Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) - 9/10

I skipped the randomizer for this one because I just finished watching Andor season two. The show is fantastic by itself (possibly the best 'made for adults' type of content within the IP), but it is really just an elongated prequel to this film. It is a brilliant move honestly because Tony Gilroy basically just took his own film that he helped make almost a decade ago, created a two season prequel to it, and somehow made the entire piece of work not just cohesive, but helped elevate both the TV show and the movie to greater heights. If you think of the show/movie combo as its own trilogy, then the result may actually put it on par with George Lucas' original trilogy - and possibly ahead of the prequel/sequel trilogies in terms of quality/consistency (at least for me). 

Point being this 9/10 is getting a bit of a unfair edge over other films. The movie has some problems standing on its own, and my knowledge of the characters outside of the film certainly influences how I view the final product. But lets get into the rubric and see how things shake out. 

1. Acting 

The place where this film gets its biggest post-Andor bump is in the acting. The problem Rogue One always had is that it was a very busy movie with a lot of new characters. This meant that outside of the leads, the actors had very little screen-time to develop their character beyond 2D. The Andor TV show is obviously very focused on Diego Luna's Cassian Andor, and his character and performance within this film are much better within the overall context. It also make the finale much more tragic given the audiences journey with Cassian over time. 

The show also helps elevate some of the more minor characters. K-2SO was already a scene stealer before Andor thanks to his comic relief role and Alan Tudyk's wonderful voice performance; but his performance in the film and fate within the story gets a great boost from the show. Another more prominent supporting role is Saw Gerrera played by Forest Whitaker. In my original watch of Rogue One, Saw was a mysterious and interesting, but, ultimately confusing character. His motivations and role within the world were unclear. Now, with the greater context of Andor, Saw feels more full. None of that even touches Whitaker's wonderfully weird take on the character and his projection of what years of paranoia and fighting might do to someone who was once much more normal and caring.

Even minor-er characters like Mon Mothma, General Draven, and Melshi all feel more fleshed out thanks to the show. 

Now, sticking just to the film itself; there are some good-to-okay performance being turned in. I think it says a lot that we are very quickly drawn into Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus' characters (played by Donnie Yen and  Jiang Wen). The actors don't have a lot of time to endear the audience to their characters but something about their implied friendship and mysterious backstories is quite intriguing - and I think that is at least in part to the actors' efforts. Riz Ahmed's Bodhi is also at least intriguing- but Ahmed's take can be a bit too odd at times. 

Now, the biggest factor for acting when judging Rogue One on its own merits is Jyn Erso played by Felicity Jones. I'd say her performance is mostly divisive at best. Again, I don't completely fault Jones here because there is just so much plot to get through that there isn't a lot of time for character building. With that said she certainly gets the most time dedicated to her character when compared with the other actors and I found the end result to be mostly just 'fine'. I think the performance is mostly wooden but can see other people using the word 'reserved' instead. I guess, for me, its an underwhelming lead performance from a talented actor who has proven to be fantastic in other projects.

2. Cinematography 

There is a lot to love about Rogue One in terms of cinematography. In fact, it may be the best looking Star Wars film to date. If I were to criticize anything, it would simply be that it is geared more towards 'moments' than an overall visual tone. In other words the visual language is much more surface level than other films which bury more 'feeling/meaning' vice 'spectacle' into its photography. But, I do love me some spectacle now and then. 

As far as more specific examples go - we start off very early with some extremely beautiful wides. In fact, most of the runtime features really lovely wide shots that capture everything from the beauty of the creative landscapes, to the carnage of huge space battles. And when you film involves the high level of CGI that Rogue One has, going wide can be a gamble if your VFX teams cant back it up. Luckily that was not the case here. 

I also like a lot of the visual contrasts that happen throughout the film. One of the very first shots of the film is a sweeping shot of a bright ocean up against a black sand shoreline and the starkness is very eye catching. In the same scene- we get Director Krennic and his white uniform clashing with the all black armor of his death troopers much to the same appealing affect. I also really like later in the film when we see slow panning reveals of Star Destroyers and the Death Star from behind deep dark shadows. The vibrancy of the white Star Destroyers in particular make the reveal very cool. In a somewhat different version of contrast - we also get to see the climatic and very deadly battle on Scarif take place on an otherwise very tropical and serene beach landscape. It's basically like a giant battle interrupting a peaceful Caribbean vacation vista. Its a very unique and cool choice that is a lot of fun to look at. 

4. Writing 

One of the issues that Rogue One suffers from is the same issue a lot of blockbuster movies suffer from; plot over character. It is a critique I have wielded often at the Armageddons of the world. However, Rogue One benefits from being apart of an established IP so they get a good deal of grace in terms of world building and setting the stakes and other facets that an isolated movie would have to. In other words, there is a built in shorthand with the audience assuming they have consumed other Star Wars media. 

