Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Writers: Chris Weitz (screenplay), Tony Gilroy (screenplay)

Stars: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk

PG-13 | 2h 14min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Read imdb review Here

Movie Rating ★★★★☆

A sleek addition to the fleet

Felicity Jones’s fugitive, hunting for the plans to the Death Star, is a tousled-but-game female lead – just one of many classic Star Wars motifs in Gareth Edwards’ exhilarating spin-off

This latest exhilarating, good-natured and enjoyable adventure from the Star Wars imaginary universe is written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, and directed by Britain’s Gareth Edwards; it comes from a time which now doesn’t seem so very long ago. The film’s action occurs some time between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV, A New Hope. So it’s a mid-quel or a deja vu-quel. Character archetypes, mythic confrontations, desperate hologram messages, dads real and quasi-, uniforms and hairstyles are always rising recognisably to the surface. Like superhero films or westerns or romcoms, Star Wars invented its own recurring generic components, and to complain or even notice now seems almost as beside the point as recognising familiar chord progressions in the blues. It is noticeable that the newish motif of the defector or renegade, which featured in The Force Awakens, pops up again here.

Rogue One has a kind of associate membership status with the projected nine-film club; it doesn’t count as a fully fledged episode, but an auxiliary story, an offshoot of the canon, a sleek fighter cruising alongside the main fleet – though of comparable size, shape and manoeuvrability.

Felicity Jones plays Jyn Erso, a courageous, fugitive rebel who happens to be the daughter of Galen Erso, the brilliant scientist, designer and Oppenheimer figure behind plans for the Empire’s terrifying new weapon, called a “Death Star”: he is played by Mads Mikkelsen with his familiar air of martyred machismo. Daughter and father endured a terrible trauma; Jyn is close to the extremist rebel-dissident Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), and Galen finds himself working for the Empire’s chillingly fanatical administrator, Krennic – a pleasingly unpleasant performance, facially tense and clipped, from Ben Mendelsohn. But whose side is Galen actually on? And when Jyn finds herself destined to steal the Death Star plans and command a rebel ship code-named Rogue One, she must team up with another insurgent, Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, whose own hidden agenda she realises when it’s almost too late.

Felicity Jones is in the tousled-yet-game tradition of Star Wars female leads, like Carrie Fisher or Daisy Ridley: well-born but determined, with a sense of purpose befitting an heiress, if not a princess. The comedy robot this time around is K-2SO, a reprogrammed Empire droid, voiced by Alan Tudyk, who is less obviously dapper than C-3PO. K-2SO is hulking and dark, more like Ted Hughes’s Iron Man in miniature, but with a droll way of objecting to orders; his style in backtalk involves a nicely timed deferred punchline. The arms are long, resulting in an almost knuckle-dragging, simian way of walking. In his taciturn way, K-2SO could almost be a quasi-Chewie presence. Elsewhere in the cast, there are signs that, whatever xenophobes like Donald Trump think, China is making a valuable contribution. Other fellow travellers in the rebel world include Baze Malbus, played by Jiang Wen, and Chirrut Imwe, played by Donnie Yen, who brings a martial artist’s poise to this blind figure who uses his hyper-acute hearing and sense of the Force to negotiate his way around.

Rogue One doesn’t really go rogue at any stage, and it isn’t a pop culture event like The Force Awakens, in whose slipstream this appears; part of its charm resides in the eerie, almost dreamlike effect of continually producing familiar elements, reshuffled and reconfigured, a reaching back to the past and hinting at a preordained future. There are some truly spectacular cameos from much-loved personae, involving next-level digital effects — almost creepily exact, so that watching feels at various stages like going into a time machine, back to the 80s and 70s.

If there is anything new in Rogue One, it is that there is much more of an emphasis on the Death Star’s nuclear effect. In other films, we’ve seen this weapon blow up planets, and the calamity was almost abstract; now a prototype is blowing up cities. The implied comparison arguably makes light of a serious subject, but there is a beady-eyed fervency with which Rogue One deploys this catastrophe, and portrays the sacrifice needed to prevent it. Its variations on a theme are muscular and adroit. This is another really entertaining fantasy with fan-fiction energy and attack.

Read full review at The Guardian

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 Rogue One’ Leaves ‘Star Wars’ Fans Wanting More and Less

The great mystery of “Rogue One” — the big payoff, the thing people like me would be pilloried for divulging, the puzzle you will congratulate yourself for solving — is where it fits in with the rest of the “Star Wars” cycle. There are scattered hints early on, and later appearances by familiar characters that elicit chuckles of recognition from fans. The very last shot tells us exactly where we are, and why we should have cared about everything we just saw

Whether that is enough — whether the fractures in the Rebel Alliance and the power struggles in the imperial ranks quicken our pulses and engage our emotions — is the big question, but it really isn’t a question at all. Millions of people will sit through this thoroughly mediocre movie (directed with basic competence by Gareth Edwards from a surprisingly hackish script by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy) and convince themselves that it’s perfectly delightful. It’s so much easier to obey than to resist. The spoiler warning sent by the Disney empire instructed journalists to “continue to be our partners on this journey,” and defiance is unthinkable, even if “partner” is taken as a synonym for “shill.”

But the injunction not to ruin anyone’s good time by “revealing spoilers and detailed story points” is itself revealing, an indication of the meager and disposable pleasures this movie is meant to provide, and also of the low regard its makers have for the audience. It hasn’t always been this way, of course. The first “Star Wars” trilogy had a fresh, insurgent energy, and learning the names of all those planets and galactic adventurers has seemed, to generations of fans, like a new and special kind of fun.

Now, though, it is starting to feel like drudgery, a schoolbook exercise in a course of study that has no useful application and that will never end. “Rogue One,” named for the call sign of an imperial cargo ship appropriated by rebel fighters, is the opposite of that vessel. Masquerading as a heroic tale of rebellion, its true spirit is Empire all the way down. Like the fighters on the planet Scarif, which is surrounded by an all-but-impenetrable atmospheric shield, you are trapped inside this world, subjected to its whims and laws. You can’t escape, because it is the supposed desire to escape that brought you here in the first place.

