The characters are sullen and tortured, having lived rough lives under the oppressive thumb of the Empire and the endless violence ensuing from an opposing Rebellion. There are a lot fewer lightsabers - indeed, just one. Gone is the sense that we're in a Saturday-morning serial (always Lucas' original inspiration) and instead ever-present is an efficient and urgent 21st-century action-plot sensibility. Newly enacted are on-screen visual cards telling us what planet we're on. Gone are the opening crawl and scene transition wipes.

Star Wars is a universe, but a Star Wars movie is whatever its particular goals are.Īs for Rogue One: This is a darker, grittier, more modern film that pulls significantly back (albeit not completely) in the humor department and seems to be more seriously invested in the 'war' part of Star Wars. That's part of the statement being made here. For the first time, it seems, under director Gareth Edwards, we have a new owner turned loose in the store.Īnd it's possible that future stand-alone films may have their own tones, serving only themselves. The answer: It looks and feels exactly like we're in the Star Wars universe, but it inhabits a noticeably altered take and tone. A year after a successful rebooting via the first entry in a sequel trilogy that went to painstaking efforts to live and breathe the same sensibilities of Lucas' original trilogy (to the point that it essentially retold A New Hope), we now have our first 'stand-alone' anthology outing - which might serve as the answer to the question of what Star Wars unmoored from the Skywalker family name might actually look like. Rogue One is a highly entertaining example of what might be the true long-term future of Star Wars.

Screenplay by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroyįelicity Jones (Jyn Erso), Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Alan Tudyk (K-2SO), Ben Mendelsohn (Orson Krennic), Riz Ahmed (Bodhi Rook), Donnie Yen (Chirrut Imwe), Wen Jiang (Baze Malbus), Forest Whitaker (Saw Gerrera), Mads Mikkelsen (Galen Erso), Genevieve O'Reilly (Mon Mothma), Guy Henry (Grand Moff Tarkin) Produced by Simon Emanuel, Kathleen Kennedy, Allison Shearmur

Star wars a rogue one review