Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
A rebellion built on hope.
Buckle in for another rendition of the Mandela effect, where we all swear I already did this before but somehow there appears to be no proof of it in any of the redundancy logs. The OG trilogy is still there, as is the oldest of the sequel batch and the Solo flick, but this one? Nopers. Well then, since Andor just finished it’s second season run that dumps pretty much literally straight into this movie, I guess we might as well take the time to go back to what might be my favorite of the wars amongst the stars in the live action front and check out the “little known story” or that certain special ragtag team known as Rogue One,
The story here is largely devoid of the one thing that I always desired the most out of the franchise - lightsabers - but trades for it something you don’t always feel like is front and center - the wars in the stars. We follow our rebels on the tail end of discovering a super weapon is getting built, but not knowing a lot of the ideas about what or where it is. Tracking down the leads, they end up coming across an Imperial scientist’s daughter whose kind of gone her own way (and also gotten arrested). Saving her and pulling her into their mission, they have to find her dad and information that might be critical to the rebel aliance’s survival - if not the galaxy. We also get plenty of moments on the flip side of that - following the program director of the super weapon and how he interacts with the rather punishing higher ups of his own faction, who frown rather furiously upon the frequent hang ups with his giant moon-sized weapon system’s development.
Actors do good here. In typical Star Wars fashion, not everyone is a full person of normal sorts sitting on display, so some will need to rely more on voice deliveries then on actual body language. The body language of those folks - like robots - tends to fall more under special effects then anything else, but I feel like everyone did a pretty good job here. At times it might feel like a person might be playing it a little too safe with their plays - and a few might feel like they are a bit over the top, but it all feels like it belongs even if you might at first be a bit confused as to why someone might have some level of line deliery because you’ve never seen them before. Some of that can be expunged out a bit if you’ve seen something - like for example the show Andor I mentioned in the opening - and a few folks you might recognize more from the originals if you’ve seen them. It’s never enough to really ruin the experience or feel like someone is doing a bad job - at worst it might feel like a “not sure I would have went with that” kind of performance.
For the characters we get a bunch of stuff here. Now, admittedly it’s mostly centered around our female lead when it comes to development side of things, and part of that might just be because she’s the one we get the most info about in the movie. The Rebels and Imperials both get development in the sense of an organization situation. To say that a little more understandably - you get a better feel for the Empire through the scenes involving their people, and how some folks upon realizing the truth can’t stomach what’s really going on, and on the flip side of it the rebels and how some of them are willing to sink to whatever lows imaginable to deal with a situation they deem desperate enough while others are more then willing to just drop it and run away when victory looks impossible. We do get to see some change within our main guy lead as well - but for the full effect of that previous viewing of the again mentioned tv show would come into play - which is partially funny since it came out well after the movie, but also it’s not crazy detrimental to the movie if you haven’t seen it as it just puts more of the heroic growth upon our lady lead and makes our guy lead feel more like a rebel for not always following orders.
Cool alien
The core unit of folks is fun, and I think part of the reason I love it is more so then the other movies it feels way more ensemble, and in turn more like some sort of Dungeons and Dragons game. It’s all super normal folks here - the closest thing you get to overpowered is the droid - who is far less indestructible feeling then when it appeared in the show. We get the rogue who does morally sus things for the good of the cause, you got the scrappy lady who gets to have her hero’s journey, the robot who has some of the most entertaining lines in the movie, a dude whose blind with crazy martial skills and full belief in the force without being able to use it, and his buddy with his fancy gun watching his back. There’s also the pilot, who serves as both a plot mcguffin and a NPC that joins that party. Between all the travel and the diverse mains, we get a ton of different costumes here - part of the sci fi benefit. It’s star wars, so even something that you own that appears in it has been tampered with somehow to make it look fancier or different - so even “normal attire” starts feeling like it’s from a different universe. Admittedly, some of the war-time rebel extras do feel a bit like they just pulled their kit straight out of a movie about ‘Nam, but I guess it’s a risk you run sometimes.
And the biggest mixed bag has finally come to the front line - the effects. While I can argue that some deliveries aren’t bad because it feels intentional and not phoned in and all of that jazz, some of the effects work is just straight not as good as the rest. Maybe it’s not entirely their fault - for example, some of it very well could have been avoided had they just used a character that was new or otherwise not played originally by an actor who died before the movie got made. Yes, Tarkin, I’m looking at you and your “it’s becoming less convincing the more my eyes are drawn to it” digital self. I wouldn’t argue that it’s so bad it ruins the movie - although others probably would between that and a final stinger shot of a certain princess. Yes, them tentacles aren’t fooling me into believing they are practical slimey little slappers wriggling around on the set - but again, it’s still not bad especially if you compared to what something like that might have looked like had the movie been made twenty or even ten years before it was. Continuing on our trek towards the hope of great - there are some shots where I’m pretty sure things must have been a model with how great the light and shadows play across it, or it just plain looks great even as CG. Those explosions from the singe-reactor Death Star shots? Things of absolute beauty those. Largely, the effects are good and the costumes and sets all help play into them - so even if you have a few spots where you get that green screen feeling or whatever, most should come out of this without many complaints.
Audio is balanced well enough, although I think Hulu (where I watched it for tonight) was pranking me by making all the line deliveries quieter at the start of the movie for no reason. Music is exactly what you would expect out of a Star Wars orchestral score - with some little variations here and there to make it feel a little different. It’s also got a lot of nods to other things, and overall just does a great job with helping the emotion - like being sad or super tense - of the scene. There is some thinking stuff in there, and a whole conversation you could have on classic good versus evil and rebels versus empires sort of stuff. It also has a lot of humor in there, and although it’s subjective so it’s always going to depend on the watcher, I had a good time and enjoy a bunch of the lines. Yes, including the pun.
The main crew
Watching it again, it’s still good and probably one of my favorite live action entries so far. It help enhance the stuff that came before it - such as actually giving you a reason that Vader is terrifying instead of just choking one guy for sass - and it helps give some context to who got the plans (even though it wasn’t necessary). Likewise, I would say the show that feeds into this one does a similar thing - it fleshes out one character - that of our male lead - and gives him more context to enhance why he does what he does, but it doesn’t make itself an absolute necessity to have seen to still have a good time. Although I would still love to see a few extraneous things - like some of those Visions shorts made feature length - happen, for now I do admit that I think this one is still probably my favorite of the space battles franchise, so with a Mandolorian movie coming up around the corner, let’s see how long this little fella can hold it’s top rank.