Maybe I’m exaggerating. The cast is wonderful. Felicity Jones is a fine addition to the “Star Wars” tradition of tough-minded, quick-thinking heroines. She plays Jyn Erso, the daughter of Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), a scientist whose allegiances are a little ambiguous. Not at all ambiguous is Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic, a marvel of sneering, vainglorious villainy in an impeccable white uniform, complete with a cape that billows behind him when he strides down a starship catwalk.

Combat walkers are part of the landscape in “Rogue One,” the first stand-alone film in the “Star Wars” franchise. Credit Lucasfilm Ltd.

Jyn’s idealistic Jedi-ish tendencies are at first checked by a hint of Bogart-esque cynicism. She’s suspicious of the rebels and contemptuous of the Empire, and has complicated feelings about Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), the extremist militant who cared for her in her father’s absence. When a mission announces itself — I don’t think I’m supposed to say too much about it, other than that it’s highly perilous and requires a lot of planet-hopping and aerial battling — Jyn gathers up an appealing, motley guerrilla crew. There’s a renegade imperial pilot (Riz Ahmed), a hard-boiled resistance type (Diego Luna), a blind monk (Donnie Yen) and a bearded berserker (Wen Jiang). And naturally, a wisecracking droid, speaking in the dry, sarcastic tones of the indispensable Alan Tudyk.

All the pieces are there, in other words, like Lego figures in a box. The problem is that the filmmakers haven’t really bothered to think of anything very interesting to do with them. A couple of 9-year-olds on a screen-free rainy afternoon would come up with better adventures, and probably also better dialogue. Plots and subplots are handled with clumsy expediency, and themes that might connect this movie with the larger Lucasfilm mythos aren’t allowed to develop.

The film’s cast includes Diego Luna, here with Ms. Jones. Credit Jonathan Olley/Lucasfilm Ltd., via Associated Press

You’re left wanting both more and less. There are too many characters, too much tactical and technical explanation, too much pseudo-political prattle. And at the same time, there isn’t quite enough of the filial dynamic between Galen and Jyn, and not enough weight given to the ethical and strategic problems of rebellion. When might ends justify means? What kind of sacrifice is required in the service of a righteous cause?

Popular art — “Star Wars” included — has often proved itself capable of exploring these kinds of questions with clarity, vigor and even a measure of nuance. But “Rogue One” has no such ambitions, no will to persuade the audience of anything other than the continued strength of the brand. It doesn’t so much preach to the choir as propagandize to the captives, telling us that we’re free spirits and partners on the journey. The only force at work here is the force of habit.

Read full review at New york times

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Movie Rating ★★★★☆

Rogue One: Rebellion never looked this good

The lure of Rogue One is perhaps the fact that it’s a stand-alone film, one that can and will be enjoyed by fans and laymen alike

More than a decade ago ago, while working on the Star Wars prequel trilogies, special effects supervisor John Knoll pitched an idea to Lucasfilm, a story for a possible film inspired by the series’ introductory crawl. That went nowhere, but when The Walt Disney Studios acquired Lucasfilm, Knoll knew he had another shot. Lo and behold, now we have a first stand-alone instalment that is set to pave the way for infinite possibilities much to the happiness of Star Wars fans all over the world. In the labyrinthine universe of Star Wars, between the sequel and prequel trilogies, and last year’s blockbuster The Force Awakens, there’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It’s just the spin-off fans need to tide them over till Episode VIII releases at the end of next year.

Rogue One is set just before Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). We start our journey with the capture of ex-Empire scientist Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) who’s being forced to return and work for the dark side. At this point, the Rebels, polarised by their conflicting ideologies, must make peace with each other and unite for a common cause: to take down The Empire. The need of the hour is to get their hands on the plans of a new super-weapon, the Death Star, being built by dark side, one that could effectively wipe out planets. With few unlikely comrades, Jyn Erso (Galen’s daughter played by Felicity Jones) must get the Rebels access to the plans. Her allies include the raspy and breathless Rebel extremist Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) is a former Imperial pilot who’s now fighting for the Rebels. Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is a Rebel Alliance Intelligence officer who’s done things he’s not proud of for his fight against the Empire. Finally, there’s Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), a blind man with the Force guiding his suave fighting skills. However, the star (pun intended) of the show has to be the reprogrammed android K-2SO whose subtle sass is just the humour the doctor ordered.

The lure of Rogue One is perhaps the fact that it’s a stand-alone film, one that can and will be enjoyed by fans and laymen alike. As a part of the latter, this writer constantly experienced edge-of-the-seat syndrome, a fictional condition that succinctly describes watching Rogue One. The film’s intricate plotline is enough to hold the audience in rapture, provided you’re hanging on to every dialogue. There’s nothing much to say about the weak individual characters, except that when they do come together, this ragtag motley crew of underdogs really reach for your emotions. While they attempt their suicide mission, every fibre in your being is rooting for them. And when it comes to special effects, Knoll has outdone himself after working on previous Star Wars films, Pacific Rim (2013) and Avatar (2009). Everything from space ships zooming through hyperspace to the combat scenes with explosions are all treats to our senses.

For fans, though, while the film is incredibly nostalgic, a couple of things will set their hearts a flutter. Knoll’s visual effects expertise fantastically brings to living colour, two characters that would not be expected to show up. Then there are few but definitely impactful scenes with Darth Vader, enough to send chills down your spine.

As is evident from this review, Rogue One is a delight. Go watch the film for its soaring action sequences, uplifting storyline, tear-jerking character ends and of course, the constant reiteration that one ought never to lose hope.

Read full review at The Hindu

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Movie Rating ★★★☆☆

The Force is back

Yes, it’s grid is predictable: in its beginning is its end. But, and this is the strength of the film, it moves past a leaden start, revs it up, and becomes quite entertaining as it goes along.

Last year’s Star Wars entrée ‘The Force awakens’ was so ho-hum that I had to work on mustering enough enthusiasm for this latest edition, which is actually the entry point to the iconic series. But I’m here to tell you that ‘Rogue One’ is not half-bad at all. Yes, it has clearly been made to milk the madly popular franchise one more time. Yes, it’s grid is predictable: in its beginning is its end. But, and this is the strength of the film, it moves past a leaden start, revs it up, and becomes quite entertaining as it goes along.

