Rogue One

I love Star Wars.

The Empire Strikes Back is probably my favourite film of all time. I mean, sure, I was burned by the prequels, I'm not the hugest fan of The Force Awakens, and I think Return of the Jedi is actually more than a little bit rubbish, but I love Star Wars.

I hated Rogue One.


I'll start with the subtitle, I suppose; for a film billing itself as "A Star Wars Story", it's remarkably weak on the story part, less weaving a tale as bundling a bunch of plot threads together and praying the power of the Force produces a tapestry at the other end. But all it ends up with is last year's christmas lights: a tangled mess of pretty colours without much of a clue what all the bits are, or how they connect.

The characters are the high point - although the heroes are mostly of the grim, scowling "anti-" variety, there are twin exceptions in Chirrut Îmwe, a blind, force-sensitive monk who would have been a Jedi if there had been any left to train him, and K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial droid who's a decent comic relief character, but probably would have been better served by straight, deadpan delivery than self-aware sarcasm.

Despite the promise, however, nobody really has an arc; initially-ruthless Rebel Intelligence Captain and Han Solo cosplayer Cassian Andor murders an informant in cold blood to get away from a handful of backwater Stormtroopers, but doesn't pull the trigger on a high-level target because of Jyn Erso, a woman he met fifteen minutes ago and shared zero meaningful screen time with.

Saw Gerrera, Jyn's one-time mentor (though again, no time is spent establishing their relationship, we're just blandly informed that they have one), is apparently so hardline and fanatical that the Rebel Alliance (informant-murdering spies and all) aren't willing to work with him - nor he with them - but he still manages to give her a weightlessly tearful "save the Rebellion!" pep talk before his utterly pointless death.

At one point, Darth Vader makes a pun.

DARTH VADER.

MAKES A PUN.

I know what you're getting for Christmas, Luke...

Rogue One never uses one shot when four will do, and there's an establishing shot every ninety seconds or so - the movie actually opens with about eight in a row, as we pan up from one planet to the rings of a gas giant, then a shot of a ship flying past the rings, then the ship approaching the planet that was in the first shot, then two or three of the ship flying over the surface.

Even the action scenes, explosion-filled as they are, are surprisingly unexciting. I put part of that down to the sound design - it never sounds like anyone's there who's not currently visible onscreen - and partly the multiple-shot approach slowing down the pacing. Rather than any of the combat feeling chaotic or dangerous, the result is airless, and lacks even the sense of scale that was Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla's single redeeming feature, as most of the action involving the towering AT-ACTs is shot from the air.

References to A New Hope are tossed in with reckless abandon, with nary a thought to either their relevance to this story, or how they connect to the original. For all the criticism (rightly) aimed at the prequels for not lining up with the original trilogy, this is nigh unforgivable.

Bail Organa declares he's going to send Leia to find Obi-Wan (which isn't what she was doing at the beginning of A New Hope), but they take her along to the final battle over Scarif, the Tantive IV docked inside the Rebel flagship.

The two guys who menace Luke in the cantina in Mos Eisley are ambling around on Jeddah, directly under an Imperial Star Destroyer, and are able to hop across to Tatooine despite being wanted enough to have "a death warrant in twelve systems" (that is a bit of a nitpick, but I'd bet cash money that most people who know A New Hope well enough to spot the cameo also know the line).

The Force Awakens was disparaged by many as a rehash of A New Hope, but nobody seems to have minded that Rogue One lifts its entire finale wholesale from Return of the Jedi, as (stop me if you've heard this one) the Rebel fleet engages the Empire to destroy an orbiting installation above the world where a small ground force, having infiltrated the Imperial blockade in a stolen shuttle, races towards a giant satellite dish. All that's missing are the Ewoks.

It's not the worst Star Wars has ever been - the performances are better than anything the prequels ever mustered, and the production & costume design are well on point - but it's far, far away from being the best.