Lords of the Rebellion.

Rating: 9/10 (30 October 2019)

In the annals of moviemaking, no film series has had as much of an impact on me as George Lucas' epic sci-fi saga, Star Wars. Much like many other kids of my generation, I grew up thinking, dreaming, watching and playing Star Wars. I watched the original trilogy on repeat and owned so much Star Wars merchandise at one point in my life that it became an obsession. After Revenge of the Sith came out, it seems that Star Wars as a film series was over. That was until 2012 when George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company for 4 billion dollars and the studio announced that they would be making more films set in the Star Wars universe. One of these films would focus on a group of Rebels stealing the plans to the Death Star. When I first heard about the film, I was quite gritty about it and when the first teaser trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story dropped in April of 2016, I was even more pumped to see it as it appeared that director Gareth Edwards would be taking a more serious approach to the series and give us something in the vein of Saving Private Ryan. Of course, when I did go see the film later that year, I was at first blown away by it but as I thought about it more and more, I began to love it less and upon rewatching it earlier this year in preparation for The Rise of Skywalker, my feelings on the film haven't really changed as while I find Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to be a highly enjoyable film thanks to its action scenes, acting and musical score, some elements of the film leave a lot to be desired in my eyes.
The film opens with Imperial scientist Galen Erso hiding with his wife and daughter on the planet Lah'mu where Imperial weapons maker Orson Krennic finds him and begs him to help finish building the Empire's new superweapon, the Darth Star. Galen's wife is killed in the stand-off but his daughter, Jyn, escapes and is rescued by rebel extremist Saw Gerrera. We then cut to a defective Imperial cargo pilot named Bodi who is captured by Sal's extremist group of rebels on the desert planet of Jedha while carrying a message for Saw. Meanwhile, rebel intelligence officer Cassian Andor learns of the Death Star via another agent and rescues Jyn from an Imperial labor camp and brings her to the Rebel headquarters where Mon Mothma persuades Erso to aid in finding her father so that the Rebel Alliance can learn more about the Death Star. Together with Andor and a reprogrammed Imperial droid named K-2SO, they head for Jedha. Now, the trio must find Galen, assemble a rag-tag team and steal the plans to the Death Star before it's too late.
What's interesting about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is how the film feels split between two frontiers. On one hand, it's a spectacular war film in the vein of Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down about a universe that is ensnared in disorder between a plucky rebel alliance and an evil imperial empire. Though the world of space fantasy, Rogue One is able to arouse the viewer with all sorts of fascinating ideas about the battle that is at the core of the Star Wars saga. What would a war in space look like in the 21st century? What is the viewpoint of this massive conflict from outside the cockpit of an X-Wing or the Millennium Falcon by those on the front lines or those people caught in the crossfire? These are just a few of the points that Rogue One focuses on as a war film that so happens to take place in the Star Wars universe.
On the other hand, Rogue One does in some ways feel like a bunch of deleted scenes that intend to link the prequel films with the original Star Wars trilogy. The essential idea of Rogue One results in the stealing of the plans for the Death Star that move the plot of A New Hope which in theory should be enough to connect Rogue One to its parent. But much like Solo: A Star War Story, Rogue One feels the need to pepper the screen with various cameos and callbacks to previous Star Wars films in order to pander to the hard-core Star Wars fans. Much like Solo: A Star Wars Story, some of the Easter eggs and callbacks work in the film's favor but others just feel tacked on and don't add anything to the story at hand. So, Rogue One feels imprisoned in-between being a thrilling look at a familiar film series with a new perspective while at the same time feeling a bit too much like Star Wars fan fiction. It's no shock that the war angle of the movie is far more interesting than the fan fiction angle.
