Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story shows us the events leading up to the original Star Wars film, A New Hope. We know the story, we know how it’s gonna end, and it is a seemingly meaningless entry in the series… right? Well despite my initial thoughts, Rogue One turned out to be one of the best Star Wars movies ever made. The tone, the acting, and the suspense – it had me on the edge of my seat wanting to see so much more like this in the future.

Rogue One felt more like a war movie set in the Star Wars universe than anything else. It was dark, it was gritty, and rather than having Jedi and the force be a key to the film, it was much more grounded in realism. The story begins with our protagonist Jyn Urso having her mother killed, and father captured by the empire to develop what we find out to be the death star. She escapes to the safety of the rebellion, and begins her life of disagreement and taking action against the galaxy leaders. As in any war movie, we meet and get to know some of the soldiers along the way who will be fighting alongside Jyn to gather plans to the Death Star and find the defect left in by Jyn’s father to be able to destroy it.

Leading the pack will be rebel fighter Cassian who doesn’t trust anyone and despite being one of the good guys, shows us that not all is black and white in the Star Wars universe. The character was portrayed by actor Diego Luna, who in my opinion gave the best performance of a Star Wars movie. His droid sidekick K-2SO is in my opinion the greatest droid of the series as well. His comedic sense of humor is much funnier than C-3PO, and the fact that he is able to speak and has depth of character makes me care more for him than R2D2, not to mention he’s played by a personal favorite of mine, Alan Tudyk. A few other misfits also join the gang including a defected imperial pilot, a blind man who is a strong believer in the force, and his heavy weapon enthusiast best friend make up a team that rivals the OG gang and prequel group despite only getting one movie’s worth of time together on screen.

The plot in itself wasn’t anything too special, but as a stand-alone movie, I must say this one is the most coherent of stories from start to finish of the series. While A New Hope was also pretty good about this, the story seemed far more generic than Rogue One, and for that the edge goes to the modern take. The action of the movie was amazing. With modern-day graphics to be able to show off the scope of the blasters and explosives used in the movie, this reminded me of Saving Private Ryan but with weapons far more destructive. When people died, I felt it. When explosions went off, I felt it. In addition to this, there is one scene at the end where we see Darth Vader showing his true strength with the force and a lightsaber which is undoubtedly one of the coolest scenes of the movie.

Despite all of the great parts of Rogue One, something just felt off about it. The addition of Princess Leia and of General Tarkin were strange to me. Both were done in CGI as the actors were either deceased or looked nothing as they had back in the 70s, and while the effects were so close to real I could just tell that something was off. Star Wars at the core is very much a magical and fantastical set of stories. While on one hand I loved the dark and gritty version of the galaxy, missing this just brought some disappointment to me. As I’m sure Disney has learned, Star Wars fans can be difficult to please. The fact that I want both dark and gritty but also magical and fantastic means that I don’t think I have realistic expectations, and I have a bad feeling about the future of the series if other fans feel like me.

Rogue One certainly brought some internal debate for me. There’s so much to love about the movie, and if I was watching each one without any knowledge of the rest I truly think that this would take the cake. That’s not how it works though, and some of the other films just have more weight to them - with so much leading up to them, the storylines just mean so much more to me. I highly recommend that everyone watch Rogue One, but I can’t in good faith call this one the best Star Wars movie out there when it doesn’t feel like a Star Wars movie.