And they all die the same way - too soon.Įdwards is not a terribly great filmmaker when it comes to telling stories about human beings. Two Imperial Stormtroopers shoot the breeze about a work-related matter before they’re gunned down. He always shows you someone’s body flying backward from an explosion, presumably broken.

In and of itself, these insert shots of the humans in the midst of destruction are no different from the ones you might see in other sci-fi adventures, but Edwards repeats this pattern. When two starships collide, he’ll intercuts shots of the people inside those starships, toppling over, never having realized that this particular day was the day they would die. Those on the side of evil are sometimes just doing their jobs but will get their lives snuffed out anyway.Įdwards emphasizes this inevitable death throughout. Those on the side of good are going to make questionable decisions. If the Star Wars saga is about a war between freedom and tyranny, then a lot of people are going to die fighting that war. The unifying theme of Rogue One is simple: People die in wars. But, oh, what a concept! Rogue One is a Star Wars movie with an emphasis on the “war” Felicity Jones and Diego Luna play two people trying to save the galaxy in Rogue One. It’s a flawed movie, but a good one, sometimes more interesting as a concept than a story. At other times, it’s a bumpily edited mess that was too-obviously assembled in post-production from a variety of possible outcomes. Sometimes, it’s a beautifully constructed antidote to years and years of fake, digitized movie destruction, with precisely crafted frames and genuinely groundbreaking cinematography. Rather than picking up where last year’s The Force Awakens left off, Rogue One tells the story of how the Rebels got the Death Star plans in the first place, the one that set the plot of 1977’s Star Wars in motion and kicked off this entire saga.Īs such, the movie is caught between the artistic impulses of its director, Gareth Edwards, and its corporate masters. Oh, yes, this is a Star Wars movie - the first of Lucasfilm’s new “anthology” entries to the franchise, which will tell stories in and around the established Star Wars universe.

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