Rogue One offers a few things I had always been keen to see in a Star Wars film: images of the galaxy under Imperial rule, and a more substantial bridge between the first two trilogies. This film also took several viewings for me to warm up to because it features consistently distracting elements including CGI resurrections and hurried character introductions. Now that I have a familiarity with the many players, I can enjoy the things this film does well, which are numerous enough to make Rogue One a visual wonder, and an absorbing addition to the saga.
Rogue One’s greatest achievement is its art direction. From blue milk to subtle wardrobe details—including Darth Vader’s red-tinted lenses—these people nail the classic aesthetic while also introducing new droids, ships, and uniforms that give Rogue One its own identity. The cast is also a highlight. While I think the number of new characters should have been whittled down, I enjoy all of these actors, even Forest Whittaker, whose eccentric performance feels like it belongs in a different movie. The overabundance of storylines does bog the script down at various points, but that became less bothersome for me with each viewing.
There are also several elements which have never grown on me, in particular the CGI renderings of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher, both dead at the time I first saw the film. I had learned of Fisher’s death only one hour before my showing, making her digital image at the end of the film feel incredibly upsetting. Digital Cushing does look pretty good when it’s standing or walking, though I cringe during dialogue because that mouth isn’t moving properly. Part of the legacy of Star Wars is pushing the limits of visual effects technology, and I appreciate that this spirit of innovation has endured. Even so, I don’t care for this general direction in filmmaking, and would have preferred to see Tarkin and Leia either recast or omitted.
Another dubious creative choice is the sequence involving Darth Vader’s base on Mustafar and the dialogue with Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) that follows. This is pure fan service— a callback to Return of the Jedi which had initially conceptualized a castle on a lava planet as a primary location. Thanks to the prequels, we now know what happened to Vader on Mustafar, which makes it unlikely that he would want to reside there—the site of your defeat and grotesque mutilation is an odd spot to buy office space. Also, Vader’s dialogue during his chat with Krennic feels very odd. James Earl Jones returns, but for the first time these Vader lines sounds more like the actor than the character he’s voicing; the scene always comes off thudding to me.
The handful of issues I have with this film seem trivial in the face of its final act, which is as exhilarating as anything Star Wars has ever offered: a gorgeous space dogfight complementing a tense extraction mission on the surface. All plots conclude with the rebel acquisition of the Death Star schematics and—in one of the more memorable scenes in Star Wars history—a narrow escape from a ferocious Darth Vader.
Rogue One overcomes some early problems to become an engrossing, inspiring adventure. Once I was able to grow familiar with the characters and get behind them, it became hard to take my eyes off the screen; the action and drama are thrilling and incredibly satisfying, especially in the final 40-minutes. The worst I can say is that the storytelling periodically suffers from some obvious rewrites/reshoots, and the CGI zombies aren’t quite ready for primetime. Rogue One—despite a few of creative and storytelling missteps—is a consistently gratifying Star Wars experience, and along with Episodes III and IV, forms a consequential period of the mythos.
