Neil Welch
The Empire, in the early stages of constructing the Death Star, abducts architect Galen Urso, killing his wife and leaving his daughter Jyn to be brought up by insurrectionist Saw Guerrera. As an adult, Jyn joins the rebellion and, when the Rebel hierarchy seem reluctant to try to steal plans for the Death Star, Jyn decides to go it alone. Well, alone except for a gallant band of associates.
The Empire, in the early stages of constructing the Death Star, abducts architect Galen Urso, killing his wife and leaving his daughter Jyn to be brought up by insurrectionist Saw Guerrera. As an adult, Jyn joins the rebellion and, when the Rebel hierarchy seem reluctant to try to steal plans for the Death Star, Jyn decides to go it alone. Well, alone except for a gallant band of associates.
Review: A long time ago in a cinema far, far away (1976, the Dominion Tottenham Court Road, to be precise) I saw a space opera movie which finally put on screen the sci-fi derring-do I had been reading about since I was a tiddler, and it blew my socks off. It started with gutsy Princess Leia being captured by sinister Darth Vader just a tad too late for him to recover the Death Star plans. We never knew how the Rebellion had obtained those plans in the first place – well, now we do.
This means, of course, that we already know the ending, so there is no “Will they succeed or not?” suspense – they do. The excitement here comes bout through the backstories which motivate the crew of Rogue One, and the mechanics of their adventure – Do they survive or not? No spoilers from me on that.
Felicity Jones plays Jyn: Star Wars more or less originated the feisty movie heroine, and Jyn maintains that tradition. She is accompanied by some respectable names who are content to be simply part of the Star Wars canon, some good players who are not (yet) big names, another pleasing droid – K2SO, voiced by the wonderful Alan Tudyk – and a host of spacecraft, exotic locations and sets and splendid effects – in short, the Star Wars mix we have come to known and love.
Conversely, if you don’t already love Star Wars, you’re not going to love this.
The story works well, albeit without huge surprises, and with a familiar and slightly unwelcome tendency to heap up “Disable the shields!”-type obstacles. It is best for me to say no more about it other than to note that it is a delight to see cameos here and there, none of them overdone. And the care over how the ending dovetails into Episode 4: A New Hope is pleasing.
Composer Michael Giacchino takes John Williams’ themes and makes them his own in another sumptuous symphonic score.
This is badged “A Star Wars Story” – it omits the classic opening theme, logo, and story crawl, although the theme returns at the end – as it is not directly part of the story of the Skywalker family, the overriding plot element which links the 7 (to date) episodes of the main saga. Yet it slots seamlessly into the gap immediately preceding episode 4, and is vastly better than the mid-80s Ewok spinoffs. I liked it more than Lucas’ prequels, too.