Rogue One First Impressions/Rant
I donāt normally make any posts about movies, but being a huge Star Wars fan I felt the need to say something. First off, this is not a review, these are just my first impressions and some other things, and second, just because I say what I say doesnāt mean you arenāt allowed to have your own opinions, your impressions of the movie are your own. Also, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
Iād like to start of this rant by saying that this movie really puts theĀ āWarā inĀ āStar Wars.ā Unlike any of the other Star Wars movies, this movie is really freaking dark, even more so than Empires Strike Back or the Prequels (though the prequels are just badly written), and I like it. Normally, you forget that in Star Wars there is usually a war going on and wars arenāt pretty. Many of the expanded universe stuff goes into the grittiness and the realities of war, but with Rogue One being a big movie itās a nice change of pace for the series. What I also appreciated was the fact that this movie cleared up a sort of plot hole in the original movies. In the first movies they already got the Death Star plans and there is this huge glaring oversight on its construction, the exhaust port. Before Rogue One, it was super weird that the Empire would have this big weak spot on their moon-sized, planet-destroying, battlestation, but what this film does is clear it up by saying it was an intentional design flaw by its creator to let the Rebels blow it up and I thought it was cool. The major problem that I did have with this movieās plot is with how it starts out. The beginning and the whole first act felt so disjointed and all over the place, and there were scenes that felt unnecessary and scenes that didnāt even match up; it was hard to keep track of what the hell was happening, but that problem went away as the film goes on.
To summarize real quick, I thought the characters, including the main ones, ranged from memorable to pretty generic. They were all flushed out and complex, but it felt like Iāve seen these characters before. The blind,quirky monk, the hard-ass soldier, egotistical evil officer, etcetera, etcetera. One interesting thing of note is the way that this film does its storytelling and establishing of charactersā relationships which was through thisĀ āshow donāt tellā form of storytelling kind of like in Mad Max: Fury Road, letting the audience interpret and form conclusions based on characters actions. Sometimes this worked, and with characters such as Cassian (Diego Luna), Baze (Jiang Wen), and Chirrut (Donnie Yen) they worked well, but in others times it doesnāt. While Jyn Ersoās backstory of her mother being killed is in the first few minutes of the movie, Cassianās, while similar, is told in a few words, and in my opinion it works because you know what Cassian went through was similar and the film knows it too by not wasting its time with telling you every detail about it. I especially loved his line ofĀ āYouāre not the only one whoās lost everything, some of us just decided to do something about it.ā Baze and Chirrut are my favorite characters because they have this amazing and interesting relationship with one another, and without any piece of exposition you know that they are the best of friends with a long history together based on their interactions with one another. Where thisĀ āShow donāt tellā stuff didnāt work was with Gerrera and Jyn, where the film tells us that they have history together yet we donāt know anything beyond that and the audience canāt really feel anything when Gerrera dies heroically in like the first act because we know jack-shit about their relationship. Another thing I have to say is about Grand Moff Tarkinās inclusion in the movie. I liked that fact that he is there and I thought the CGI for the human characters there were amazing, totally life-like, but there was too much Tarkin and less Krennic, the antagonist, which really took away the impact and evil from him. Also, Darth Vader was pretty fucking radical.
I donāt have much to say for the sound design other than it was great and it sounds likeĀ āStar Wars-stuff,ā but the musical score I have a lot of beef with. The way that I would describe the score would be that itās like some kind of weird off-key version of the Star Wars theme that you would find in a parody video of Star Wars. Every time that I heard it just didnāt feel right and it really takes me out of it hearing it in the backdrop of Star Wars. Objectively, it wasnāt bad per se, but it just didnāt sound right.
One major part of Rogue One, as similarly in The Force Awakens, was the callbacks and references to the older movies and other bits of canon, such as the dude who gets his arm sliced off in A New Hope, the blue milk, or Red 5 being killed leaving the spot vacant for Luke Skywalker. However, unlike The Force Awakens, Rogue One does it much better and Iād like to attribute it to the fact that they were much more subtler. In The Force Awakens, there werenāt as much references to the older movies, but they were so in your face. Heck, even the entire movie had the story beats of the original trilogy packed into one film (not that it was bad though, I loved The Force Awakens).
All in all, Rogue One isnāt the best Star Wars movie, but it deserves to stand in place with all of the other films in the franchise. The story, the characters, the music, all of it had their good points, but there were flaws as well. If you are a huge Star Wars fanboy then I urge you to go see it just for how they explain the exhaust port weakness on the Death Star. If you are just a casual viewer, then I still urge you to go see it, but there are possibly more better movies out there.Ā
For Rogue One, I give it 3 1/2 finglebangles out of a John Mayer
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