The most compelling element of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the bold promise of the entire film. With it not being a main chapter in the Star Wars saga, there's a feeling that Rogue One is able to have a bit of fun with one of the most beloved movie franchises ever put to screen. It can acquire the current framework that the previous Star Wars films have built and undo or question what has already been established. Think of a spy film set within the Star Wars universe starring Jyn, Cassian, and K2 or a heist movie on a grand scale. Envision seeing the Star Wars saga without the Jedi and Sith playing a central part in the story. That is the kind of film Rogue One is.
Words can not explain how much Star Wars has become engrained into our culture since 1977 and the fact that most of us know the saga inside and out, even the most casual of moviegoers know of the iconic imagery and mythology that the saga has given us over the past 42 years. People who don't go to the movies that much sometimes hum the opening Star Wars theme like a Beatles song. Yoda and Darth Vader are the go-to for Star Wars imitations that are the easiest to read even if the impressions themselves may be awful. So the Star Wars saga is as much apart of our culture as Coca Cola and is something that lends itself to being tampered with. Unlike some people who think the saga should be preserved in glass and put on display, I have always felt that's room in the franchise for improvement and exploring new worlds and characters. Sure, the Star Wars films do invite moviegoers of all ages to admire and be wowed by pure wonder and ask questions but the true delight of watching the saga that George Lucas created is the ability with which a single line of dialog can lead to endless hours of discussion between moviegoers and fans alike. The universe of Star Wars is so vast and endless in scope and yet so flawlessly created. When watching a Star Wars film, it's always fun to picture yourself dancing below the raindrops of continuity or recalling images of a pop art depiction of 2001: A Space Odyssey to Star Wars.
Certainly, that was perhaps the best part of the controversial plan by Disney to scarp the Expanded Universe and start over and by doing so, had erased several decades of novels, comics and video games that were built around the films. Now, it must be stressed that what has been tossed out of the new Star Wars canon doesn't mean that the books about Thrawn or Prince Xizor should cease to exist simply because Disney doesn't consider those stories part of their Star Wars universe. The stories are still there and the fans who love those stories can still love them and even Lucasfilm has been using elements of the EU in the more recent comics and TV shows so it's not like the EU has been snapped out of existence. As for me, while I did read some EU stories when I was younger, I never cared for it nor do I care for the new Star Wars canon mostly because I see them both as simply filling in the gaps before, between and after the films. When writing fan-fiction, the urge is to focus on building a universe from the inside instead of the outside as there's always a passion to link every important event or character to a slice of the continuity pie. Taking out all of the material that isn't considered to be apart of the canon allows the creative team to put their own stamp on certain events.
There's a ton in Rogue One that works perfectly in that respect. There are quite a few points that Gareth Edwards seems content to set free of the assumptions of a big blockbuster film. Right when it starts, Rogue One gives us a multitude of considerable ritualistic shifts from various tropes found in the other Star Wars films. The opening score sounds much different than the John Williams fanfare that usually opens the other films and there's no title card or text scroll as well as on-screen captions that show the various planets rather than having them explained to us. These departures from what we're used to seeing in the other Star Wars films are small but still critical. Over the course of the first hour of the film, Edwards gives the viewer his own touch to the greater Star Wars universe. This is a film that is steadily rooted in the background characters with none of them being a chosen farm boy or princess but rather mere footnotes in the lager Star Wars universe. In this regard, Rogue One builds upon the storytelling choices that The Force Awakens had already established.
At its finest, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story gives us a view of the Star Wars universe for the ground floor. The film includes all sorts of classic Star Wars icons but the scoop and scale are so much more massive than what we've seen before. These affairs and clashes seem to happen on multiple levels above the heads of our main characters. The Death Star and the threat it presents itself as are what drives the story with different forms and descriptions of the battle station have shown up in four of the seven Star Wars films, however, Rogue One still finds a way to make the superweapon look intimidating and epic at the same time. The film looks at the Death Star from the surface of Jedha. At one point in the film, the weapon appears over the surface of the planet like a moon while another time, the Death Star places itself as if it's eclipsing the sun. When it does fire its laser, the viewer doesn't see the destruction from the freezing vacuum of space but rather they see