Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Whether man­i­fest­ed in the blind­ing glare of a nuclear blast or the last glim­mer of life in a dying father’s eyes, light can be found even in the dark­est moments. This sense of hope pow­ers direc­tor Gareth Edwards’ daz­zling new film, Rogue One – it is the foun­da­tion upon which Jyn Erso (Felic­i­ty Jones) and her rag­tag rebel­lion is built, the unyield­ing force that gives her belief and strength in the face of extreme adversity.

Yet where Star Wars tra­di­tion­al­ly presents bina­ry oppo­si­tions in stark terms, Edwards is more inter­est­ed in explor­ing the grey areas in between. The Rebel Alliance, for exam­ple, appears not as a unit­ed front but a frac­tured, great­ly dimin­ished last line of defence; its lead­ers con­flict­ed, des­per­ate and fal­li­ble. The Galac­tic Empire, for its part, is depict­ed not as a sin­gle malev­o­lent organ­ism but as a mas­sive cor­po­ra­tion bent to the will of a hand­ful of moral­ly cor­rupt, pow­er-mad men.

If The Force Awak­ens was a glo­ri­ous exer­cise in auto­homage, Rogue One instant­ly feels less behold­en to George Lucas’ orig­i­nal tril­o­gy. Where JJ Abrams deliv­ered a crowd-pleas­ing spec­ta­cle packed with clus­ter bombs of unadul­ter­at­ed nos­tal­gia, Edwards does some­thing qui­et­ly rad­i­cal with the time-hon­oured for­mu­la, not exact­ly tear­ing up the Rebel rule­book but using fine brush­strokes to incor­po­rate var­i­ous clas­sic Star Wars motifs in sub­tle and inter­est­ing ways. He uses shad­ow and light in lieu of the franchise’s trade­mark screen wipes to move grace­ful­ly, some­times omi­nous­ly between scenes. An icon­ic char­ac­ter is (re)introduced in unmis­tak­able sil­hou­ette in one of sev­er­al clear nods to Steven Spiel­berg. Famil­iar musi­cal refrains gen­tly swell to awe-inspir­ing celes­tial imagery that would make Stan­ley Kubrick weep.

It’s not all plain sail­ing: the first hour is heavy on expo­si­tion; a rewired droid with no social fil­ter (voiced by Alan Tudy­ck) ini­tial­ly threat­ens to usurp Jar Jar Binks, and then there’s the eth­i­cal­ly dubi­ous deci­sion to dig­i­tal­ly exhume a long since depart­ed actor in order to reprise a role that could just as eas­i­ly, though per­haps no less con­tro­ver­sial­ly, have been recast.

When Edwards gets it right, how­ev­er, the results are spec­tac­u­lar. He may not have the same knack for Spiel­ber­gian humour that Abrams employed to win­ning effect in Episode VII, but Edwards is a supreme visu­al sto­ry­teller who makes gen­uine­ly bold, risky artis­tic choic­es (as any­one who’s seen 2014’s Godzil­la will be able to attest). We already know the fates of Jyn, Diego Luna’s Cass­ian Andor, Don­nie Yen’s Chirrut Îmwe, Wen Jiang’s Baze Mal­bus and Riz Ahmed’s Bod­hi Rook – their shared lega­cy is writ­ten in the stars – but Edwards doesn’t treat these char­ac­ters as mere foot­notes to anoth­er, even grander saga.

Instead he shows how even the small­est action or ges­ture can have a pro­found impact on the big­ger pic­ture. It’s often said that his­to­ry is writ­ten by the vic­tors, but in Rogue One, tri­umph and tragedy are sep­a­rat­ed by the slimmest mar­gins. As we scram­ble our way across mul­ti­ple star sys­tems, nav­i­gat­ing a scrap­py, slow-burn plot that builds towards a tru­ly awe­some third act show­down, even the most mun­dane details, such as a glitch­ing holo­gram or a jammed space­ship door, are imbued with arm­rest-grip­ping gravity.

