ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY - A Previous Hope

NOTE: A long time ago, in a SPOILER far, far away...

“I'm one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

- Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

In 2012, when it was announced that Disney had acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. and its main export, the Star Wars franchise, fans initially did not know what to make of it. Over the past decade, Star Wars under George Lucas – and his universally despised prequels and Special Editions – had basically become a pop culture punch-line. Lucas was starting to allow outright parodies of his work by fans like Seth MacFarlane and Seth Green in trilogies of “Family Guy” and “Robot Chicken” episodes; none of that adult-themed humor would ever be allowed through Disney. How would the Mouse House of all places be able to resuscitate a galaxy far, far away? It started by the appointment of longtime Steven Spielberg collaborator Kathleen Kennedy as the head of Lucasfilm. She devised a Story Group of authors, writers and other creatives to plan out the franchise going forward as opposed to waiting on the whims of a burned-out creative mind who genuinely hated the moviemaking process.

2015 brought the first fruit of their efforts, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams. It was a worldwide smash hit with critics and audiences, bringing back the love of Star Wars once again. The film successfully reintroduced fan favorite characters while launching new and intriguing characters to carry the franchise forward. But the previous three-year wait time between Star Wars films would not be enough for Disney. With their considerable resources, they would set out an ambitious release schedule: one Star Wars film a year for the foreseeable future. Every other year in which a Saga film would not be featured, Kennedy would set a date for what Lucasfilm would call Anthology films – films set in the Star Wars universe that did not have to obey the previously set chronology and would be based on events previously not seen or characters’ origins. The first film under this new banner would be called Rogue One.

A year beforehand, rising British director Gareth Edwards was adding the finishing touches to the biggest film he had ever directed at the time, an American reboot of Godzilla for Warner Bros. Pictures. It was then when he received a phone call from Kiri Hart, the leader of Kennedy’s Lucasfilm Story Group at Disney. It seemed his name had come up at the top of the list of potential directors for a standalone Star Wars film. After a meeting, it was decided that the perfect Star Wars film for Edwards’ sensibilities would be a war-themed film centered around the Rebel Alliance’s theft of the top-secret plans to the Death Star. This story had been developed by long-time Star Wars visual effects veteran, Academy Award winner and the man who gave the world Photoshop, John Knoll. Edwards was a die-hard Star Wars fan from a young age, even dragging his girlfriend to the then-abandoned Tunisian set of the Lars homestead on his 30th birthday so he could drink actual blue milk from the same table Luke Skywalker had. It killed him to not be able to tell anyone about his new project, even his mother. When the go-ahead was given to Edwards to tell anyone he wanted that he was doing a new Star Wars film, he gleefully had a guessing game with his mother over the phone. Clearly, this was a director after a geek's own heart.

Jyn Erso (Academy Award nominee Felicity Jones) grew up without a stable sense of family. Her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), was taken from her at an early age to go work for the Empire on the same day her mother was murdered. Years later, after her willfulness and bad attitude leaves her in an Imperial cell, she is broken out by resistance fighters Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his mouthy droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk). They lead her to the Rebel Alliance and their leader, Mon Mothma. She is concerned about a new weapon the Empire is constructing to destroy any planet that stands in its way of galactic conquest. When asked why she should care, Jyn is stunned to learn that her father was the lead architect of what becomes known as the Death Star. Believing him to be a pawn of the Empire, she volunteers her services to help rescue him while obtaining the plans to the Death Star.

As many online have already pointed out, most of the movie does not reflect the footage the trailers advertised. The film notably went through reshoots months before its release headed by Tony Gilroy. Most feared Disney’s influence to lighten the movie to a childish degree, even allowing the characters to live at the end. In fact, the entire Internet had the story backwards. The original script was written with all the characters living at the end, because Edwards assumed Disney would not want them killed off. With Kennedy and Disney’s help, they agreed to go with Edwards’ preferred ending where Jyn and the Rogue One crew are all killed by the Death Star. As to the footage used in the trailers not seen in the film, it was deemed by Disney’s marketing that it would be useful to sell the film on without using the actual footage. Directors of films that go through immense post-production changes are often cagey in their responses to the press or simply disown the film outright. However, it seems Edwards had a great time working on the film and seems to be proud of it. He even joked that the demises of the heroes is, “…a great Disney tradition…. For every single character to die in all their movies.”

