Unremarkable action-laden sci-fi adventure, which does little but bridge a gap.

Rating: 6/10 (22 May 2020)

Well, at least we now know how THAT happened... I'm not sure what it means when all you can illicit after a film like "Star Wars: Rogue One" has come to its crashing, thrashing, resounding finale, is a shrug - a frown and a meekly appreciative nod of the head at how far special effects have come along, but it can't be good. Look, I don't necessarily dislike "Star Wars"; I just came to it too late on in life to be able to adore it. But is a film which bridges the gap between the events of the first trilogy and the second of the famous filmic brand really what the die-hards wanted? If what transpires therein "Rogue One" was any other science-fiction war drama, would we really be all that interested?
It strikes me that the mind behind Star Wars, George Lucas, did neither himself nor the name of Star Wars many favours when he decided to sell it on to the Disney corporation, a brand name more synonymous with child's films, or at the very least entertainment for children. That is not to say that all of Disney's output has necessarily been made for the youngest among us, but there is something inherently childish about "Rogue One" - it is a film for people who like noise and colour; its nucleus of heroes battling villains (toward an outcome we already know) is strikingly simplistic. By the end, I was struck by just how uncomplicated it all was.
Gareth Edwards' effort here is, as stated, the conduit connecting the first three episodes to the latter three - that seemingly dead filmic space between the coming of Darth Vader and the evil empire he seeks to use to command the galaxy, and the plans of a weapon of mass destruction being stolen from one of said empire's bases. I cannot say that said dead-space, never mind the events that transpired therein, especially captured my imagination having actually seen all six episodes, but I cannot speak for other people - one assumes they are not the same as those who were desperate to learn about what Hans Solo was like as a younger smuggler, or what the origin-story of Vader himself was.
Principally, there is a thematic in "Rogue One" somewhere about morality and good vs. evil. It is epitomised in two characters whom both work for Vader's Empire: Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), a technician who has first developed the Death Star and then gone on to develop second thoughts, and Ben Mendelsohn's Orson Krennic, who works with Vader and is very much in love with the idea of a WMD. Anyone who has seen Mendelsohn's work in other films, particularly his native Australian ones, will know that he is probably one of the best actors working today, but is wasted here in being asked to snarl into the camera and pull exasperated expressions. Galen should be, and I suspect probably was in an earlier draft, the film's protagonist with Krennic the principal villain. This, I would surmise, was changed at some point to encompass Felicity Jones, who plays Mikkelsen's daughter Jyn Erso, as the lead - a move which was probably supposed to have an eye on feminism or diversity or something, but actually hurts the project.
As "Rogue One" rolls on, you can see what the initial, more interesting film, might have resembled: two men working for the same organisation seeing things from different sides; both working to thwart the other and building to a climax whereby these ideas blossom into a tense finale atop a skywalk, as all-out war unfolds around them. This is not the film we are presented with, but we get something instead with enough going on to engage us - the being taken to new worlds; the thrill of a pursuit; the quirky supporting acts which bump us along the road - commendation is in order for Edwards for refusing to pepper the opening acts with differing robots; aliens and other idiosyncratic creatures for sake of selling them on the shelves of toy stores.
Jones, as a young girl, is hiding on her parents' farm when Krennic comes calling for her father so that he may finish the Death Star. His refusal causes a tiff, a tiff from which Jones escapes into the world of underground resistance led by the eccentric Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), whose mob is far from wholesome, and we appreciate how the film is trying to paint good in characters associated with the dark and bad in those synonymous with the alliance. Again, these ideas seem left over from a different, better, project and eventually come to nothing. Eventually, Jones takes it on to seek the Death Star's weak spot her father purposely created by way of the plans hidden in the depths of an enemy base. Tossed into the mix is a defecting Empirical fighter-pilot played by Riz Ahmed, which is an interesting idea, but we had seen this line of attack executed more efficiently the previous year with the John Boyega character in "Force Awakens".
For almost its entire runtime, "Rogue One" consists of hits and misses until its head-banging climax: the Death Star, when we see it, and despite knowing exactly what it's capable of, still manages to awe us when it gets going, which is good. One particular character, an ally, is a blind Chinaman whose forté is that he is good at marital arts and spouts Eastern philosophical tidbits, which is bad. Ultimately, Rogue One is an expensive diversion; a project Lucas probably wishes he himself had thought of when he had the rights to this pandemonium; an answer to that annoying question fans and whoever else like to ask pertaining to the Death Star's weak spot and how someone could be so stupid as to put it there in the first place. Well, after much thrashing about, that has now been buried. Congratulations...