Cinema Styles: Rogue One tells a story of hope
Film: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen
How to Watch: Disney+
Runtime: 133 minutes Genre: Action, War, Sci-fi
Rating: PG-13 Awards: Academy Award Nominations for Best Sound Design and Best Visual Effects, Empire Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actress (Jones)
Rogue One is a Star Wars film about a group of rebels working together to steal the plans to the Death Star; a planet-destroying weapon created by the Galactic Empire. The film is set a week before the events of the original 1977 Star Wars movie: Episode IV — A New Hope. The characters in that movie succeed because of the efforts and sacrifices of the characters in Rogue One. This film emphasizes the “war” aspect of Star Wars, showing a dispirited group of insurgents facing off against the rising power of an authoritarian regime.
Rogue One would make a great war film even if it wasn’t connected to the Star Wars storyline. It’s profoundly dark, showing the shock and horror that often comes with wartime situations. It also surprisingly stands alone quite well, existing as an excellent film even without the context of the movies in the storyline that precede and succeed it. It breaks new ground in the Star Wars mythology, deepening that cinematic universe and also paying tribute to what came before.
Rogue One is completely unlike any other Star Wars film. It’s the first film in the series in which no one mentions the name Skywalker. While this story is certainly connected to that saga, that family isn’t the focus. This is a movie about universal ideas like good versus evil, and freedom versus control. It purposefully distances itself from the other Star Wars movies, removing or limiting many of the trademark aspects people have come to associate with the series. This includes a minimal amount of lightsabers, almost no Jedis, and the removal of the text scroll at the beginning of the movie. From the outset, Rogue One stakes its claim as its own powerful work of art.
Rogue One also does a great job of feeling closely connected to the next film in the series. With this in mind, Rogue One’s director, Gareth Edwards, instructed the art department to only use elements that would have been available in 1977. This was designed to give a look and feel to the movie that would most closely resemble that of A New Hope. Another challenge would be to connect Rogue One to that movie using any of the original actors. They had all aged several decades since that film’s release. Still, Rogue One used brand new technology from Industrial Light & Magic to de-age the original actors from A New Hope, showing them as their younger self.
The theme at the center of Rogue One is the idea of hope, and its necessity in overcoming a powerful foe. The characters in this movie are focused on the greater good, and they’re all willing to pay the ultimate price to combat the Empire and achieve freedom for future generations. Hope is explicitly mentioned frequently throughout the film, often cited as the one thing keeping them going. Hope is shown as the connective tissue that unites the Rebel Alliance as they embark on impossible missions with low likelihood of success. Some of the characters in Rogue One are aware they won’t be around to see the fruits of their labors. These selfless people make the sacrifice, knowing the hope they’re creating isn’t their own, but that of future generations.
After all, the next film in the timeline is A New Hope because the rebel fighters in this movie forged that new hope to exist.
The creator of the Empire’s weapon of mass destruction is a man named Galen Erso. His character was modeled after J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Both men share the guilt of building weapons capable of killing mass amounts of people and becoming agents of death.
The original Star Wars film, A New Hope, came out shortly after the end of America’s war in Vietnam. Many film historians have viewed that film through the lens of that war, and drawn parallels between them. Similarly, people have done the same for Rogue One, this time comparing it to the United States’ recent wars in the Middle East.
Rogue One is remarkable for introducing many new characters to the Star Wars universe, and immediately making us care about them. It incrementally expands the Star Wars lore, and shows there are so many other stories out there to explore. Rogue One, itself a prequel, recently received its own prequel in the form of a new television series on Disney+. Titled Andor, it follows the complicated Cassion Andor (Diego Luna) in the years leading up to Rogue One.
This film has a diverse ensemble of talented actors playing memorable characters. Donnie Yen gets to show off his martial arts abilities as Chirrut Îmwe, and Alan Tudyk is hilariously deadpan as K-2SO, a former droid of the Empire that has been reprogrammed to work with the rebels.
Rogue One boldly goes where no Star Wars film has gone before. It extends and expands that universe in new and exciting ways. It’s an emotional film about ordinary people doing something extraordinary; emphasizing courage in the face of despair and hope in the face of fear. It takes the concept of the Force, and applies it to non-magical beings.
For them, hope is the force, and it’s the driving power and shared experience that keeps them going. Their efforts, and this movie, are reminders every meaningful achievement requires group effort, blind hope, and great sacrifice.
Bobby Styles studied Film at UCLA, and worked as an editor and producer on several film, commercial, and music video projects in Los Angeles. He currently teaches the intermediate and advanced Video Production courses in the Multimedia & Technology Academy at Monache High School. His column appears in The Recorder every Tuesday.