Rogue One and how Star Wars still has a Rhyming Problem

Six days after (and eight hours after) the film.

(It would also be some 238 days after the last entry in that other blog of mine. This is not that blog. But, like that blog, this is not a place for movies reviews as such.)

The film in question: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

I'll keep my 'review' simple--I liked the film a lot. There are not a lot of Star Wars films, of course, but this is one of the best of them, for sure. The performances are as good as one might expect from a fantasy franchise like Star Wars, good actors playing just above the level of the material but never quite achieving greatness. The plot is simple enough, and as far as prequels go, Rogue One is obviously the best Star Wars one and a good example of what can really be done with a prequel... But I will get to that below the spoiler tag.

SPOILERS. Really, if you read on, many things will be SPOILED for you.

The ending of this film with all of our major characters dying to get those Death Star plans adds a better sense of gravitas to the proceedings in A New Hope. Nevermind the debate over the use of a CGI Peter Cushing, Rogue One adds a little depth to the character of Tarkin, seemingly taking it upon himself to destroy an Imperial base to protect their new superweapon and squeezing Krennic out of his job. Plus, if you watch A New Hope right after watching the end of this film, I imagine Darth Vader might be even scarier than I remember him being when I was a kid.

So, yeah, I enjoyed the film. But, I also was making a list of complaints in my head as I watched it (the first time) because that is just what I do. I have no particular problem with the use of CGI for Tarkin or Leia. Ethically, I mean. I do wish that Tarkin had played a little less like a video game cut scene, or they had at least kept him turn away from the camera more or something. Leia works better because her appearance is so brief. (And, because, really, Leia in A New Hope did have a bit of a too-made up vibe going.) I liked the bit with Pando Baba and Doctor Evazan. I liked the brief appearance of C-3PO and R2-D2. I liked the non-CGI inclusion of old footage of rebel pilots in the final battle.

But.

And, I am surprised I have not seen more reviews complaining about this but.

I do not think there needed to be or should have been a space battle at the end of this film that was supposed to stand apart from the main series. I mean, sure, George Lucas made a point about the series rhyming but a) Lucas is not calling the shots anymore and b) Rogue One is not part of the series. My high school English teacher made a point about how he did not like Emily Dickinson's poetry because all of her poems--and I never confirmed this to actually be entirely accurate--could be read to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." If every Star Wars film is going to play to the same tune, I wonder how long it can sustain itself. This after nearly four decades of Star Wars, of course, but we left Star Wars behind in the late 80s, we can do so again. Like the Marvel Cinematic Universe films or the less successfully realized DC version, at a certain point the concept will wear too thin. Rogue One should have been a better injection of... Not originality, exactly, but something to energize the "series" away from all of that rhyming.

Instead, Rogue One rhymes too. A quick rundown:

Jedha stands in for Tatooine at the start of both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. Our main characters lookout over Jedha City like Obi-Wan and Luke once looked out over Mos Eisley. While Cassian and K-2SO feel like stand-ins for Han and Chewie in the rhyming structure, we head into Jedha City to find another set of Han and Chewie stand-ins in Chirrut and Baze.

(If they had been a little more coded-gay, maybe they would have served a better structural purpose in the story of the film. And, for the record, I loved these two and the way they played off one another and how Chirrut was a replacement for a Jedi rather than a stand-in for one. But, in terms of the structure of this story, they are there simply to pad out the cannon fodder checklist for the third act. If there had been no commandos later, maybe Chirrut and Baze would have had a greater import (if not a greater presence) in the plot.)

They get to Saw Gerrera, a sort of stand-in for Obi-Wan but not physically fit enough to have so much screentime. And, like Jabba the Hutt, ruling his criminal empire from a B'Omarr monk temple on Tatooine, Saw rules over his insurgency (and the film could have really taken more time to explain why Saw's men bombing an Imperial tank was going too far for the Rebel Alliance but Cassian murdering his own informant was not) from a tomb. Rescuing Bodhi from Saw is something like rescuing Han from Jabba but not quite.

Similarly, failing to rescue Galen from Eado is something like rescuing Leia from the Death Star but, again, not quite. The stories rhyme. They echo. They do not quite mirror. Jyn gets two father figures dying right in a row instead of a few years between as it was with Luke. (As it presumably will be with Rey.)

Finally, the assault on Scarif plays just like the assault on Endor, even cutting between three parts of the fight--the space battle, the ground combat, and the efforts inside the citadel. And, judging by footage in early trailers, this was part of the reshoots. No longer does Jyn march toward a TIE Fighter on that high platform. Nor does Krennic march through the water with stormtroopers. Instead--and I do commend this choice--the film attempts to make it more personal by putting Krennic there in the tower with Jyn. This is problematic in a couple ways, though. 1) Jyn does not save herself from Krennic; rather Cassian shows up to save her. Not the best move for a franchise that seems to actively be trying to be progressive. 2) Though Krennic was apparently her father's friend once upon a time, and he was the officer who took her father away, he was neither the one who pulled the trigger on her mother (exactly) or on her father. In fact, Galen Erso died because of rebel fire. The film could have benefitted from changing the way it plays the Empire--make it much more personal or make it much more monolithic. Meaning, give us real interaction between our heroes and Krennic, maybe make them have to actually pose as Imperials to to get the Death Star plans rather than simply dress as them. Or, never take us inside the Imperial ships, never take us inside the Death Star or the citadel on Scarif unless or until our heroes sneak inside it. The real power in the original trilogy is that the conflict is personal. The prequels took that away in order to build up that same very personal struggle to come. The Force Awakens already played one familial hand to make the conflict personal, and I expect the new trilogy will play another. Rogue One, on the other hand, has a very personal hand to play but never quite plays it. Saw dies arbitrarily. He does not protect Jyn. He is not even that important in helping out the fight she is about to join. Bodhi could just as easily have been picked up by Cassian and the rest of the plot would have worked the same. Galen dies not by the quite direct hand, or orders, of Krennic but by passing rebel fire unintended for him. The film tries to amp up... something in Jyn's attack on Cassian in the shuttle afterward, and her line, "You can't talk your way out of this" lands well, but Cassian's response, "I don't have to" is so on-the-nose as to weaken the delve into darkness this film wants to be. He refused to kill one guy, so nevermind that we saw him murder a guy who was on his side earlier, Cassian is a great guy.

(To be fair, refusing to kill someone is more than Han got after murdering Greedo.)

Rogue One wants to be a darker, grittier war film, but it also insists on being a fun Star Wars romp. Imagine if this were more about the violent insurgency or about spies deep undercover in Imperial territory, or an entire film like that ground combat in act three (i.e. an actual war film). I mean, taking one step away from the feel of the franchise is great, laudable, but why not two? Why not three? At this rate, the Young Han Solo film can never be a serious exploration of him being a scoundrel, a portrait of a scruffy-looking gambler and smuggler. It can only be the story of how he defected from being an Imperial and saved Chewbacca from slavery, established backstory with room for Han to team up with his own Jedi stand-in, his own Han and Chewie stand-ins, a droid nearby for comic relief.

Star Wars, as a brand, is increasingly self-limiting. If they really want to make standalone films, they should probably take more risks, bigger risks than casting a female lead and actors that are not all white.