Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, film review – The Force is wavering with this one

There are plenty of treats for knowing fans but the latest addition to the saga feels more like a formulaic corporate product, says David Sexton
David Sexton16 December 2016

Disney bought up Star Wars (Lucasfilm) for $4.05 billion in 2012, a bit of a punt since it was unclear how much more the franchise had to give. However, last year’s reboot, episode VII, The Force Awakens, was the highest-grossing instalment yet and the third highest-grossing film of all time, taking more than $2 billion. Episode VIII has been shooting this year and it’s due for release next December.

Meanwhile, here’s a new stand-alone film, a bolt-on to the existing Star Wars universe, slotting in neatly as the immediate prequel to the original 1977 Star Wars (re-titled Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981). There, it will be remembered, we are told at the start that, a long, long time ago, “rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star”. So that’s the story of Rogue One, confidently predicted to be this year’s biggest release.

These non-Saga films are intended to explore new genres and be slightly grittier, with “the chosen directors empowered to tell the stories in their own way” even. The first so empowered is 41-year-old Brit Gareth Edwards, who has previously directed Monsters (his 2010 tiny-budget debut) and Godzilla (2014). He has quite a distinctive style, favouring hand-held cameras and enveloping environments, this whole background being lit rather than just the actors themselves within it. His cinematographer here, Greig Fraser, has a sympathetically murky approach too (his work includes Zero Dark Thirty, Killing Them Softly, Foxcatcher and Lion).

Edwards is still entirely credited by Disney as the director of Rogue One but it emerged during the making of the film that one of its writers, the Bourne hack director Tony Gilroy, had been given an enhanced role, his salary upped from $200,000 per week to $5 million, put in charge of re-edits and re-shoots, amounting, some insiders alleged, to as much as 40 per cent of the whole, including a revised ending. Disney has repressed this story — and you too might think this industry background is irrelevant to the film before us. All you want to know is: is it any good? Is it fun?

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in pictures

1/7

But it is relevant. These films are minutely adjusted products, here the balance being between going a little off-piste as promised and yet delivering the required Star Wars experience, hitting numbers but not outdoing the core product. The resulting film shows signs of different approaches glued together: it’s a blockbuster palimpsest.

The first half jerkily takes us to lots of different worlds, not staying long in any of them, as if lacking confidence that they deserve expansion. The climax is classic Star Wars, X-wings and TIE-fighters whizzing around, AT-AT walkers blasting and toppling, Darth Vader flashing the light-saber. In the second-hand motor business it’s called a cut and shut, and it is not a good buy.

Rogue One opens with brilliant engineer Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) being kidnapped from his pastoral retreat by sneery Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, very good in his first scenes, less so later on in a particularly sheety cloak), taken to help create the Death Star, so seeming to turn to the dark side. But before his abduction, Galen tells his little daughter: “Whatever I do, I do to protect you. I love you, Stardust.”.To which she replies, “I love you too, papa”, so setting up major Daddy issues, as per regs, for the rest of the film.

For, suddenly, 15 years on, this girl has become our heroine, Jyn Erso (names are crucial in the creation of fantasy: this one sounds like something from Ikea, perhaps a bit embarrassing from the bathroom range). She’s admirably played by Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything, The Invisible Woman).

Since her father’s disappearance, Jyn has been brought up by ferocious warrior Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker, a bit worse for wear). Now she finds herself charged with an almost impossible mission by a hologram of Daddy, generated from a data stick brought to the rebels by renegade Empire pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed, wearing goggles and playing a bit of a weakling, sadly). Jones emotes greatly before the paternal hologram, a performance revealing how rare any expression of feeling has been in the whole franchise.

They’re a rag-tag lot, the rebel alliance, shabbily dressed and poorly equipped. The look is definitely Second World War, their base, Yavin 4, resembling a hard-pressed RAF station, if not actually a branch of Dad’s Army.

After the holy city of Jedha has experienced the destructive power of the Death Star, Jyn urges the Alliance leaders to support this almost impossible mission but they demur. Still, “rebellions are built on hope”, she tells them (the script, by Gilroy and Chris Weitz, is a clunker, so firmly in the tradition).

And off Jyn goes, in a stolen imperial cargo ship, quickly named Rogue One for the occasion, with a select band of volunteers, first in search of her father to the extremely foggy world of Eadu, and then on to the beatific Scarif, rather like the Maldives, except with a Shard-like tower among the palms.

Besides the nervous Bodhi, her companions in arms include a rebel soldier, Cassian Andor (handsome Diego Luna, Y tu Mama Tambien), and a couple of characterful Chinese warriors, casting that takes into thoughtful consideration the Far Eastern market. Blind but deadly martial-arts monk Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) keeps muttering to himself “the Force is with me” while his beardy, piratical mate, Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), blasts away with his big gun.

And there’s a droid — you bet. K-250 is a reprogrammed imperial security guard, sinisterly black, bald, skeletal and pin-headed but an absolute wag — since his reprogramming “he tends to say whatever comes into his circuits”, it’s explained, which includes repeatedly giving pessimistic predictions of the chances of survival at the wrong time. He is voiced with appalling pertness by veteran comedian Alan Tudyk.

So this Star Wars veers off into a new style of near-realism (Gareth Edwards fancying almost a war-documentary look) only to be yanked back into the classic product by the end. There are treats here for knowing fans (an astounding digital resurrection or two, a new style of nasty trooper, etc) and some reviewers have been in five-star raptures. In many ways the new Star Wars films are better than the originals, thanks mainly to technical advances, a difference that only becomes fully apparent when you make the mistake of rewatching the classics rather than just remembering them. However, I can only report that I found Rogue One not just a dull but an oppressive experience, being force-fed a corporate product: a film that never comes alive, with none of the characters properly developed, none of the relationships gelling, the very adventure formulaic. You may do better.

Cert 12A, 134 mins

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESGoingOut

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in