Part of that has to do with the fact that it has a plot we never lose sight of, and characters we begin to know more of: of course, there is all the action and the soaring, near-deafeaning background track that we want from inter-galactic battles, but the film firmly foregrounds its faces. And that is all to the good.

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) leads the charge of the rebel forces in their fight against the evil empire led by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and his storm-troopers. Jones is suitably feisty and weather-beaten as she struggles to locate her long-missing weapons expert father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), with the help of rebel ally Cassian Andor (Diego Luna).

There’s enough juice here for newbies to the Star Wars series. A chatty droid called K-2 (Alan Tudyk) who nearly steals the film from his human companions. Lots of alien creatures who are to be seen casually floating about, all of whom speak English (yeah, this may be a galaxy far far away, and it may have outer-space critters and very multi-culti black and Asian faces) but the language remains strictly Anglo-Saxon). And as many rapid bang-bang skirmishes between sleek futuristic battle-ships and their commanders taking on inimical planetary alignments to please even the most hard-nosed present day gamer.

There’s also enough to please die-hard fans too, and there appear to be millions of believers still, given by the numbers of tickets sold worldwide. You can spot the beloved characters of the very first 1977 Star Wars film, the one that made George Lucas a house-hold name: I wouldn’t be giving any thing away when I tell you that there’s a flash of those two original droids and a certain princess with those two distinctive plaits, and, above all, that masked guy whom you can hear breathing menacingly much before you can see him and his famous light sabres.

I’m not a fan, so I started getting impatient when things started clunking and clanking (and amongst those is one of the most non-charismatic leading men to have graced this series: Luna tries hard, but he is simply not eye-catching enough). But once it shed its layabout ways it was all fine, and I stayed with it right till the end.

Read full review at The Indian express

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Movie Rating ★★✮☆☆

Rogue One’ can feel mechanical but spurs ‘Star Wars’ nostalgia

We’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion,” someone says midway through “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” I’m relieved to tell you that the movie is not one of those things. But neither is it a pinnacle in the film series that, more than any other property in our popular culture, feels genuinely sacrosanct because it feels like it belongs to us.

It doesn’t, of course. The rights to any new “Star Wars” movies belong to the Walt Disney Company, and “Rogue One” is the first major film in that universe to stray from the canonical story line — it’s a franchise extension and a toe dipped in hopefully profitable waters after the successful relaunch of the brand with last year’s “The Force Awakens.” As such, the new film is being hyped as a triumphant second coming, a brand new wing on the mansion. In reality, after all the digital dust has settled, it’s a supporting beam, and, especially toward the end, a rather dark one.

Rogue One” initially unfolds as a straightforward action movie, often exciting, just as often over-busy and underwritten. It features characters who, while calling on classic “Star Wars” archetypes, are rather thinly drawn (which for some tenderhearted audiences may be a good thing). The setting is sometime after the events of Episode III and before those of Episode IV, a.k.a. the original 1977 “Star Wars.” (Call it Episode 3B.) A young girl, Jyn Erso (Beau Gadsdon), is torn from her scientist father (Mads Mikkelsen) and grows into a tough, cynical galactic roustabout (Felicity Jones) who, in time-honored tradition, sticks her neck out for nobody, least of all the freedom fighters of the Rebel Alliance.

Directed by Gareth Edwards (“Monsters,” “Godzilla”) from a screenplay by Hollywood pros Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, “Rogue One” surrounds this heroine with a sort of dented Magnificent Five. Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna, rakishly appealing) hijacks Jyn so he can get to her father, who’s being forced to build a top-secret weapon (wink wink) for the Empire under the brute direction of the movie’s main villain, Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn).

Along for the mission are a renegade Imperial pilot, the touchingly naive Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed of HBO’s “The Night Of”); a reprogrammed Imperial droid named K-2S0 (speaking in actor Alan Tudyk’s wry tones); and a dynamic duo of blind monk-swordsman Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) and hulking sharpshooter Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang). The latter two are great fun, and they simultaneously look back to martial arts genre fixtures and ahead to the deep pockets of Chinese theatrical markets.

The movie races forward with little variety in pace, and it offers more details of interoffice politics among the squabbling factions of both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance than probably anyone but a mid-level manager cares for. Yet you generally feel you’re in good hands. While there are enough concordances with the known “Star Wars” universe for us to get our bearings, “Rogue One” at first seems less invested in legend building and more interested in telling a story. At a certain point, though, the greater “Star Wars” narrative comes back to claim this movie with a vengeance, and as the biggest puzzle piece clicks into place, the hairs on the back of your neck may rise.

So your emotions are engaged, but mostly indirectly, as they relate to our feelings for other characters in other movies. A few of those characters are even here as digital ghosts. Grand Moff Tarkin, one of the subsidiary villains of the original “Star Wars,” is played by actor Guy Henry with the face of the (very) late Peter Cushing eerily and not all that convincingly pixelated atop his features. There’s a similar Special Appearance toward the end that, along with the plot’s over-reliance on mechanical tasks that need to be solved — throw the switch, plug in the power cord, climb the tower, re-align the antenna — prompts the feeling that we’ve wandered into a very expensive and very well-made video game rather than a movie.

The cast does good work, despite a less-than-great screenplay. The trouble with “iconic” dialogue is that it sounds merely generic if it’s not perfectly turned, and a few too many lines here sound like placeholders for rewrites to come later. (“This town is ready to blow!”) K-2S0’s banter has about a .600 batting average — terrific for Major League Baseball, close to distressing for a film — and an appearance by a major “Star Wars” figure known for his dramatic terseness is unaccountably chatty.

But we’re here for spectacle and the final battle of “Rogue One” piles it on to pulse-quickening and ultimately harrowing effect, with easter-egg glimpses of characters we know/will know and old school close-ups of all those X-Wing fighters talking straight into the camera. If you’ve ever wanted to know what two immense Imperial destroyers smushing into each other looks like, here’s your movie. The one missing piece is a truly memorable villain; I can think of at least five films in which Ben Mendelsohn has been scarier.

