Film of the Week: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Set between Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith and immediately before Episode 4 – A New Hope, this film explores the adventure that is only briefly mentioned in the opening text of the fourth film. An entire adventure packed into one sentence, gave us the story and allowed us to follow what was happening without hassle, but actually seeing the adventure unfold was a treat as well as reigniting the nostalgic flare. It’s classic Star Wars, with a new original story, new characters, and has been updated to modern day.

A team from the Rebel Alliance, after learning about a way to defeat this new super weapon the Sith Empire is building. Led by Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones) Calen Erso’s daughter, the Rebel team steals the plans for the Death Star, setting up the epic trilogy and future films in the future. This is the first time we’ve ever been introduced to Jyn Erso, but she has certainly made her mark in Star Wars history. Well, strictly speaking, we’ve already known the importance of her work long before we learned her name.

There have been many jokes centered around how the Death Star seemingly has this self-destruct button in place, ready for anyone to come along and press. This film finally establishes why the Death Star has that fault, and there’s that sense of completion. Instead of guessing and trying to fill in what can loosely be considered a plot-hole, we’ve been given an explanation so we don’t have to guess any more, and the explanation makes perfect sense. Calen Erso was ordered back to the Empire to help build the Death Star, and he knew they would have built it without him, it’s just he’s a resource they could benefit from, and so he secretly planted a trap than can be exploited without anyone’s notice. It was a simple answer to an old question that we thought was never going to be officially answered.

It was classic Star Wars. We saw the AT-AT, the Death Star, along with cameos from C-3PO and R2-D2 (who are the only characters to appear in all eight main films) and even appearances from Darth Vader himself during a brand new story. The first time he was introduced, with the door slowly rising up, and him walking forward, sent chills down my back. Every time he entered the screen, it was in some epic fashion, because anything less would deprive him of the power he has, and seeing him in action right at the end, during an original story, allowed my inner nerd to jump for joy.

Whilst Episode 7 – The Force Awakens went down a much darker route than some of the other films in the main set, Rogue One went for a much lighter atmosphere. The threat was real, the mission had to be successful or risk being forced to surrender. We all know that they would be successful at the end, because the text in Episode 4 proved that, and so it could explore a much lighter tone. Jyn and her team had hope, and in the end, they proved the Sith wrong. In the end, during the final battle, when the Sith took the only option to stop the Rebels from escaping with the plans and attacked the planet with the Death Star, Jyn and her friend Cassian Andor sat and watched, waiting for the end, knowing they were successful. That was a powerful moment, because from now on, when we re-watch the original trilogy, we know what happened before it now, and we know that they sacrificed themselves in the hope of victory that does come when Luke destroys the Death Star. The fact that some of the characters in the fourth film knew how many people sacrificed themselves adds a whole new element that was already there to begin with, just waiting to be explored and unlocked.

That’s the power of Star Wars. If it stayed as the original trilogy only, we would have gotten so much out of it, and would have been happy with it. Because it was popular, it continued to expand and give us more because we wanted more, and doing so reveals just how incredibly cleverly put together the films are. There’s so much more that can be added. Exploring new stories of popular characters, expanding on briefly mentioned throwaway lines, which does ultimately be successful with adding more to the original story, allowing us to re-watch the same films we have done for years in a new light, and that’s power so few stories have.

Even though you knew exactly what was going to happen at the end, the film still takes advantage of creating an incredible amount of tensions. Right at the very end, when the plans of the Death Star are in the Rebel’s hands, you’re still on the edge of your seat, and even more so when Darth Vader shows up and starts attacking the Rebel soldiers. As the Rebel ship flies away, leaving Darth Vader standing on the edge, watching as the plans are stolen right in front of him, we see a close up on his helmet. We don’t need to see his facial expressions, because we already know what they are. Anger that he lost a battle, and worry that they now have the plans and can begin escalating their strength. Vader has become such a powerful cultural character; we know pretty much everything about him. If any film tried to copy without fleshing the character out beforehand, it would be confusing. The filmmakers don’t have to add everything we would normally see, such as Vader’s reaction, because we already know, because we know Vader incredibly well.

The next big Star Wars film will be Episode 8, and I am excited for it. Episode 7 set up a lot of questions, and it will be exciting to learn the answers, along with more questions to then be carried over to Episode 9. The biggest of them all is the identity of Rey’s parents. My prediction is it’s going to be someone who we haven’t heard of as much before, but have heard enough about to not throw us off course and into the pit of confusion.