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In that galaxy far far away, little Jyn has to see her mom (Valene Kane) shot and her dad (Mads Mikkelsen) by baddie Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) because the Empire needs him to build the Death Star. Now Jyn (played as an adult by Felicity Jones) is abducted by the rebels of the alliance who have found out that Jyn's dad has sent a pilot (Riz Ahmed) to extremist Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who just happened to bring up Jyn. Now they think the pilot has plans to destroy the Death Star (he has), and thus want to get him out of Gerrera's grasp, who's of course much too extreme for the Alliance. Now somehow that works out, with the small detail that they manage to save the pilot but not the plans, which they have to get from some other planet where there's this big archive. Somehow they make it to said planet and to the archive, and it's up to Jyn and rebel Cassian (Diego Luna) to actually get the plans and they manage to upload them to the Alliance just in time before Tarkin (Guy Henry with the CGI likeness of Peter Cushing) steers the Death Star to said archive planet, and blows it up, thus allowing Jyn, Cassian, the pilot, their robot sidekick K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), their closest companions, blind Chirrut (Donnie Yen) and Baze (Wen Jiang) and a few other rebels to die their heroes' deaths. And somehow the plans get into the hands of Princess Leia Organa (Ingvild Deila with the CGI likeness of Carrie Fisher) of course, who calls them "hope", to hammer home the point that this movie leads directly to the events of Star Wars, later clumsily retitled Star Wars: A New Hope.

Oh, and Darth Vader (embodied by Spencer Wilding and Daniel Naprous, voiced by James Earl Jones) is in there somewhere too, but he does little other than swing his light saber for a bit.

Well, on one side Rogue One does much less to just please fans than The Force Awakens (despite bringing Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher back, plus Darth Vader, and many allusions to later films in the series), and mostly tries to stand on its own feet, presenting us with a whole new cast of lead characters who have no relation to established ones. Plus, the film's less gimmicky and more adult that most previous entries, telling a serious story in a very serious way.

On the downside though, the story of the movie's over-complicated and a tad simplistic at the same time, and neither of the characters experience much development, especially Cassian sees none at all. So what in the end is basically the (well made) spectacle rather than anything else. The movie's really mostly spaceships, gunfights, chases, stunts, explosions, (bloodless) violence, with little meat beyond that. That's not to say it's not entertaining, because it actually is - but it isn't a movie that stays with one for long.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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