One of the major talking points of the film is the revelation of a supporting character played previously by an actor who has been dead for over two decades: Grand Moff Tarkin, performed in the image of Sir Peter Cushing. In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Tarkin makes a brief walk-on appearance near the end of the film portrayed by another actor in prosthetic makeup. The character has also appeared in both “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars Rebels”. Here, however, it appears digital technology has improved enough to allow for Peter Cushing to make an appearance from the grave. I must admit, I was quite taken aback at how much of the movie he was in. I have long been an advocate of performance capture but this is de-aging on a dead actor – something rarely attempted before. Is it utterly perfect? No, but it does well. It is an improvement on the de-aging effect on '80s Jeff Bridges in TRON: Legacy, but not as convincing as '80s Michael Douglas at the beginning of Ant-Man. The only thing that bothered me most was the gray, translucent quality of Tarkin’s face. You could almost see his veins through the skin and it did not rub me quite the right way. Still, it is an evolving technology and I hope to see more experimentation with it in the years to come.

Rogue One, while a story we all know the ending to, is a fine film with a lot of good action and characters. They all get something to do in the third act and it is thrilling to watch good practical effects in action. However, I think I must confess that I like The Force Awakens more: it moves the story we knew forward into the future while respecting the past. This is a movie that does respect the past certainly (almost too much for me, with that Ponda Baba and Evazan cameo), but we all know where it is going. You can literally watch the end of Rogue One, replace the Blu-Ray with A New Hope, and just keep right on going. Nothing bad certainly, and I did thoroughly enjoy the film, but I am ready for The Last Jedi to keep the Star Wars train rolling.

RIP Carrie Fisher and Kenny Baker

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - To Boldly Go To A Galaxy Far Far Away…

NOTE: May the spoilers be with you. Also, fair warning, this is more of an in-depth review so hang in there.

“Some things never change.”
- Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Star Wars: The Force Awakens

All his life, J.J. Abrams wanted to be a storyteller. Inspired by the films of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, he became a screenwriter. In college, he wrote the film Regarding Henry. During the making of the film, Abrams got to meet its star, Harrison Ford – who had years earlier played two of his film heroes, Han Solo and Indiana Jones.

Nearly 20 years later, Abrams transitioned into directing. He was offered Mission: Impossible III by Spielberg and Tom Cruise, which led to the reinvention of the franchise. Paramount would often ask Abrams to help revive a franchise with 2009’s Star Trek. The film was a massive success and led to Abrams’ first original directorial project, Super 8, about a group of kids shooting a zombie movie in a small town when an alien monster attacks. He was able to share a set with Spielberg, the film’s producer. It was also a major success.

Then, Abrams hit a major speed-bump in the form of 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness. While the film was a financial success, the critical and fan reaction was dismal; the leading argument being that the film was nothing more than a rip-off of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Speaking of Khan, the decision in the film marketing to hide the true identity of Benedict Cumberbatch’s character was loudly decried. Eventually, things got so hostile that the film’s co-writer Roberto Orci launched into an all-out rage against the fans on Twitter and declared he knew “what was best for Star Trek” more than they did. After the outburst, Orci left Twitter and has not resurfaced other than his television projects (“Limitless” and “Minority Report”) with his partner, Alex Kurtzman. Abrams has since taken the blame for most of the decisions made on the film. Little did he know that he was about to jump from one galaxy to another and become a part of something he once knew as a younger man.

Late October 2012. The world is stunned when George Lucas and Bob Iger jointly announce that Lucasfilm has been sold to the Walt Disney Company. They also announced that – for the first time – Star Wars Episode VII was officially in the works; the movie George Lucas said for DECADES would never happen. Almost immediately, the brains of fans everywhere were working overtime to think of who could possibly direct this new installment. Lucasfilm’s press release specifically stated that “Star Wars will be handed over to the new generation of filmmakers”. 

One by one, every fan’s choice turned down the film: Steven Spielberg (“It’s George’s world, not mine”), Jon Favreau (“I’m not sure what I want to do next” – it eventually became Disney's The Jungle Book), Guillermo del Toro (“I’d have better luck dating a supermodel”), Quentin Tarantino (“Disney Star Wars movies? No way, José” - Tarantino would eventually despise Disney for taking away screens reserved for The Hateful Eight and instead show Star Wars), Brad Bird (“I’m busy with Tomorrowland”) and Colin Trevorrow (“I’m reopening the park with Jurassic World”). Naturally, Abrams was asked by Empire Magazine in November if he had been contacted by Lucasfilm. This was Abrams’ response:

“There were very early conversations and I quickly said that because of my loyalty to Star Trek, and also just being a fan, I wouldn’t even want to be involved in the next version of those things. I declined any involvement very early on. I’d rather be in the audience not knowing what was coming, rather than being involved in the minutiae of making them.”

Fast forward to late January 2013. With fans chomping at the bit for Lucasfilm to announce who will be behind the first Star Wars movie in a decade, it is finally revealed that the director of Episode VII will be… J.J. Abrams. Jaws everywhere fell to the floor. Even worse, this was not immediately confirmed by Lucasfilm until a day later. Abrams then said in an official press release titled, “Star Wars Is Being Kick-Started With Dynamite”:

“To be a part of the next chapter of the Star Wars saga, to collaborate with Kathy Kennedy and this remarkable group of people, is an absolute honor. I may be even more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid.”