There’s this, too (and here is where I tread further into spoiler territory as a warning to parents of very small children): The “Rogue One” that unfolds onscreen is ultimately very different in tone and impact than the heady pop-culture party that months of nonstop marketing would have us believe. There are notions of sacrifice for the greater good here, and of the unfairness of war, and while these will be pondered and taken to heart by adults and older kids, they may be deeply upsetting to your average 6-year-old Obi-wan Kenobi wannabe with a bag of plastic lightsabers at home. You have been advised.

“Rogue One,” in other words, ends up carrying a lot of weight that it only partially earns on its own. It’s generally accepted that not every one of the heroes will make it to the end of an epic saga. What’s both stirring and unsettling is that when a character here dies, it’s so that “Star Wars” may live.

Read full review at Boston Globe

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A 'deeply disappointing' effort

When a desperate George Lucas sat down at a low ebb in a house in San Francisco in the early 1970s to map out a saga in space, he foresaw a canvas on which he could project all he had learnt about life – from nearly killing himself in a souped-up car outside Modesto in the early 1960s (that gives us Luke's love of speed) to his determined study of anthropology and mythology (which gives us both the cute little Ewoks who want to eat Han Solo and the central place taken in the stories by warfare).

There was also his troubled relationship with his father, which turns up again and again in the relationships that matter in the films.

What he could not foresee was that he would get to make it at all – if he even wanted to. But unprecedented profits took care of that.

Now we have an industrial machine behind Star Wars: the might of Disney, who in 2012 bought the rights from Lucas for $US4 billion he didn't need and promptly changed the series' direction against his wishes.

Lucas grumbled about selling his baby to "white slavers", but the fans did not care. They just wanted more: more spaceships, more fighting, more jokes, more mumbo-jumbo religion, more of the holy excitement they had experienced from the ages of zero to 40.

Rogue One demonstrates yet again to be careful what you wish for. It delivers all of what I just described and more: the second half is exciting, full of the best effects money can buy, harking back to the original 1977 movie with a satisfying completeness – and yet, it's still a deeply disappointing movie.

As the first of the "Anthology" series – films that may not have any of the main characters, but connect parenthetically to the main storyline – it bolts onto the original film with a fine logic.

This is the story of the rebels who stole the plans to the Death Star – taking us up to where we came in in 1977. No need for Luke or Han or Chewbacca, and only a fleeting glimpse of a digitally created young Leia (perhaps the most startling technical achievement of the whole film).

Instead we get resourceful young Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), kidnapped by the rebellion in order to get to her father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), the designer of the Death Star. Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), an intelligence officer for the rebellion, has orders to kill him. Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), the director of weapons research, might do it first if he finds out Galen betrayed the emperor.

En route to the extended finale on a tropical planet, the plucky Jyn hooks up with two Asian sidekicks and a mouthy droid (voiced by Alan Tudyk). Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) is a blind seer in whom the Force is strong; Baze Malbus (the great Wen Jiang) is the warrior who protects him with a huge gun.

These two are the best newcomers in the film, although the reason they are there is more to do with the rise of the Chinese market than any desire to return to the Asian mysticism that Lucas wove into his original plans.

On paper, there is plenty to work with. Part of the problem is that director Gareth Edwards, an Englishman with an effects background, is unready for the challenge.

His touch is sure with action, fighting and pyrotechnics. Anything to do with character, dialogue and drama either bores or mystifies him.

That means the first half has to plod through forests of exposition worse than even the second series of Lucas-directed films.

The coalition of rebels is left chewing on pages of dialogue that make even great actors like Forest Whitaker (as Saw Gerrera, a rebel among rebels) look silly.

How you tell a story is as important as the story you tell, and Edwards just wants to get to the battle. That is indeed impressive, and many will forgive the sloppy start, but there is a deeper malaise here.

The series is now divorced from its origins – its father figure – and Rogue One shows how the separation from meaning weakens the fabric.

Emulation and adoration and "for the fans" are not enough. The milk has grown watery, tainted by greed.

The Force is weak with this one.

Read full review at Sydney morning Herald

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 Movie rating ★★★★☆

An old war tale told around a spectacular campfire

Until now, the good-evil split in Star Wars has been as cleanly cut as well-carved turkey meat: light and dark tidily arranged on opposite sides of the plate. Rogue One gets stuck into the giblets.

This is the first in a potentially endless series of "Star Wars Stories" spun off from the franchise’s humming fulcrum, and it sides with the Rebellion, which is exactly as you’d expect. This time, though, the good guys aren’t tousled rascals but a covert cell of self-described spies, saboteurs and assassins, staining their hands and consciences in the struggle.

As such, in terms of atmosphere and structure, Rogue One is less of a nostalgia bath than The Force Awakens, last Christmas’s two-billion-grossing franchise-reviver.

But Star Wars devotees, of which a few reportedly exist, needn’t panic: the thing is crammed with the kind of cameos and callbacks, from beloved incidental characters to sly recreations of specific shots from the original trilogy, that make multiple viewings a necessity.

As promised, Darth Vader’s back, with a box-fresh helmet and cape: three scenes only, though each one’s very worth it. Elsewhere, the late Peter Cushing is digitally resurrected as Death Star boss Moff Tarkin: there’s an eerie nervelessness about the results from certain angles, but given Cushing, a Hammer Horror veteran, exuded an aura of undeath at his professional best, he might be the ideal candidate for the procedure.

More startling still is the flawless, single-shot CG recreation of a young Princess Leia: send your thoughts and prayers to the Beverly Hills facelift clinics about to be engulfed by angry customers demanding whatever Carrie Fisher got.

Rogue One’s promise of something familiar but different makes it something of a tightrope walk: even Michael Giacchino’s score, the first in the series not to be composed by John Williams, begins its main theme with that iconic ascending fifth before veering off to melodic pastures new

But director Gareth Edwards and his cast and crew strike an agile balance throughout. Take the prologue, in which the former Empire technologist Galen Erso (a nobly anguished Mads Mikkelsen) is captured by Commander Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, deliciously booable, with a throat you can’t wait to see Force-strangled), who needs his expert input in the crafting of a new Imperial super-weapon.

