Rogue One *** (2016, Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Ben Mendelsohn, Riz Ahmed, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen, Donnie Yen) – Movie Review

Lucasfilm’s competent and efficient but none too fascinating or inspired 2016 Star Wars spinoff plays like a spliced-together TV series with low-cost-looking sets and visual effects. It’s a shock to discover it cost $200,000,000. That money is not really up there on screen.

Moving the narrative continually onwards if not upwards, Gareth Edwards, the director of Monsters (2010) and Godzilla (2014), keeps it reasonably brisk and lively, but always predictable and never truly exciting or thrilling.

However, the cast is good though, and so are many of the characters, with Felicity Jones and Diego Luna making a fine star team as Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor. Though playing second fiddle, Luna, particularly, gives it real acting clout. Ben Mendelsohn is a strong villain as Orson Krennic, Riz Ahmed is excellent as good guy Bodhi Rook, Forest Whitaker storms around with authority in a rather pointless role as Saw Gerrera, and Mads Mikkelsen has real authority as Jyn’s dad Galen Erso.

(I didn’t quite get how the very English Felicity Jones could be the daughter of the very Danish Mads Mikkelsen, or why the very Australian Ben Mendelsohn had strapped on an ‘English’ accent, but we’ll let that pass.)

But Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang are fairly irritating as blind Chirrut Îmwe and blazing Baze Malbus, while Alan Tudyk’s vocal and motion capture performance as K-2SO is pretty annoying of course (not the actors’ fault in any of these cases).

Genevieve O’Reilly gets to reprise her role as Mon Mothma and so does Jimmy Smits as Senator Bail Organa. She makes her mark briefly, but he is completely wasted. Guy Henry plays bad Governor Tarkin, enhanced with CGI of his illustrious predecessor Peter Cushing, and Carrie Fisher appears momentarily at the end as young Princess Leia in archive footage. Both those things seem unbearably sad now.

Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy’s OK script, based on a story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta, is very deja vu, but what else can it be? It feels strained and uneasy as it makes a visible effort trying to slot into, and tell a parallel story to, the original Star Wars story. There are some good, tense extended sequences of sci-fi action but its attempts at humour are weedy and irritating, though they are of course unfortunately an essential part of the Star Wars mythology.

I should tell you, by the way, that Jyn and Cassian lead the Rebel Alliance on a do or die mission to steal the plans for new super weapon Death Star to keep them away from ambitious, sadistic Orson Krennic and his rather unpleasant boss Darth Vader (thankfully the voice of James Earl Jones).

This story is very much a side issue to the franchise, and it feels like a tacked-on filler and inevitably fails to make its place as an essential chapter in the Star Wars universe. We’ve had an essential chapter already in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015). We don’t need random Star Wars stories too, though, having said that, the Han Solo origins story is perhaps something to look forward to.

It was filmed mainly at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, UK, but also on location at Reynisfjara, Iceland (Planet Eadu), Gan, Laamu Atoll, Maldives (final battle on Planet Scarif), Wadi Rum, Jordan (Planet Jedha), Bovingdon Airfield, Hertfordshire, UK (Scarif) and, most importantly, Canary Wharf Underground Station, London (Death Star).

I saw it in 2D on a small screen, but maybe it’s more exciting in IMAX 3D 12 track digital sound.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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