently not really).
The plot is pretty simple, they get warned that there is a super weapon, then they see a test firing (apparently Aldaraan was the first full power test, not the first test). Conveniently Jyn’s father sent a message saying where he put a structural weakness, and where to find the plans. To the films credit Saw (Forest Whitaker) does actually point out how strange a coincidence the timing is. They go find said plans, and hand it off through a tense battle to the ship carrying Princess Leia, and that’s it, that’s the film. The characters are what make this movie shine though, so I’m gonna talk about them.
The Characters
Alright first off fuck Suicide Squad, (I wrote a review here: http://butheresthething.blogs.com/my-blog/2016/08/suicide-squad.html ), Rogue One is how you characterize a whole diverse team, and make me care. Now this sucks objectively, cause going into the film you know that none of these characters appear in the movies that directly follow these events, so you don’t want to care too much (due to uncertainty) but dammit you do. Hell I even cared about pilot dude, and he was barely there. Alright going through the characters in all their glory:
Jyn: Daughter of Imperial Scientist plot McGuffin and lady who doesn’t like the Empire, and when her father is captured by the empire to return to work (chief engineer for the Deathstar, el grand pumbah), she is raised by a militant rebel extremist. He was a friend of family apparently (would love to hear that story sometime). She is a trained rebel soldier left behind by her own mentor; “You were my best soldier, I knew you would be fine” we get as explanation, “I was 16” as the response. Daddy issues, crack soldier, general smuggler type, strong chemistry/sexual tension (from which nothing ever comes, more on that later) with lead number 2;
Cassian McJaded: Head of Rebel Intelligence, sneaky spyman with no qualms about killing friend or foe as needed, until later in the plot when he does have a moral problem with it. He plays a darker Han Solo, allusions are made to his dark past and the things he has done in service of the rebellion. He plays Rogue (one of them), is morally conflicted about his mission at times, generally a good guy, clearly in love with Jyn, and now a day after seeing the movie I can’t really remember any other character traits… His best feature by far though was his Robot companion;
K-2: The second best robot in any star wars vehicle (following HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic, and just before R2-D2). He is a reprogrammed Imperial Interrogation Droid (though not the floaty ball kind, just forget those exist). Voiced by Alan Tudyk (one of my very favourite actors, along with the rest of the case of Serenity) He is my favourite character of the movie (blind Donnie Yen a close second). Where to even begin with him, whether it’s giving the updated odds of surviving a situation, lamenting the waste of his strategic skills, or his awesome action scenes, you want him as your buddy. Funniest character in the movie, and I want a copy of him for the other movies, or at least an upgrade to C-3PO.
Blind Donnie Yen: Blind guardian of the crystal temple, fights with a staff, dodges laser fire, judges peoples intentions, does the blind super senses thing, and generally super powered, also Donnie Yen. He is badass, I could watch a movie of just him mumbling about the force and dodging bullets, also Donnie Yen. I love Donnie Yen, and in this movie he comes with a Mandalorian (Boba Fett’s people) side-kick;
Baze Machinegun Monk: The Mandalorian Sidekick with machine gun and excellent aim, he follows Donnie Yen. He used to be the most devout guardian, and now has lost his faith, and is generally tagging along due to a lack of anything else to do.
Bohdi Pilotdude*: Bohdi is a defector, an ex-imperial pilot sent by Jyn’s father with a message about the Deathstar plans that he probably should have just sent instead of the message. He is ruthlessly interrogated by Saw (militant friend of family) and told it may make him lose his mind, he got better. I actually really liked him, which was odd because he was very much a peripheral member of the team, but near the end I started to really care about him. I like K-2 more, but Bohdi is probably the character I remember most fondly.
*A friend on social media excitedly pointed out how exciting it was for him to see a brown guy in a major role (let alone star wars) and I thought that was pretty awesome.
Saw: Forest Whitaker is the cyborg super militant rebel friend of family. Frankly he is in the trailer about as much as he is in the movie, pretty minimal impact as a character, but has a cool character design at least…
All the Cameos: Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, Princess Leia, R2D2 and C-3PO, Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin (Who looks just like the older actor, I was concerned that he was the same dude who just didn’t age) all make appearances. Darth Vader makes a pun, it made me so happy.
The characters are interesting, unique, and human (even if they aren’t). You will like them all, I’m sorry.
But Here’s the Thing (spoilers abound)
The Pun. The force pun is the greatest thing to happen in a star wars film ever. For those who haven’t seen it; supervisor McDickhead goes to Darth Vader to just sorta generally bitch, and at the end he says “You will tell the Emperor about how well I am doing?” as Darth Vader leaves. Darth Vader pauses and capey jackass begins choking in standard force choke method, Darth Vader turns and says:
“Careful you don’t ‘choke’ on your ambition”
And thus was born the greatest Disney cinematic moment of all time.
It still makes me happy just to think about it.
Close second was Erso’s last words: “I have so much to tell you…” which is hilarious (I mean serious and sad, but still pretty great last words). I want my last words to be “I have so much to tell you… the treasure is…”
Alright but what was wrong with the movie? There were problems with it don’t get me wrong, not a perfect film. Character motivations were a bit iffy at times, and the leaders of the rebellion weren’t the smartest. That damn love subplot should have happened (Jyn didn’t need the dark and broody Cassian, but by god he needed her, she was his knight in shining armor who saved him from that dark place), the torture beast thing that didn’t do what it said it did, Saw being not important.
Let’s start with the torture machine that pulled a Spectre. “This tentacle beast has an unfortunate side effect; people who experience it tend to lose their minds” Saw says to the valuable informant who defected to bring them secret information. I couldn’t tell if it was implied that he only lost his mind if he lied or not, or is he just got violated by tentacles anyway. When we next see him he is basically comatose in a cell and not responding to things. Like in spectre when the device was supposed to mess with Bond’s balance, and then did nothing, He gets asked if he is the pilot, snaps out of it, and is good to go, never brought up again.
The leaders of the rebellion are idiots. Why kill Erso? He sent them a message, he doesn’t benefit from it, his old buddy is fucking Saw, the dude who hates the Empire so much he split from the rebellion because they were too nice. Capturing the architect of the Death Star is way more worth than killing him. Also Cassian should have just shot him, He has killed tons of people before, hell he does it to someone who knows him in like the first 10 minutes of the movie, no way he is torn up about this one mission.
I wanted that love story between Jyn and Cassian, you could see the tension between them. Disney has avoided love stories in their past few films, princess movies included, and my theory is that they read one of those psychology papers describing the negative impacts of the Disney Princess persona on young women. Now don’t get me wrong, those papers are solid, and there was some really detrimental stuff, which oddly enough is probably best explained by showing you the Disney princess movie Frozen (fuck Hans), but every once in a while it’s okay. Just kiss at the end scene as they embrace, would have made that whole thing, all the looks, all the posturing, all of it, pay off.
I want a movie with just K-2 though, just him being badass, shooting people, throwing grenades, just being Alan Tudyk, and giving statistics. Best character ever.
Oh also everyone dies, and it made me sad. Like I know we knew they didn’t show up in later movies, and so either they die or turn to the dark side, and I was very aware of that going in, but dammit by the end I liked them. I knew they weren’t going to be there, but I was still sad during that whole end sequence. One after another they fell, each dramatically, each in pursuit of their goal, and I loved them for it. Fuck this movie for making me feel things, I’m gonna make my whole family watch it over Christmas
Comments