While fans might be angry for Abrams’ outright lie (or at least poor attention of misdirection), The Hollywood Reporter reports that:

“Abrams said in November that he wasn’t interested in taking over the venerable franchise from creator George Lucas. But sources tell THR that Kennedy contacted Abrams in early January and went to visit the filmmaker at the Santa Monica offices of his Bad Robot production company. Kennedy is said to have won over the filmmaker with her pitch [“Please do Star Wars”].”

And so, with the financial backing of Disney, the encouragement of powerhouse producer Kathleen Kennedy and the universe that was the brainchild of George Lucas, Abrams embarked on unarguably the biggest movie of his career.

30 years after the destruction of the Death Star II, the heroes of the Rebellion have disappeared into legend. In the case of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), he and the Jedi have fallen into myth after Luke vanished after one of his Jedi students turned to the dark side. With Luke’s disappearance, the galaxy has fallen into chaos with a new evil rising, the First Order. One of its darker disciples, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is obsessed with Skywalker’s father Darth Vader and continuing where he left off – destroying all that is good in the galaxy; apparently not realizing Vader had a change of heart before he died. He captures X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), from a secret mission for General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), and threatens to destroy him if he does not reveal the information he seeks. On the distant planet Jakku, a desert scavenger Rey (newcomer Daisy Ridley) is dreaming of a life of adventure rather than being stuck in the middle of nowhere. She gets her wish granted in the form of a rogue stormtrooper nicknamed Finn (John Boyega), who crash-lands his TIE Fighter while escaping from the fanatical First Order. Reluctantly teaming up, they come across the paths of old veterans Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Meyhew), who knew Luke Skywalker firsthand.

J.J. Abrams has pulled off a moviegoing miracle. After the disastrous fan reactions to the Prequel Trilogy (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at the Prequels without scoffing intensely now; welcome back, character dialogue that sounds like what people actually talk like), The Force Awakens is a callback to the good old Original Trilogy while establishing itself as an entirely new entity. I quite enjoyed the bromance between Poe and Finn, it was quite funny and awesome. Finn and Rey are the main focus of the film however, and they both play off each other well; I was particularly appreciative that they were not given a typical romance attached to them just because they are opposite genders. Daisy Ridley is a vision, perfectly smart, beautiful and talented. John Boyega has this natural charisma and charm that works well; all the controversial brouhaha over him being a Stormtrooper was absolutely worthless. Oscar Isaac is someone I had seen in movies before, but here he shines as someone personifying cool and confidence. But, to me, the shining light of the film is Harrison Ford as Han Solo. We are given a genuinely fun performance from a guy who otherwise looks so miserable he would not even go to his own funeral.

Speaking of funerals... Harrison Ford has finally delivered on his threats to kill off Han Solo. It is the scene everyone and their mother is talking about: Han Solo confronts the monstrous Kylo Ren and reveals to the audience that he knows Ren as Ben, his son. After he tries to convince his son to abandon the Dark Side of the Force, Ren kills his father with his lightsaber. As he falls, Han lovingly bids farewell to his son. It is a scene I knew was coming, but even as it was happening, my heart was pounding as I wished it was not true. However, if it had to happen, this was the best possible scenario: something noble, appropriate and well-made. Ford looks truly heartbroken, but I am sure he had to fight the urge to jump with joy.

I will make this analogy (if it makes any sense): George Lucas builds a shiny automobile. He lavishes over it and everybody loves to see it. Then, he starts adding all sorts of annoying gadgets and gizmos to the car, too proud to let anyone else handle it. Eventually, the car falls into disrepair and, having fallen out of love with it, Lucas decides to bequeath it to a friend, Kathleen Kennedy. Kennedy knows that this car used to be really something and just needs a little tender love and care. She immediately takes the car to a mechanic, J.J. Abrams, known for fixing up old hot rods. Abrams gives the car a once-over and brings in a specialist, Lawrence Kasdan, to help him match together parts. For this operation, Abrams uses top-of-the-line technology while also tracking down old parts from its distributor. The result is a purring sports car with a brand-new engine, leather seats, full tires and a new paint job.

All in all, Disney and Lucasfilm have given the world a wonderful gift: new Star Wars movies with endless possibilities. Unlike the prequels which had to go in a very specific direction and “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” which is set in a contained period of time, The Force Awakens and subsequent films can go anywhere. Anybody in Hollywood who consider themselves true blue fans of Star Wars can eventually take their shot with their favorite space saga. Abrams was the first because he has the ability to revitalize a brand. His films are action-packed thrill rides with depth-filled characters and appropriate levels of levity. Force Awakens is no different, a thrill ride with enough laughs, cheers and tears to keep audiences coming back for more of that galaxy far, far away…