Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Review

This Rogue One: A Story Wars Story review is spoiler-free and deliberately vague on details, but if that’s not enough and you want only the quick take so you can see it with totally fresh eyes: two thumbs up. Suffice to say, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a very good movie.

It’s also one that feels and looks very much like a traditional Star Wars movie while deviating from the style and formula of the main series. For those who found that The Force Awakens rehashed too much and felt like a reboot as much as it did a sequel, I’m fairly certain you won’t have those concerns here.

Let’s start with the feel of the film. The filmmakers have convincingly blended the visual style of Rogue One with that of A New Hope, and if you compared certain frames from each side by side, the similarities would be striking. For all the efforts to distinguish this as a “self-contained” anthology story, it feels much more like a prequel for A New Hope than do any of the actual prequels.

I wonder to what extent Disney will continue to do this with future Star Wars anthology stories. It would be a savvy move to wedge as many films in between the reviled prequels and original trilogy to create more of a gap between the two. While Disney doesn’t disregard or contradict the cannon of the prequels here, not nearly as much effort is made to weave the prequels into Rogue One as is the original trilogy.

Part of this is probably a matter of the film’s timing in relation to A New Hope–but I suspect another part is the desire to minimize the ‘significance’ of the prequels. It will be interesting to see whether Disney’s long game here involves other anthology prequels that create more of a buffer between the prequels and original trilogy.

In some ways, Rogue One feels like an overcorrection for the prequels, films that fixated on the political process and procedure to a fault. Here, you see the consequences of politics, but not so much the strife and ideology that got things there. While a bit more on-screen political strife might’ve helped inform the action, I can hardly fault the filmmakers for omitting it.

I think we all had enough of that in the prequels, and the why of war is patently obvious to anyone who has seen the prequels. If you were to watch all 8 films in sequential order, Rogue One would be the sweet release after an inordinate amount of exposition.

Let’s get back to the feel of the movie–the cinematography in Rogue One is breathtaking. As was the case with The Force Awakens, there are some really gorgeous visuals in Rogue One. At times, these are little environmental details that stick with you; other times, it’s the lighting or how a scene is arranged.

There are moments in this movie that are going to rank among the all-time most iconic scenes in Star Wars history, and I think these are in large part the result of cinematography here. The lighting, composition, and camera work give more than a few scenes a hauntingly beautiful look.

The war scenes are shot in an intimate style, immersing you in the action. For me, these bore a resemblance to Saving Private Ryan. That may come across as an odd comparison, but I suspect this was intentional, especially with the allusions that Star Wars has always made to Nazism.

Speaking of which, Rogue One is a war film, more so than any episode of Star Wars has been in the past. It focuses on the grim realities of war, and does so in a gritty way that (rightfully) lacks some of the romanticism found in the main episodes. There were rumors floating around that Rogue One’s reshoots were due to its dark tone, and while I’m not sure as to the veracity of those rumors, the tone is darker here. (I do know that a lot of footage–more than normal–from the trailers is not in the finished film.)

However, I wouldn’t call it downright dark or bleak, nor would I have any hesitations about allowing children to watch. While intimately shot, most of the violence has an oddly detached sense to it. Rogue One is not explicit or gory, and strikes a balance between being visceral and unsettling, never going too far. (This is not an R-rated movie masquerading as a PG-13 one because Disney pushed for the rating.) Again, this comes back to the brilliant cinematography, which manages to convey the horrors of war without actually showing them.

This cinematography really carries the day with Rogue One, but that’s not to diminish the other elements, which are pretty much universally good. The action is relentless without being gratuitous or coming across as a Michael Bay caliber explosion-fest, the dialogue is great (with a few laugh-out-loud moments–almost as if Star Wars took a page out of the Marvel playbook), and the score is fantastic.

I have minor quibbles with character development in Rogue One, but the emphasis is really on minor. A couple of characters do pretty quick 180s in terms of ideology, but the rationale is easily supported by the surrounding circumstances and can be inferred. While I ended up caring about every character in the film by the end, I do think the one way The Force Awakens has Rogue One beat is in terms of the character arcs. Of course, the key difference there is Episode 7 had to set the stage for Episode 8.

That’s about the only complaint I can muster about Rogue One. And that aside, the characters are fantastic. The cast in Rogue One is compelling and diverse, Jyn is a strong female lead, and there’s a lovely, tender moment shared between two characters that caused me to tear up a bit. It’s refreshing to see Disney continue making progress at greater representation in its films.

Overall, I think Disney has that rare blockbuster that is a fun, action-packed romp while also having a gritty realism and something important to say. It also brings something fresh to the Star Wars universe while retaining the familiar threads that quite clearly make this a Star Wars film. (Maybe a mash-up of Saving Private Ryan/Captain America: Civil War/Star Wars: A New Hope is an improbable, but apt way to describe this movie?) For me, Rogue One goes down as one of the best Star Wars films to date, and made me want to immediately watch A New Hope, and then see it again.

Finally, there’s one important issue that bears addressing…

I know many people are concerned that the ‘message’ of Rogue One will necessitate a boycott of Star Wars (and Disney) so as to not offend their delicate political sensibilities. Rest assured, the subtext of Rogue One is exactly same as the previous seven films. So, if that went over your head before, it probably will again.