Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

After the joyless vapidity of the Star Wars prequels, J.J. Abrams’ Episode VII – The Force Awakens rebooted the franchise back to its original settings. The 2015 movie honored the past while also building infrastructure for innumerable future additions. It was a throwback and a step forward at the same time, almost pathologically rehashing visuals and story beats from the original Star Wars trilogy, but also righting past wrongs by expanding the racial makeup of the ensemble and making the female characters more active.

But it wasn’t a great film. Abrams tried to serve so many masters that The Force Awakens ultimately became a little faceless and overstuffed, and in the end it succeeded more as an exercise in Star Wars-isn’t-lame-anymore optics than as a fully rounded movie experience. At best, it made the Star Wars universe feel tactile and human again, refocusing on the characters while remaining vague and anonymous enough to allow future franchise directors to make some corner of the galaxy their own.

Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the first of what will no doubt be tens of thousands of Star Wars extended universe movies, and it feels sort of like an Episode 3.5 – designed to fill space between Episode VII and next year’s Episode VIII. And although Rogue One thankfully continues the trend of character-based stories, tactile visuals, active female characters and diverse ensembles, while also taking the franchise to some new and fascinating places, it definitely feels like filler.

The first of several key diversions from the classic Star Wars form comes right away, when instead of a story crawl we get a shock cut, followed by a series of eerily beautiful shots tracking a single spacecraft across a lonely planet. These early scenes establish the backstory of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones, capable but unmemorable, especially following Daisy Ridley’s breakthrough role in The Force Awakens), a prisoner and outcast haunted by her past. Years later, Jyn joins with a shifty rebel spy (Diego Luna) and his sarcastic droid (Alan Tudyk) to learn more about the Empire’s newly built Death Star.

Rogue One takes place after the fall of the Republic in Revenge of the Sith and before the destruction of the Death Star in A New Hope, but it only associates itself with the latter film, even offering creepily spot-on recreations of beloved characters from that 1977 classic. Maybe it latches on too tight; there are a number of striking and singular shots inRogue One, and it’s less busy than The Force Awakens, but beyond adding some interesting visual texture and moral dimensions to the Star Wars universe, it’s hard to get over the fact that the story is a foregone conclusion, with the one-note characters to match.

Ultimately, this is a film about stealing plans, which is almost as lame as the trade embargoes and Galactic Senate resolutions of the prequels. At this rate, how long before we get an entire film built around the origin story of Chewbacca’s bandolier?

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (3) Directed by Gareth Edwards • Starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk • Rated PG-13 • 133 min. • At Century Cinemas Del Monte, Century Marina, Maya Cinemas, Northridge Cinemas, Lighthouse Cinemas, Cannery Row XD