Review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) by Brian S — 15 Feb 2017

Itâ??s been interesting seeing the divide in peopleâ??s reactions to ROGUE ONE. I suspect it comes down to how you reacted to the characters; if they worked for you, you truly loved the movie, but if you didnâ??t gel with them the whole thing fell flat. I donâ??t have a further theory on this - ie, I donâ??t really know why some people didnâ??t like the characters while others, like me, fell for them hard - but it does seem to be the dividing line.

Because I loved the characters I found the ending to be doubly impactful. Itâ??s impactful on a simple level everyone has to agree on, which is that we NEVER see the leads die in a blockbuster franchise movie, let alone see ALL the leads die (also this movie blows up every new location, making ROGUE ONE almost impossible to revisit in any meaningful way in future films). Thatâ??s a big deal, and itâ??s a ballsy move for a movie studio that is just as interested in licensing and toys deals as it is with telling stories.

That ending is so important, though, and I believe itâ??s the ending that we need right now as we face down Trumpâ??s America. Indulge me while I talk about this for a minute.

In the modern West we have this vision of heroism, and that vision is a lone wolf who gets the job done. We, as a society, have become exceedingly individualistic, and we have learned to downplay the importance of sacrifice. In our stories the hero is often willing to make a sacrifice but, because of the needs of franchise filmmaking and longform storytelling, is rarely asked to actually go through with it.

You can see this throughout the original STAR WARS trilogy. Luke Skywalker is hyper individualistic, consistently going off and doing his own thing. Han Soloâ??s story is the closest you get to true selflessness in the modern Western world - he becomes a hero to save his friends/his love. Itâ??s actually selfish in a pretty fundamental way - we canâ??t have Solo just decide that fighting the Empire is the right thing to do, he needs to return to the battle in STAR WARS because he wants to help his buddy Luke, and in EMPIRE he is trying to help Leia. Meanwhile the only main characters in the OT who die for their beliefs are either very old (and thus on their way out already) or evil.

Thereâ??s nothing inherently wrong with this messaging - itâ??s better to be heroic to save your friends than to be not heroic at all - but I do believe itâ??s limited. And ROGUE ONE blows past those limits. Itâ??s a movie about selflessness in the most extreme way possible, about characters who sacrifice everything for a cause - not for vengeance, not to save someone, but simply because itâ??s the right thing to do.

Where Luke is motivated by a complex series of emotions - desire for adventure, a drive to glory, hope for vengeance for his father and Obi-Wan - Jyn is motivated simply by the fact that somebody has to stop this death machine from blowing up planets. Itâ??s that simple, and some people get stuck on it - they want more motivation, they want more scenes of Jyn changing her mind. We are so inundated with the selfish mode of heroism, in which our hero only takes extreme action when they/their family/their essential comforts are threatened, that Jynâ??s change of heart almost seemed unmotivated. But it isnâ??t; rather itâ??s motivated by the most extraordinary of all human impulses - true selflessness.

So what does this have to do with Trump?

First, through Jyn, it tells us that we donâ??t have to wait for the Empire to kill our aunt and uncle or blow up our home world or endanger the woman we love to take action. We can see wrong in the world and take action.

Second, and this is the big and heavy part that will sound especially awful to late capitalist era Western ears, it tells us that not all of us will be able to attend the medal ceremony at the end of the battle. But what it does is shift our understanding of those who donâ??t make it to the end; in STAR WARS theyâ??re nameless squad guys - Red Two! Gold Leader! - who blow up and leave behind no trace of themselves. ROGUE ONE shifts our perspective to look at the people who sacrifice everything and shows us how heroic they truly are. Rather than cannon fodder, these self-sacrificing soldiers become aspirational figures. We look up to them, and we feel the honor in what they gave up.

Because hereâ??s the thing - if fascism is rising in the world, and all data indicates that it is, we will soon be called to make our own sacrifices. Maybe itâ??s not our lives but perhaps itâ??s our livelihoods, or our relationships or our comfort or our sense of safety. And not all of us will see the end of this coming fight, but THAT IS OKAY. Itâ??s the nature of how these things work.

Think about what Trump said about John McCainâ??s time as a POW, that he doesnâ??t respect guys who get captured. Thatâ??s a terrible thing to say, but itâ??s pretty in line with Western ideas of heroism. The hero doesnâ??t get captured, and if he does, he heroically breaks himself and all his buddies out. The hero certainly doesnâ??t die; if Trump thinks McCain is a loser what must he think of poor Bodhi Root, getting taken out by a grenade almost unthinkingly lobbed into his ship?

That, by the way, is another piece of ROGUE ONE that delights me - not every death in this movie is meaningful. In fact very few actually are. Galen dies from injuries inflicted by the Rebels, and his last words are â??I have so much to tell you,â?? a far cry from the usual speechifying our martyred dying do in movies like these. Baze just walks into his death. Bodhi gets fragged out of nowhere. Even Jyn and Cassian meet their doom not in a hail of heroic blaster fire but after their mission is over, calmly looking into a wall of flame that is about to consume them. This movie undermines all of our John Wayne concepts of heroism, a truly remarkable feat for a toy commercial released at Christmas.

Our movies have taught us that unless weâ??re the Chosen One we should probably just sit down and shut up, otherwise weâ??ll end up like a nameless X-Wing pilot splattered across the Death Star. That might be the greatest thing ROGUE ONE does - it undermines the Chosen One story that STAR WARS itself popularized. Once Jyn tells Galenâ??s message to the others she is no longer special; she has no unique abilities, positioning or disposition to lead the raid on Scarif. What she has is the will and the selflessness to do it. Every character is moved into place by the Force, acting very subtly in this film, but none of them are great gleaming founts of potential. Theyâ??re blind, theyâ??re faithless, theyâ??re morally compromised assassins, theyâ??re traitors with nowhere else to go. Each of them simply does the best they can, taking action at the time when action is indicated to them. It is on their backs that Luke takes his Heroâ??s Journey.

By taking away the element of the Chosen One, ROGUE ONE reinforces that we can all make a difference. We can all be involved. And it doesnâ??t lie to us about our odds. Thatâ??s radical, and itâ??s exciting, and itâ??s the kind of messaging that we need right now. You donâ??t have to be Luke Skywalker to take down the Empire, and Luke Skywalker canâ??t do it without you.