Galen’s hideout is on a previously unseen planet called Lah’mu. It’s all green hills and blackened desert, and shrouded in a mist so thick it trickles down the peak of Krennic’s officer’s cap.

The place looks like nothing you’ve seen before in Star Wars – but as you’re scrambling for your bearings, the camera slips into Galen’s farmhouse, and there’s a jug of Luke Skywalker’s favourite blue milk on the kitchen worktop.  Everything different comes sprinkled with crumbs of the familiar.

That means despite its darker tone, Rogue One feels cosily at home in the Star Wars universe, and is crowded with the kind of imagination-tickling details the franchise thrives on. The film’s world is entirely physical, full of boxy things that hiss and clunk. X-Wings skitter across a planetary defence shield like curling stones on ice, while top secret data sits on hard disks the size of cheese toasties.

One scene alone – a bazaar on the pilgrim moon of Jedha, teeming with astonishing creature puppets – generates enough sparks for 10 further spin-off films at least.

Somewhere in the throng is Galen’s long-lost daughter Jyn Erso (a spirited Felicity Jones) – raised in the interim by Forest Whitaker’s hardline Rebel zealot, Saw Gerrera – who appeared from Rogue One’s trailers to be pretty much decisively the film’s lead character.

She is, just about – although the plot, in which a secret holo-message from Jyn’s father leads to the vital discovery of the Death Star’s notorious weak spot, is one in which she slowly emerges as a heroine thanks to the help of her accompanying rag-tag ensemble.

This team proves tricky to assemble, both in-film and outside of it: particularly in its first act, the storytelling can feel multi-branched and muddled as the cast members’ threads are laboriously tied up. For a while, barely a scene passes in which someone isn’t kidnapped and dragged to a rendezvous with the next key character – though the characters themselves, from Riz Ahmed’s defecting Imperial pilot to Donnie Yen’s Zatoichi-like blind martial artist, are a textured and engaging bunch.

They’re led by Rebel captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his drily comic droid sidekick K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) – and once Jyn is properly inducted into the cause, the bigger picture starts to coalesce.

It’s often very big indeed: Edwards’s stint at the 2014 Godzilla reboot’s helm makes him no stranger to earth-ripping set-pieces, and Rogue One’s have been conceived and executed with serious dazzle and grace. But in its best moments, there’s a yarn-spinning intimacy to it too – an old war story told around a spectacular campfire.

Read full review at The telegraph

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Movie Rating ★★✬☆

Rogue One’ doesn’t offer much joy, but Star Wars fans will enjoy it anyway

A movie has been made for “Star Wars” fans that finally answers many of the questions they’ve long been asking, having to do with the tensile strength of a franchise that has experienced its share of strain over 40 years, and the ability of artists with new, perhaps iconoclastic visions to bring a faraway galaxy from long ago into a bold new future.

In the meantime, we have “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” Gareth Edwards’s perfectly serviceable, if undistinguished, placeholder. This is a movie that, technically, doesn’t need to exist, apart from abject fan service, the minting of some easy money and mindshare maintenance at a time when attention spans ping from one sci-fi spectacle to the next with brazen promiscuity. So many images in “Rogue One” conjure recent films — from “Mad Max: Fury Road” to “Arrival” — that it’s easy to forget that it was that first “Star Wars” installment, back in 1977, that started it all.

To its credit, and like last year’s “The Force Awakens,” “Rogue One” pays homage to the imaginative and physical world that George Lucas and his collaborators built four decades ago. Hewed from the same “used future” aesthetic Lucas so cleverly perfected, the movie has a scruffy, tarnished patina, staging that harks back to wartime classics from the World War II and Vietnam eras, and video-game-like visual flourishes. It fits neatly with the “Star Wars” mythos, especially during its rousing third act, some clever digital legerdemain and an immensely satisfying final moment.

What “Rogue One” doesn’t have is much joy, although viewers can’t say they weren’t warned. Edwards and Disney executives have made much of the fact that they wanted this stand-alone venture to be “dark,” and is it ever: As “Star Wars” movies go, this one may have the highest body count of them all, above and beyond the Imperial stormtroopers who can be relied on to go out with a desperate Wilhelm scream at least once in a production.

That reassuring callback, as well as several others, is present and accounted for in “Rogue One,” which centers on the story of Jyn (Felicity Jones), a young woman pressed into service by a militant splinter group of the Rebel Alliance to perform crucial espionage against the tyrannical Galactic Empire, which is in the process of inventing a superweapon called the Death Star

Because this is “Star Wars,” you know that Jyn’s efforts ultimately will involve some kind of ragtag team of plucky misfits. In “Rogue One,” that merry band consists of a rebel intelligence officer named Cassian (Diego Luna), a disaffected Empire pilot named Bodhi (Riz Ahmed) and a snippily sarcastic droid named K-2SO. Voiced by Alan Tudyk, this angular, spidery limbed creature provides precious comic relief in a film that is otherwise grim and unsmiling, as Jyn and her brothers in arms do battle with the Empire’s diabolical weapons director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn).

Sturdily executed by Edwards, whose previous credits include “Monsters” and “Godzilla,” “Rogue One” is nonetheless a relatively rote affair, enlivened by some impressive visuals and Michael Giacchino’s stirring musical score, but lacking the warmth and humor of the previous films. By no stretch is this a disaster on a par with Lucas’s misbegotten prequel trilogy. Still, at least until its final section, “Rogue One” lacks the zip, zing and exhilarating sense of return to form that “The Force Awakens” conveyed so lightly.

Jones presents a convincing, if monotonously self-serious, heroine in “Rogue One,” and her uncanny physical resemblance to Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey in the new installments, invites intriguing speculation as to whether and how they may be related. But few of her fellow actors make as vivid an impression, and the fey, soft-spoken Luna is particularly ill-suited to play a rakish man of ad­ven­ture. Chinese actor Donnie Yen, as a mystical warrior, is underused in a role that feels perfunctory and shoehorned in.

