Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Review

Not Quite Going To Plan

♦Tripwire encoded instructions for its Senior Editor ANDREW COLMAN in a stolen droid so he could review the latest Star Wars, prequel standalone Rogue One: A Star Wars Story…

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Director: Gareth Edwards
Stars: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen

Hot on the heels of last year’s nostalgia-fest, The Franchise, I mean Force, Awakens, the fatted calf that is the Star Wars saga churns out another installment with the “Anthology” entry that is Rogue One – a sort of sequel / prequel (in betweenquel?) that precedes Episode 4. A bit unnecessary, perhaps, and somewhat akin to a Marvel crossover issue for diehard completists, but with the production values on offer, it’s clear that Disney and Lucasfilm mean business, overkill be damned.

For the first half of the movie, the plot seems considerably involved, but it’s all just smoke and mirrors belying a product that anthologizes every achingly overused trope in the book. As we venture from exotic planet to mining colony to remote outpost, we learn of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), a young girl separated from her parents when she was a child, who ends up as your typically indestructible rebel warrior, fighting the Empire while trying to locate her estranged dad Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) who has secretly betrayed his Imperial captors while building the Death Star. She becomes fast friends with Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), an intelligence officer for the Alliance, as well as K2SO (Alan Tudyk), an Imperial droid who has been reprogrammed to fight for the rebels – it’s the same dynamic as the original trilogy, only a second generation copy, in both senses of the term.

Along for the ride is Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), a former Imperial pilot and rather irritating plot device whose only purpose is to remind his fellow rebels (and the audience) what their objective is, especially in the final reel. I know that Ahmed can act (he was more than serviceable in the excellent HBO crime meller The Night Of) but his role betrays the lack of direction going on, as spectacle continually takes precedence over actors – he sort of emotes, but more often than not mumbles his way through the movie, uncertain of whether he’s angsty, enigmatic or tough. Or why he’s there at all.

And indeed this is the inherent problem with our latest feature – the production and CGI are outstanding, with more locations and beguiling planetscapes than ever before, but what’s missing is a decent narrative thread, and time for any of the vast ensemble of actors to be given any kind of room to develop their roles. Genevieve O’Reilly (Mon Mothma) and Alistair Petrie (General Draven) play the two alliance mavens well enough but barely have time to register before Jyn, Cassian, Bohdi and their motley band of merry men set sail to conquer the Imperial fleet against their wishes. It’s almost as if director Gareth Edwards’s remit is to throw everything at the viewer, including the kitchen sink, add some Easter egg references and CGI cameos, and assume that that will amply suffice. What we get however is a two hour trailer.

I could add that in places the film does come to life, especially when Cassian (a decidedly odd turn from Diego Luna) is hunting his prey in the doomed metropolis situated in Jedha, a key site for the Jedi (the gothic cityscape looks superb, for what it’s worth). But this being a whistle stop tour of the museum, our protagonist is immediately whisked off elsewhere.

At the heart of it all is the belief that more is more, with the denouement (showcasing a lot of familiar faces) a relentlessly turgid litany of cataclysmic destruction that falls dramatically short of grand guignol due to being underpinned by an absurd lack of drama. There’s a coda in there somewhere, especially in the fate of the two leads and their henchmen (did I mention that one of said henchmen constantly invokes The Force? They had to shoehorn that in somewhere). This is down to the aforementioned cast size and logistical constraints. But it’s also down to a complacently bland, below par script that doesn’t have much in the way of inspiration or anything to give the characters the spark that might hook the audience. You almost feel for Felicity Jones having to declaim such vapid nonsense as her character tries to motivate the troops. In the end Tudyk’s K2SO gets all the best lines, and even those seem contrived.

There’s nothing wrong with a massively budgeted space opera mimicking a Saturday morning cartoon if panache is involved, and the sense of fun that was extant in the first trilogy. Granted, not every film manages to restore cherished character actors who have long since left us to life with such a degree of accuracy (I won’t say who, but it’s impressive). And a prequel such as this (where you know the outcome, like in Better Call Saul) is always a gamble, but hopefully the next time Disney decides to do this again they might want to consider that such blockbusters are all interchangeable, be they spandex or inter-galactic. There are so many gritty, dark scenes here that could’ve fitted quite easily into half the Marvel extravaganzas that have graced our imax screens in recent years.

If only Disney / Lucasfilm / Marvel etc. realised you don’t have to bombard your audience into submission, nor produce a film written solely from a fan’s perspective. Still, the film looks very good indeed. Until the next episode…

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is out from tomorrow Thursday 15 December in the UK and on Friday 16 December in the US

Rogue One review www.tripwiremagazine.co.uk