This is a film about tak­ing charge of your own des­tiny, even if that means mak­ing the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice. In the moment, acts of immea­sur­able brav­ery are car­ried out to lit­tle fan­fare, char­ac­ters uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dis­patched with an even-hand­ed mat­ter-of-fact­ness that has become an essen­tial hall­mark of the director’s work. Only For­est Whitaker’s bat­tle-weary resis­tance fight­er Saw Ger­rera (who looks like he lost a fight with a Dyson vac­u­um clean­er) is giv­en short shrift here, mak­ing his exit almost as abrupt­ly as he enters the fray. That said, he – along with each and every mem­ber of this might­i­ly impres­sive ensem­ble – plays a vital part in Jyn’s redemp­tive journey.

The com­par­isons between the young hero­ine of this film and Daisy Ridley’s Rey are unavoid­able, but while both have seri­ous aban­don­ment issues and are com­pelled by the burn­ing desire to get back home, the for­mer has all but aban­doned hope because doing so would require her to return not to a des­ti­na­tion but a point in time. Jyn car­ries around with her a trou­bling fam­i­ly secret, one she is unable to rec­on­cile with until a mes­sage from an unlike­ly source sheds new light on her past and that feel­ing of hope comes flood­ing back. The scene in ques­tion is the film’s emo­tion­al anchor, and Edwards lingers on Felic­i­ty Jones’ face so that we wit­ness the full weight of this shock rev­e­la­tion sink in. It is a crush­ing moment.

Unre­lent­ing in its aus­tere count­ing of the phys­i­cal (and spir­i­tu­al) cost of war, Rogue One is the dark­est Star Wars movie ever made. Not a swash­buck­ling hi-gloss space epic but a dirt-smudged human dra­ma in which the eter­nal strug­gle between good and evil – the light side and the dark – plays out almost exclu­sive­ly at ground lev­el, in dense jun­gles, dystopi­an neo-cities and on pris­tine beaches.

The set pieces in this film are no less exhil­a­rat­ing than any­thing the offi­cial Saga has to offer, its scope just as sweep­ing and majes­tic, but Edwards resists the temp­ta­tion to shoe­horn in extrav­a­gant digres­sions which serve no func­tion to the actu­al sto­ry, like, say, the podrac­ing sequence from The Phan­tom Men­ace. It is also entire­ly devoid of emp­ty roman­ti­cism and the kind of dis­ori­en­tat­ing, pro­tract­ed FX-dri­ven destruc­tion that has become the scourge of mod­ern block­busters. Even more cru­cial­ly, Edwards has his actors to do most of the heavy lift­ing, mean­ing that even at 133 min­utes Rogue One feels rel­a­tive­ly restrained, stripped down to its purest the­mat­ic essence.

When screen­writer Chris Weitz apol­o­gised recent­ly for ​“politi­cis­ing” the film by tweet­ing a series of since delet­ed respons­es to #Dump­Star­Wars, he should have saved his breath. Like every Star Wars sto­ry before it, Rogue One is inher­ent­ly, inescapably polit­i­cal, but that doesn’t mean there is some insid­i­ous hid­den agen­da con­tained with­in its sur­face-lev­el alle­go­ry (if the fact that the Galac­tic Empire is a thin­ly-veiled satire of the Third Reich is brand new infor­ma­tion to you, then lit­er­al sym­bol­ism in Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma real­ly is the last of your wor­ries). Its mes­sage is sim­ply and reas­sur­ing­ly one of hope, and it nev­er once labours this point or rams it down the viewer’s throat.

Then again, maybe there is some­thing in the whole anti-Trump pro­pa­gan­da con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, although in truth it’s doubt­ful that Weitz or Edwards explic­it­ly intend­ed to evoke Pres­i­dent Oba­ma or America’s cur­rent sociopo­lit­i­cal cli­mate in the film’s last lines. After all, hope is a uni­ver­sal virtue more pow­er­ful than even the most sin­is­ter forces in this or any oth­er galaxy.