Too often, “Rogue One” seems to be checking boxes as it goes about its plotty business, which ultimately has to do with the retrieval of documents, the closing of a shield gate and locating the master switch on a communications control tower. It’s simplistic stuff, and bluntly effective at ginning up the idea of action and stakes, which take on increased heft as “Rogue One” finally reaches its busy, startlingly apocalyptic conclusion. (At two hours and 13 minutes, the film is at least 15 minutes too long). Graced with the first appearance of some of the “Star Wars” series’ most iconic characters — at least in the chronological sense — “Rogue One” represents an unobjectionable exercise in franchise extension. It’s fine. It’ll do

Read full review at Washington post

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Movie Rating ★★★★☆

 The latest spin-off handles the George Lucas legacy with care, playing to the traditionalists and the new generation

There are two damn fine performances in the Star Wars prequel Rogue One. The first is Felicity Jones as the maverick rebel fighter Jyn Erso, and the second is the new droid, K-2SO, a dry, mildly resentful patrician robot who is in the habit of blurting out exactly what’s on his circuits. Towering like a stick-man over the rest of the cast, K-2SO provides most of the laughs in this portentous voyage into that same old galaxy far, far away.

The director of this latest money-spinning spin-off is Gareth Edwards, who cut his fangs on the creature-features Monsters and Godzilla. He handles the George Lucas legacy with care, playing to the traditionalists, who will be overjoyed with the red-eyed reappearance of Darth Vader (rasped, as in the original, by James Earl Jones, now 85), and to the new generation, rolling with a multiracial cast and a second kick-ass female lead after Rey in last year’s The Force Awakens.

While Rogue One does not quite have the grandeur or nostalgic impact of The Force Awakens, it does have the usual daddy issues that plague the series’ protagonists. Set just before the events of the original 1977 film, the story opens on an isolated volcanic beach with Jyn as a little girl watching in horror as her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), is captured by the Galactic Empire’s latest lunatic military man, the weapons director Orson Krennic — a sweaty, manic, sibilant Ben Mendelsohn.

The Empire is keen to force Erso to finish his splendid scientific work on the Death Star, and the set-up is taken from the yellow-lettered crawl from the first movie: “Rebel spaceships . . . have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star.”

So with the spoilers on screen long ago, the interest lies now in precisely how Rogue One’s motley crew gather to steal the plans, and in watching Jyn grow in stature from disillusioned prisoner to rebel leader, against her own expectations. Jones handles the action with aplomb — there is no lolling about in a Carrie Fisher gold bikini here but instead hand-to-hand combat, blaster battles and perilous leaps into the unknown.

Cassian’s droid K-2SO; the goofy-but-brave pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed with ponytail and goggles); and the martial arts actor Donnie Yen playing a blind ninja, a sight worth seeing.

Plenty of explosive action and spaceship canyon-riding then occurs, although occasionally the special effects are clunky, perhaps a nod to the original aesthetic. In all, a solid Star Wars effort, and no doubt the force will be with international sales.

 Read full review at The times

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Too violent for kids?

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” the tale of a controversial Death Star and those who loathe it, operates as a prequel to the 1977 movie that became a flexible, malleable religion (with ray guns!) to millions. The new movie is a little bit “Guardians of the Galaxy,” a little bit “Dirty Dozen” in its mass wartime slaughter, and a pretty good time once it gets going.

The opening title crawl to the ’77 original made reference, as you may recall, to “Rebel spies” who manage to “steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR.” Some death stars deserve all caps, for sure!

Industrial Light and Magic chief creative officer John Knoll thought there would be a nice little stand-alone movie in imagining who these rebels were, and how they wangled the Death Star plans from the Empire forces. Lo: "Rogue One,” which takes its name from the U-shaped spaceship whisking our Alliance fighters to the tropical planet Scarif for the big showdown. The group is led by Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor. Scarif resembles the Atlantis Paradise Bahamas resort as redesigned by Albert Speer.

Deliberately, director Gareth Edwards’ effort is rough around the edges, hectic in its cross-cutting but increasingly effective as kinetic cinema. The battle scenes are shot in what production designer Neil Lamont calls “docu-war film” style, heavy on the hand-held technique, with cinematographer Greig Fraser making use of some old-timey ’77-era lenses. In the climax, when our heroes are joined by their fellow rebel forces, the familiar orange jumpsuits and super-bright cockpit lighting takes you all the way back to director George Lucas' ode to "Flash Gordon."

Much of the film’s middle section, in which Jyn and her father (Mads Mikkelsen) reunite after many years, takes place in dark, glum, rainy settings that out-“Blade Runner” “Blade Runner” in terms of precipitation. Screenwriters Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy foreground the father/daughter saga, when they’re not focusing on the coming-together of the lone wolves comprising Rogue One’s rebel fighters. Donnie Yen plays the blind and dazzlingly lethal Chirrut Imwe, with whom the Force is strong; Jiang Wen is Baze Malbus, ex-assassin; Riz Ahmed is the pilot Bodhi Rook, and in the droid department, “Rogue One” introduces a fine addition to the “Star Wars” universe, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), who gets some genuinely funny material. He's programmed to express his feelings at all times, no matter how blunt.

The movie’s pretty violent. Certain shots, such as a child screaming for her mother in the middle of a rebel attack on the Empire troops in a crowded marketplace, evoke memories of various nonfiction wars in Vietnam and Iraq, by design. Several people exiting Monday from the Chicago press screening expressed the same three-word sentiment — “not for kids” — though of course millions of preteens will prove that sentiment hapless.

Director Edwards made the unusually grave and compelling reboot of “Godzilla,” and while “Rogue One” is less distinctive fantasy, veering in and out of story focus, it is its own thing and very much a thing designed to fit into all the other things that came before it. Last year, there was a little push-back from certain racially preoccupied and frankly embarrassing “Star Wars” devotees regarding the casting of a young actor of color (John Boyega) in one of the male leads. The multicultural ensemble of “Rogue One” may well spell heart attacks and an early demise for those who really, really want the “Star Wars” universe to stay the Way It Used To Be. Whatever; these people are dopes. I do wish Felicity Jones’ character popped the way Daisy Ridley’s did in last year’s franchise offering. “The Force Awakens,” directed by J.J. Abrams, was smooth, consistent, even-toned, nostalgic. “Rogue One” zigzags, and it’s more willfully jarring. Yet it takes time for callbacks and shout-outs to characters we’ve seen before, and we’ll see again. And again. And again.

