ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016)
This story takes place right before the events of STAR WARS where a group of
miscreants decide they don’t really care about the “duck and cover” plan of
Empire avoidance and mediocre attempts at sabotage…and decide to steal the
plans to the Death Star.
It doesn’t take long to realize that we are not only
involved in a rich enveloping addition to the STAR WARS universe but a deeper
insight that almost made me wish this had come out in 1975 or 1976. The core
reason STAR WARS can even happen is covered in this film, which features, by
far, the best character development and overall dialog we’ve seen in any of the
films to date. With a scope dealing in issues of abandonment, atonement, and finding
worth and sacrifice, to unparalleled bravery against all odds for a worthy
cause, Gareth Edwards takes this STAR WARS installment to the precipice of the original
series like nothing we’ve seen before. It answers the most obvious questions from the original
trilogy, with an overt attention to the mythos that made it almost impossible
not to enjoy. We get, not only an injection of humor at just the right times,
but an emotional ride driving the audience from joy to absolute tears and
everywhere in between like a rollercoaster.
ROGUE ONE is shot like a war movie
which oddly makes it the first STAR WARS movie that actually felt like a real
war film. Let me also say it was worth the wait to see Vader do Vader
stuff again. The rebellion is complex, the EMPIRE is brutal, and the fight
scenes are brilliant. Donnie Yen is freakin’ fantastic and just wow. Go see this. It will make you watch STAR WARS in a whole
new light.
I won’t go into any spoilers here, but some of the nods to
the originals are just really awesome, while others I can say I would have
approached completely differently. So
with that, I have to say there are some issues in this thing that I think could
have been avoided.
1) I don’t think you should legally be able to release a movie where half the previews are not even in the movie. At the very least – previews should come with a legal tag that tells you...” We might just flat-out lie to you and not put some of this in the movie at all”.
2) Even though we had a female lead and Felicity Jones is fantastic, we could have used at least one more major female role in this. I think a lot of fans will notice something was oddly missing and it didn’t necessarily have to be.
3) If someone says there is a side effect of losing your mind…doesn’t that actually happen? Why have that line of dialog in the film if it doesn’t actually occur. Maybe it’s a delayed insanity?
Outside of this – like with any STAR WARS film, you can get crazy nit-picky, but overall this is a triumph for the series and another absolute gem from Gareth Edwards, one of the best fairly new directors out there. It is very very rare that a movie comes out and makes the ones before it in the series even better by way of clarity.
1) I don’t think you should legally be able to release a movie where half the previews are not even in the movie. At the very least – previews should come with a legal tag that tells you...” We might just flat-out lie to you and not put some of this in the movie at all”.
2) Even though we had a female lead and Felicity Jones is fantastic, we could have used at least one more major female role in this. I think a lot of fans will notice something was oddly missing and it didn’t necessarily have to be.
3) If someone says there is a side effect of losing your mind…doesn’t that actually happen? Why have that line of dialog in the film if it doesn’t actually occur. Maybe it’s a delayed insanity?
Outside of this – like with any STAR WARS film, you can get crazy nit-picky, but overall this is a triumph for the series and another absolute gem from Gareth Edwards, one of the best fairly new directors out there. It is very very rare that a movie comes out and makes the ones before it in the series even better by way of clarity.
THE FORCE AWAKENS is the clear best movie in this series for
me, with RETURN OF THE JEDI 2nd EMPIRE, and then ROGUE ONE. Empire is third for me because the 2nd
half of the movie should have probably been the 1st half, and I
remember wanting to go back to Hoth for most of the second half of the movie
even when I was a kid. ROGUE ONE masterfully reverses those two elements but
overall is more emotionally intense.
Overall I give ROGUE ONE a stellar 6 out of 7….this
is the movie that answers what we could only speculate about in the past. It
repairs and deepens the saga.
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