The question is, can you tell a good story without good characters? The short answer is yes, but with a heavy caveat that your plot has to then pick up the slack. So, if plot is the way in which your narrative beats tie together, does Rogue One have a strong plot? (Shameless plug here for a future Deep Dive into the narrative technique of 'Therefore, But and Then')

Looking at Rogue One from a plot perspective, its a relatively simple story, but one that ties together quite nicely. There are some points that if you stare it too closely it starts to fall apart a little bit. An obvious example being Governor Tarkin's insistence that Vader will 'handle the rebel fleet' only for him to immediately fail in doing so. In that same sequence - how does Vader know exactly what ship to board? The flagship is a likely target, but couldn't any of the ships have the plans? Little things like that can break immersion if the audience is unwilling to suspend certain beliefs. 

Yet, for the most part the narrative sequence is a basically a race against the clock endeavor where the main characters are first chasing a secret, then learn the secret, then seek to capture it in the finale and escape. There is rarely any bloat or an excess of exposition. And the willingness of the filmmakers to remove the 'plot armor' from all of the main characters and let them die one after the other is a bold move that a family friendly IP would not usually make. It lends the story gravity and keeps the audience on their toes by subverting genre norms (and studio norms).

Now, dialogue wise, I'd say the film is mostly fine - nothing too bad, nothing too good. I think that because the characters are not fully established whatever they verbalize will have diminishing returns. That is why some of Jyn's 'big speech' type moments fall flat. We don't really know her, and in fact most of the first act is her trying to shirk away from the rebellion. So, when she turns around 30 minutes later espousing the virtues of rebellion and trying to sound inspirational it doesn't really work. 

All in all, Rogue One is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of writing but I think it leans on the side of pretty good.

5. Sound Design 

I really feel bad for any composer who has to work under the massive shadow of John Williams and the, arguably, most iconic score of all time. Michael Giacchino not only had to do that, but did so on very short notice after rescheduling forced the original composer, Alexandre Desplat, to drop out. All things considered, Giacchino did a great job respecting what came before while trying to craft something new. You can still hear the themes and a few stings of the original composition while enjoying a more somber and emotional approach to the score. 

As for its integration - a key hallmark of Star Wars is the near continuous use of the soundtrack to backdrop every scene. It helps accentuate important moments and the emotions of the characters. It also integrates with the sound effects of the film. A quick but impactful example being when we first see Saw Gerrera in person, there is a rapid change in themes to the music and gets accentuated with Saw's metal foot clanking against a metal grating. It's a poignant and even jarring transition. 

 6. Editing 

At 134 minutes, the longer runtime feels breezy thanks to the pace of the edit. But more importantly, the action heavy finale needed to be carefully edited to maintain its coherence. There are multiple different factions all taking part in different parts of the battle and the audience could've easily lost track of what is going on. I also enjoyed the integration of old unused footage from A New Hope into the space battle. It may not marry 100% perfectly but I like the attempt to tie the films in directly with each other. 

Now, this film was notable upon its release due to its highly publicized (and highly expensive) reshoots. It's fairly common at this point for big budgeted films to actually plan reshoots into its production schedule, and everyone involved with this film claimed 'nothing to see here'. Whatever the truth is, the final product doesn't feel like it suffered due to last minute changes and was likely an improvement from the first cut. Tony Gilroy specifically helped with the edit and later was given the helm for Andor, so Disney clearly trusted his vision.

3. Production/Costume Design / 7. Visual Effects 

I moved these sections down to be together because the interaction between them is critical to the success of each. There is a ton of CGI in this film and its looks incredibly good because its paired with a very large amount of practical elements and locations.

One important part of a Star Wars film is the creation of the locales the make up the galaxy far far away - and Rogue One has some locations that will undoubtedly be remembered for a long time. Jedha City is one particular example that not only looks fantastic, but feels lived in. One reason for this, is that the team used a real world desert location in Jordan, and then brought VFX on top of it to build out the city. Within the city itself, the scenes benefit greatly from specific use of blue screen. What I mean is instead of just shooting the whole thing on blue screen - the production team built most of the sets with practical elements, and then used blue screen in the background to integrate that set into the fictional city. It's a simple trick, but plays out so well on screen. Scarif gets the same treatment by turning the Maldives into a whole beautiful planet that acts as the backdrop for a very deadly battle.

Another major component of the film is the space elements and battles. To make it work, the team elected to dust off George Lucas' approach from the original trilogy. A great deal of the shots in space then are the use of beautifully crafted miniatures and simple compositing. Most of what you see is actually happening in camera which is why it looks so great. As for the more interactive parts in the battle - those real world models are perfect reference materials for VFX artists to turn into full CGI. The end result of all the work makes the whole battle feel incredibly visceral, despite it being so fantastical. 