Read full story at Chicago tribune

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 Efficient and Gray, Rogue One Gets the Job Done

The Star Wars spinoff will not change lives for the worse or for the better, and it will—or ought to—offend no one

One of the most derisive things you can say about a fictional woman character was that she doesn’t have agency. What almost no one says is that agency is the least interesting thing a woman can have. We’re in such a rush to have stories about women who do things that we haven’t thought much about what they should be doing. Kicking ass? Leaving bad husbands? Driving cars off cliffs? All of those can be great things, in the right story, but you can’t just sew bravery onto a character like a Girl Scout patch. If it doesn’t come from someplace within, it’s just a gimmick.

In Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, it’s a gimmick, no matter how well-intentioned. Felicity Jones stars as Jyn Erso, a young woman whose father, Galen Erso (a characteristically stately Mads Mikkelsen), was snatched away from her years ago by Empire thug Orson Krennic (a weasely Ben Mendelsohn). We see the family’s disintegration in flashback: Galen, his wife and little Jyn are living, simply, as farmers, more or less. But Galen is in reality a talented weapons engineer, and Krennic needs his skills to build the ultimate weapon, which shall later come to be known as the Death Star. Jyn, essentially orphaned and driven underground, is left to make her way in the world alone.

It’s a dangerous one: Stormtroopers roam the grim landscape, rooting out threats to the Empire. People—like Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera, one of Galen’s old compatriots—come and go in Jyn’s life. There’s no such thing as stability in her world. But she finds a purpose when she meets rebel fighter Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his reprogrammed-security-droid sidekick K-2S0 (whose voice belongs to Alan Tudyk, a charming, dry actor with a long, varied career, but who first sparked in Joss Whedon’s late, great Firefly). At first, Jyn doesn’t like Cassian much. Then she likes him a lot. Everyone must earn one another’s trust. And so forth.

If you lose track of the plot, just remember this: A bunch of people have to go to the place to get the thing. Rogue One, directed by Gareth Edwards (director of the listless, monotone 2014 Godzilla) and written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy (from a story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta), has been designed as a Star Wars stand-alone, a picture that takes place within the Star Wars universe but which introduces new characters and storylines. That’s not a bad idea, but what you do with it counts. The story was inspired, according to Knoll, by World War II adventure films that had energized Lucas, pictures like The Dam Busters (1955) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). Visually, Edwards and cinematographer Greig Fraser have chosen to go with a studied, naturalistic, semi-gritty palette: They sought out 1970s camera lenses and tweaked the results with digital technology. The resulting look is a kind of intergalactic dishwater fugue.

But even if there’s a lot of gray in Rogue One, that doesn’t make it particularly dark. The Rebel Alliance is fighting for something important, but what was it again? The freedom to wear something other than drab, tattered, sub-Eileen Fisher linen? (Not such a bad thing to fight for.) The story hits every expected beat, right when you expect it to. And it squanders some of its best resources: The actors who show up include Riz Ahmed and Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen, though the former’s soulfulness has nowhere to land, and the latter, playing a blind rebel warrior, is stuck with a stupefyingly obvious mantra (“I am with the force, the force is with me”) that’s tired the second time we hear it, let alone the fifth.

Jones, as Jyn, comes at the material gamely. Her character gets to run around and discharge firearms, both wonderful things in theory. But they work only as signpost feminism: These may be things we want women to do in movies, but they aren’t necessarily more interesting just because women are doing them. (Charlize Theron’s one-armed renegade Furiosa, from Mad Max: Fury Road, is an example of how to do it right, a character whose tendency toward violence is the fabric of her vitality.) Jones is a capable actress, but the movie asks her to strike a tough-girl pose she can’t sustain, at least not without flaring her nostrils excessively. When she gives a Saint Crispin’s Day-style speech designed to rouse the troops, they perk up their heads with mild interest, but you can tell they’re not buying it.

Still, there are a few bright dots of rouge in Rogue One. At one point Jimmy Smits sweeps by in some primo Flash Gordon wear. Franchise loyalists will recognize him as Bail Organa, from Revenge of the Sith and Attack of the Clones, a reminder of the days when the Star Wars franchise was a bountiful font of drag-queen names. Rogue One made me nostalgic for those movies, a thing I never thought I’d say. They were boring and stupid and Lucas, their mastermind, took them way too seriously. But at least they scooted along, semi-efficiently, on the fumes of their own ridiculousness.

Their freak-flag-flying zaniness almost looks progressive next to Rogue One, which is almost pedantic in its inoffensiveness. There’s nothing in Rogue One that would damage or scare most little children, as long as they’re prepared for an on-screen onslaught of the Pantone colors known as Oatmeal and Soot. (Toward the movie’s end, a light saber appears, and the picture levitates, if only for a moment.) And while some Donald Trump supporters have vowed to boycott the film—believing, for some tinfoil-helmet reason known only to themselves, that the ending was reshot post-election to incorporate some subliminal, anti-Trump sentiment—looking to Rogue One for any subversive political statement is a fool’s errand. Its politics are numbingly multi-purpose. Characters spout slogans like “Rebellions are built on hope,” which may very well be intended to slant left, though you could also put those same words in the mouths of disenchanted white Americans who just want their jobs back. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will not change lives for the worse or for the better, and it will—or ought to—offend no one. Welcome to the Republic of the Just OK.

Read full review at Time

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This Is The 'Star Wars Story' You're Looking For

If not for the fact that I still love Revenge of the Sith, I’d be able to argue that Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the best Star Wars movie in 33 years. This promising spin-off/prequel is absolutely better than The Force Awakens. It still relies on good/distinctive actors and fan service to paper over thin characters and klutzy plotting. It banks on visual and narrative callbacks to elicit nostalgia-driven approval, and it undercuts its own story in order to make the final product play more like a conventional Star Wars film.

