Latest 'Star Wars' goes 'Rogue' with more battles, less emotion
Gareth Edwards' “Rogue One” is so “Star Warsy” that it uses 1970s camera lenses to replicate the visual texture of the 1977 original.
It's so “Star Warsy” that it neatly folds John Williams' iconic space-adventure themes into Michael Giacchino's seamlessly complementary score.
It's so “Star Warsy” that the great James Earl Jones returns as Darth Vader's sinister vocal chords.
“Rogue One” is so “Star Warsy” that it features cameo appearances by droid buddies C3PO and R2D2. Just because.
The premise for “Rogue One” comes from Industrial Light & Magic's chief creative officer John Knoll, who saw the opening crawl to the original “Star Wars” and wondered, just who were those rebel spies who managed to steal the secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star?
“Rogue One” stars Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso. As a child, Jyn witnesses the execution of her mother while escaping Empire forces, who kidnap her scientist father Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) so he can finish creating the Death Star.
As an adult, Jyn Erso becomes a key figure in the Rebellion's mission to stop the Empire's mad plans to develop its weapon of true mass destruction.
She joins with a ragtag rebel group, including handsome Alliance officer Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), outlaw Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), blind warrior monk Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), Imperial cargo pilot defector Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), Baze “Machine Gun” Malbus (Jiang Wen) and snippy, sarcastic rehabbed Imperial droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk).
In his quest for narrative speed and visual impact, Edwards, the director of “Monster” and the 2014 retelling of “Godzilla,” succumbs to the Hollywood sequel/prequel axiom of “more and bigger are better.”
So, the movie comes crammed with more weapons, more battles, more space ships (especially TIE fighters), more execution-style killings, and more deaths of significant characters.
Certain Alliance characters die for their cause, modeled after “The Seven Samurai,” by Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, an inspiration to George Lucas when he created “Star Wars.”
In the first trilogy, we felt the sting and sorrow of loss when a major character died or was killed.
Here, key characters meet their doom with aloof distance, certainly nothing like the shocker loss in last year's “The Force Awakens.”
“Rogue One” doesn't qualify as a true stand-alone feature, for it closes - as we know it must - with Princess Leia laying her royal hands on the documents that will be this movie's true ending in “Episode IV: A New Hope.”
As Jyn points out, “Rebellions are built on hope!”
Despite an unresolved father/daughter subplot, “Rogue One” rates as more of a traditional war movie than space fantasy with well-placed humor, inside jokes, aliens, droids and creepy CGI renderings of two key “Star Wars” characters, all set against the backdrops of mind-bending production designs and hypnotic visual effects.
Jones (also in this year's “Inferno” and “A Monster Calls”) proves herself to be a versatile performer, highly physical and personally appealing without being a romantic prize for Andor.
Ben Mendelsohn brings a blend of spoiled-childishness and amorality to the movie's chief Imperial baddie, Director Orson Krennic, who, in one telling scene, regrets insulting Darth Vader.
“Be careful,” a punny Vader says while mentally grabbing Krennic's throat, “not to choke on your aspirations!”
Some of this dialogue could have been written by Lucas himself. And that's not always a good thing.
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen, Donnie Yen, Forest Whitaker
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Other: A Walt Disney Studios release. Rated PG-13 for violence. 133 minutes