Directed by:
Gareth EdwardsCinematography:
Greig FraserComposer:
Michael GiacchinoCast:
Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Ben Mendelsohn, Diego Luna, Forest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, James Earl Jones, Jimmy Smits, Warwick Davis, Donnie Yen (more)VOD (4)
Plots(1)
From Lucasfilm comes an epic adventure - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. In a period of great confilct, a group of unlikely heroes led by Jyn Erso, a daring fugitive, and Cassian Andor, a rebel spy, band together on a desperate mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire's ultimate weapon of destruction. (Disney / Buena Vista)
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Reviews (15)
Star Wars for me has always been a saga based on adventure, laughable naivety, likable heroes, and fairly one-dimensional but ultimately fun characters. Rogue One has none of that. Nothing against trying to make a darker story, but the attempts to turn the rebels into sort of bastards who aren't afraid to slaughter innocents because "the ends justify the means" are more distracting than interesting, as are all the other attempts at a grittier atmosphere and the efforts to make this sci-fi flick into a war movie. Although it could work, it would just have to have more interesting characters that we know something about. Not two Asians who are teamed up with the heroes because they happened to meet in the city and became best buddies during a scene that probably ended up in the editing room. No one in the bunch is the least bit interesting, failing to evoke any emotion and just being there, either pretending to be a blind halfling or a fat lover of big guns, and that's where all ends. Nobody is funny, nobody is cool, nobody is scary, they're just there, flying from planet to planet and you're supposed to root for them because the director said so. And the more the minutes tick by, the more tedious and annoying the whole thing gets. Fortunately, Rogue One looks great and pulls a truly epic space carnage out of its sleeve in its last half hour, so in the end I left the cinema not satisfied, but certainly not angry – although I did feel more and more embarrassed with each successive reference to Episodes 4 to 6. A moderately entertaining film and a pretty big step off for the entire saga. I hope it's the last one.
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The Star Wars universe has never seemed so empty, two-dimensional, and pointless. A film that fills two sentences from the epilogue of A New Hope and fulfills its role mechanically, without enthusiasm, without exciting characters, but with lots of wooden sentences and abbreviations. The film contains disposable heroes - heroes without a past and a future. And if it sounds like a good starting point for a war film on paper, it creates an incoherent hermaphrodite on the screen, which gives me almost physical feelings of discomfort when I watch it. Like 2016, the incredibly disgusting and unbelievable digital resurrection of the two characters in the original trilogy. Episode VII showed that old clichés can have a new life. Rogue One is the corpse that contains the best and most chilling scene in the last five minutes. Until then, you are watching the clashes of opaque and poorly drawn characters in space, which, despite jumping from place to place, resembles someone's cramped living room. A disappointment of galactic proportions, there is no doubt about that. P. S. Bonus points for reviving Forest Whitaker from Battlefield: Earth: This is truly a feat for lovers of recession. Edit: Given this year's Christmas competition, I have to add a third star. It simply does not deserves the same treatment as Assassin's Creed and Passengers.
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More mature? Don't let it mess with you, it´s only dirtier and free of childish staff. It is true that the first hour is largely redundant and the movie would probably do without it. There is also no denying that describing characters as one-dimensional means adding one dimension to them. On the other hand, this has always been the case with Star Wars. You can recognize scenes that were shot several times and that's not good. And what they did to poor Cushing will make you turn in the grave for more than a decade. At the same time, however, the final half hour has unprecedented zest for this series, that it goes its own way and that Edwards works impressively with space and scale (at least in Imax, it works great in this respect). Yes, it's nothing more than intense disposable blockbuster. However, it is a pretty successful disposable blockbuster that does not try to be anything else which is nice, not in terms of events let alone in terms of not pop culture idol like other self-centered movies of this universe. PS: Although Giacchin's accompaniment is not as good quality or grateful/suitable for independent listening as Williams's, it is surprisingly better, as it does not draw attention to itself and, in fact, only serves the film.
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Edwards filmed this exactly to my taste. A Star Wars fans’ dream come true. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t change anything about the saga; these sideline events aren’t vital to the big story, they “just" expand on it. Rogue One offers a great deal of action and exceptionally (with such little room to develop) layered characters, headed by a cruelly sincere robot. Felicity Jones je excellent, but everyone in the team is indispensible for final result, which forms a founding pillar of Star Wars. Mendelsohn is a dignified baddy. An ambitious villain who is disgusted at the inefficiency of his imperial colleagues and tries to find support in Vader. The fairytale atmosphere is replaced with semi-documentary wartime confusion and excellent action sequences, and the only smear on its beauty are the two digital faces. The demonstrations of power by the Death Star were much more horrific than in the original trilogy (the fifty megaton Tsar Hadra) and if this part of Star Wars had any purpose, it was this demonstration of the Empire’s newly attained power. A more than dignified farewell to Darth Vader.
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I should state at the outset that I am more of a Star Wars detractor than a fan. I suffered through Episode VII in the cinema and gave Rogue One a chance mainly because of the new cast and Donnie Yen, who apart from two small action set pieces didn't show much. Fortunately the new film is not as infantile, trivial and tired as the previous ones. The weird creatures are kept to a minimum, none of the actors pissed me off, and the action was watchable without rolling my eyes, yet it's nothing exciting or imaginative that would make me fall on my ass. Thumbs up for a great performance by Forest Whitaker and for Lord Vader's two-minute solo, which had some oomph, but once was enough. 65%.
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