But, and this is a big “but,” it does not slavishly copy a previous Star Wars movie to the point where it negates its own emotional impact. And it works as a cinematic wonder (Greig Fraser's cinematography is flat-out gorgeous) and an occasionally show-stopping action spectacular. Warts and all, Rogue One tells an original story within the established Star Wars mythology that succeeds as a big-budget fantasy blockbuster. And in a year when the would-be live-action blockbusters have generally been wanting, that it works as well as it does should not be taken for granted.

It is more plot-driven than character-driven, and it sometimes over explains itself in a way that undermines both this Star Wars story and A New Hope in comically unintentional ways. Yet, it is rarely less than entertaining, with a rich visual vocabulary and a tone that mostly stands apart from its cinematic predecessors. Ironically, at its very best, it mixes the battle-weary cynicism of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the “What difference can one person make?” desperation of Star Wars: Rebels.

Felicity Jones is our protagonist, Jyn Erso, a bitter young woman who watched her father get kidnapped by the Empire when she was just a child. 15 years later, said scientist father (Mads Mikkelsen) is a key figure in creating what will allegedly be the Empire’s game-changing weapon. So Jyn is tracked down by the Rebel Alliance in the hopes that she can lead them to dear old dad. But is this an extraction mission, or something more sinister?

For much of its running time, Rogue One is about the shades-of-grey compromises of war, specifically the often horrific choices that must be made when a guerrilla insurgency is fighting an overpowering enemy. Helping that along is a somewhat more grounded tone than we’re used to from this franchise. Ben Mendelsohn specifically is wonderfully shaded as our lead antagonist, playing a seemingly powerful Imperial officer who slowly realizes how little authority he has as a mere cog in a machine.

The Rebel team leader, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), is introduced committing a cold-blooded murder of a non-hostile. Jyn’s contact, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker, playing a character from the Clone Wars animated series), is viewed by the Rebels as a bridge too far in terms of tactics. The first major action sequence is an intense close quarters shootout with innocent civilians put in harm's way by both sides. The sequence feels less like freedom fighting and more like terrorism. The film is most exciting when the fog of war is almost blinding.

Now, I won’t pretend to know exactly what did or didn’t get reshot over the summer. To wit, many of your favorite trailer/TV spot moments are not in the movie. But the fog eventually gets lifted, and Rogue One eventually becomes a more conventionally upbeat affair. We get uplifting speeches, rousing sacrifices and some late-in-the-game fan service that is so shameless that I laughed out loud.

The third act becomes needlessly bloated in a way that frankly betrays the core premise for the sake of familiar action beats. Even absent any behind-the-scenes knowledge, the film does have the feel of a darker/more introspective espionage movie that was gently massaged into a more “commercial” final product. Now, to be fair, we all saw how audiences reacted when Lionsgates' The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part I and part 2 dove headfirst into the muck. And, yeah, this darker Star Wars movie is still appropriate for most younger fans.

It does awkwardly morph into a standard Star Wars movie. And the word “hope” gets thrown around so much as a “This is what the movie is about!” vocabulary word that you’ll swear you’re watching a Chris Nolan movie. But the action payoffs are spectacular (if overly complicated so that everyone gets something to do) and the climax is cinematically inspired. There is a third-act shot that pays beautiful homage both to one of the most iconic images in the franchise and a beloved western. Oh, and for the record, X-Wings look gorgeous flying in a blinding rainstorm.

And yet, like The Force Awakens, the film back in spots by occasionally ham-fisted fan service. There are explicit and implicit not-remotely-organic references to future Star Wars movies, and they take you out of this movie every time. Yes, Darth Vader shows up at least once and does something that Darth Vader should never, ever do. More interesting is the return of Grand Moff Tarkin, “played” by the late Peter Cushing with such superb special effects work that Walt Disney should just wait five years, enhance the technology and let Harrison Ford star in that “Young Han Solo” movie.

As for the new characters, this is an ensemble adventure with an emphasis on a few core members. The fact that Alan Tudyk’s (bitterly funny and obnoxiously defeatist) K-2SO gets more to do than most of the humans is not exactly a compliment. At least Donnie Yen’s would-be Jedi fanboy (he believes in the Force no matter if the Force believes in him) gets a few crowd-pleasing beats. Whitaker’s supporting turn is a novel Star Wars creation, a man emotionally and physically broken by a lifetime of fighting insurmountable evil.

The focus is mostly on (a not-so-rebellious) Jyn and Cassian. We flirt with the Divergent trap where the female-fronted action movie gives its male co-star many of the hard action beats and plot pivots. Jyn and Cassian work onscreen because Felicity Jones and Diego Luna are good actors, and because it’s still somewhat rare for a movie like this to have a female protagonist (who, sadly, is basically the only female character with more than a few lines).

That goes for the ensemble (including Jiang Wen and Riz Ahmed) in general, who stand out because they are notable performers, and because, yes, they aren’t the kind of faces that we usually see in a mega-budget blockbuster. That may be a crude way of saying “Yay, inclusivity,” but it’s better than John Carter which stars a dozen James Purefoys in key supporting roles. These characters will become fan-favorites, but that’s more on the performances and the action beats than the character development.

I wish the entirety of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story had the focus and grounded realism of its first half. I wish we got fewer callbacks and narrative complications and more character development. And, personal aside, I wish we could have found a way to include some light saber fights, so there better be lots of laser sword-ing in Episode 8 next year! But Rogue One: A Star Wars Story delivers on the promise of an original stand-alone story that takes place within and somewhat deconstructs the Star Wars universe.

Rogue One is hampered by the past, but not undone by it, and Gareth Edwards again proves himself to be a master of big-scale visuals that emphasize “scale.” Mendelsohn almost singlehandedly grounds the film while being a surprisingly sympathetic heartless villain. Rest assured, he is going to inspire erotic fan fiction among the Snape-loving Harry Potter nerds. And yeah, the “Rebellions are built on hope!” stuff is obviously going to resonate right now. Rogue One is a step in the right direction, and it ends on a ridiculously high note. Most importantly, it provides hope (hope!) for a Star Wars franchise less beholden on nostalgia and fan service and more willing to cinematically and narratively embrace its own unique destiny.

Read full review at Forbes

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