Charlie Custer

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story may be the most polarizing Star Wars film yet released. I’ve seen it suggested that this is both the best and the worst entry in the Star Wars franchise. Having seen it yesterday, I’m quite confident that it’s neither of those things, but I can see where both sides are coming from.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

The Good

Let’s start with the good: Rogue One has some of the best action scenes of any Star Wars movie. The fighting is intense and vivid, and although it’s gritty it doesn’t succumb to the temptation to turn fight scenes into the incomprehensible shaky-cam quick-cuts of some action movies or the big CGI spectacle of others.

Another positive: the visuals. Rogue One is a beautiful film. If you saw the trailers, it may not be beautiful in the ways you expect, because a lot of the iconic shots in the trailer weren’t used in the actual film. But you’ll get over that disappointment fast, because with one rather notable exception (which I’ll get into later) the film is a visual feast. It manages the same sort of gritty-gorgeous spectacle that director Gareth Edwards pulled off in his Godzilla movie, and if you liked the look of that you’ll love the look of this.

I’m not sure whether that means it’s the best-looking Star Wars film. I think Empire Strikes Back still contains more striking visuals at times, and given that it was released in 1980, it might be the superior visual accomplishment if we grade on a curve to account for three-plus decades of advancement in cinematography. Any way you slice it, Rogue One looks good though.

Finally, there’s K2SO. I love Alan Tudyk’s wit in his other great sci-fi franchise, and he’s just as good here. Sure, Star Wars has done the sassy-robot-as-comic-relief thing before, but it works well here. And it was sorely needed given that this is otherwise a pretty bleak movie.

The Bad

While I enjoyed Rogue One, it has plenty of problems, both large and small. To give it a fair and thorough reckoning, I’ll have to watch it again a few more times (when the DVD comes out), but after one viewing I think the film’s greatest flaw is shallow characters. We don’t get to know much about any of the folks along for Rogue One‘s ride, and this creates some significant problems for the story.

For example, although the entire arc of Jyn Erso (the film’s protagonist) revolves around her relationship with her father, we never get to see any of that, and it makes it difficult to relate to her character. It also makes the beginning of the film feel jumpy and a bit hollow. Right off the bat, we see a girl we don’t know anything about lose a father and mother we don’t know anything about, and then be rescued by a man we don’t know anything about.

Compare that to the beginning of A New Hope or The Force Awakens, which also feature protagonists who’ve lost their families. In A New Hope, we see some of Luke’s life with his aunt and uncle, and we get an introduction to Obi-wan Kenobi and his connection to Luke before Luke’s family is killed and story begins in earnest. By the time he comes home to find the smoldering skeletons of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, we know Luke, and we can relate to him. That makes the loss more meaningful, and it gives Luke a strong motivation to follow Obi-wan on the next step of his adventure. Similarly, in The Force Awakens, we see Rey’s everyday struggles to get by without her family for a while before she’s pulled into the larger arc of the film’s narrative. This gives her leaving Jakku some real emotional weight (she’s giving up on her family returning), and it helps us get to know her as a character.

Rogue One offers us none of that. We see virtually none of Jyn’s real life with her father before he was taken (which might have helped establish their bond), and we see virtually none of her life after he was taken. Her relationships with her father with her childhood rescuer Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) are hugely important to the plot of the film, but we know pretty much nothing about either of them. Rogue One could have benefited greatly from cutting out some of the side characters and stories to spend more time giving us reasons to relate to characters like Jyn.

Another big problem with the film, tangentially related to the character problem, is that the plot hinges on a decision that makes no sense. Jyn and company go to see Saw Gerrera, and he shows her the hologram message carried by the pilot. We’re told that Saw refuses to work with the rebels, and that he’s been waging a vicious guerrilla war against the Empire for years. But then, when the Empire blows up a nearby city and Saw has a chance to escape the blast with Jyn and her friends, he refuses because he’s done with “running.”

Based on what we know about his character, this decision makes no sense. By allowing himself to die, Gerrera is basically handing total control over the anti-Empire fight over to the Rebel Alliance, whom he supposedly doesn’t trust. And while it’s not hard to picture his character being OK with going out in a last stand, that’s not what this is. He’s not taking anyone down with him. He’s not slowing down the enemy so that others can escape and the fight can go on. He’s pretty much just killing himself. His death was completely meaningless and also completely avoidable. We’re supposed to believe this guy fought tooth and nail against the Empire for years, and now he’s just committing suicide because he’s tired and handing the fight over to a group he distrusts and one girl he hasn’t seen in years? I don’t buy it, and if there’s something in Saw’s backstory that would explain it, the audience isn’t privy to it because we get virtually no backstory on him.

Truthfully, I think this decision was made in service of the story. From a story perspective, Saw has to die here, because later, the writers needed a reason for the Rebel authorities to doubt Jyn’s story (if Saw had lived, he could confirm it), giving her the opportunity to give a rousing speech and round up her ragtag group of fighters for the underdog suicide mission that is the film’s final act. But if the story requires a character to make a nonsensical, out-of-character decision, that’s probably a sign that something’s wrong with the character, the story, or both.

The Ugly

Beyond the character issues and lesser flaws like a few bad line reads, Rogue One is marred by one visual effects mistake: the CGI recreation of the characters Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia, designed to look just as they appeared in 1977 in the original Star Wars film.

Some people have complained that using CGI to build a new performance for a now-deceased actor or actress is sort of creepy, but my problem is more with the effect itself. Princess Leia only appears onscreen for a second, but in that second she – or rather, her computer-generated doppelganger – flashes a creepy, uncanny valley smile.

Grand Moff Tarkin, whose CGI likeness got considerably more screen time, simply didn’t look natural. It may have been something related to the smoothness of his skin; all I know for sure is that it distracted the hell out of me every second he was on the screen. Apparently CGI technology isn’t quite good enough yet to really pull off a totally CGI human in the context of an intimate conversation with lots of close-up shots.

(Also, something about the Darth Vader voice was off. I’m not sure what the culprit there was, since they did get James Earl Jones to voice him, but I’m not the only one who felt Rogue One‘s Vader didn’t quite sound like Vader.)

There are lots of other minor quibbles I could make, but this already seems a bit harsh for what is ultimately an entertaining and very watchable movie. Ultimately, Rogue One does enough to elevate itself above the debacles that were the prequel films, but it doesn’t get much higher than that on my list. It’s grittier, prettier, and more visceral than anything Star Wars has done before, but it lacks the human heart that made the originals (especially Empire) and The Force Awakens tick.

(As a side note, it’s also worth pointing out that this movie works at all only if you’re familiar with Star Wars. That’s fine, since most people are, but for anyone who hasn’t seen A New Hope, Rogue One will be pretty incomprehensible, and the ending will be infuriating).