The final VFX element I want to talk about is the CGI recreation of characters from the original trilogy: specifically Tarkin and Princess Leia. Just judging the end results - it isn't able to fully escape the uncanny valley. This gets a gigantic however though, because this was a very bold move towards advancing VFX into a new era. Is it a good era? Should a studio be able to profit off of the likenesses of dead actors? As technology continues to advance, can we just replace actors entirely with AI or photoreal CGI? These are loftier conversations that deserve more nuance than I can give here, but as far technological achievements go - this was a big step forward. And the execution of it was very very good. You can definitely tell in motion, but still frames of the characters - especially Tarkin - look impeccable at times. 

8. Originality or Strength of Adaptation 

Certainly not original - in fact relies highly on what has come before it for success. However, taking what amounts to a few throwaway sentences in the opening scroll from A New Hope and crafting an entire space epic from that, is fairly impressive in terms of adaptation. Rogue One also fits very well into the Star Wars media family, and is arguably one of the best Star Wars movies ever made. 

9. Stunt Coordination 

The stunt work is pretty good throughout the movie and there is a variety of different needs going on - hand to hand combat, gun fights, wire falls, space battles. All of the choreography seemed pretty good. We also did get a few standout moments - but the one I wanted to highlight was the initial fight scene featuring Chirrut and Baze. 

I've talked before about how good action tells a story within the greater story. If you just film a bunch of people throwing punches or shooting guns and expect the audience to be engaged, your scene will fail. What I like about this particular scene is that it shows how you can use action to inform character. The scene basically plays out like this - Jyn and Cassian have been captured by stormtroopers. Before they can be taken away Chirrut emerges from the sidelines telling the stormtroopers to let them go and declaring that the Force is with him. He wanders out into the middle of the setting and plants himself in between all the troopers. The troopers, recognizing he is blind, dismiss him and warn him to go away, to which he passively refuses. Growing frustrated the troopers take aim, ready to kill him. The camera goes in tight to show the audience he is using his hearing to identify the threats, and his foot digs in to a ready stance. As the troopers begin firing, he uses martial arts to dismantle every trooper, dodging laser blasts along the way, and even taking time to taunt them as he does it. After all of the stormtroopers have been beaten, a second wave comes into the scene with blasters trained on Chirrut. From off-screen bolts of a rapidly firing blaster come in and take out the entire squad within a second. Baze struts into frame and the two exchange friendly banter about how Baze almost shot Chirrut and Baze responding with 'you're welcome'. 

So, what did we learn about these brand new characters? We learn about Chirrut first. He is someone who has a sense of righteousness and is no friend to the Empire. He declares about how the Force is with him meaning he is a believer, full of faith, and likely force sensitive. As the fight begins we learn that despite his blindness he can 'see' to some extent and that he is highly skilled in hand to hand combat. We also learn that he is a bit cheeky because he taunts the troopers as he defeats them one by one. We also learn that he can be a bit reckless and may often find himself 'blinded' by his faith in the Force - considering by the end of the initial part of the fight, he gets completely surrounded by the second wave of troopers. Next we very quickly learn about Baze. Baze has a more blunt and possibly more cynical approach. He uses his blaster to take out the entire wave of troopers quickly and without any of the style or taunting that Chirrut displayed. Then finally we learn another piece of information - they are clearly partners that know each other well. There is a distinct impression from their interaction that this is not the first time the two have found themselves in that sort of predicament and that they have a opposites attract type of relationship. It's a lot of information to be gleamed from what amounts to about 80 seconds of runtime. But that is the power of using your action in a smart way.

10. Direction 

At the time of release, Gareth Edwards was a bit of a risk for Disney. He had made one somewhat popular indie movie called Monsters and was coming off the 2014 remake of Godzilla. That was really it. To hand the reigns of one of the most popular franchises ever made to an relative unknown director, shows that there was a lot of faith that Edwards was going to get it right. With that said, the obscure controversy surround the reshoots and release delays does make you wonder what exactly happened. 

If we are just going off the final product, I'd say Edwards did an impressive job bringing the film to fruition - though he may have had some help after the fact.

Legacy/Final Thoughts

I'm very interested to see what effect the completion of Andor will have on Rogue One's legacy. Tony Gilroy essentially managed to retcon the entire thing and create a new mixed media trilogy. Rogue One went from being one of the most expensive movies ever made to DEFINITELY the most expensive TV series finale ever made. And luckily it's all to the benefits of the fans who now get to enjoy a fantastic TV series AND a full blockbuster finale film. As for its place among the Skywalker Saga and other SW media, I'd put this pretty close to the top. But time has a funny way of effecting SW as more and more new generations interact with it, so who really knows.