Review: ROGUE ONE - WOBAM Entertainment

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Directed By: Gareth Edwards

Produced By: Kathleen Kennedy

Simon Emanuel

Allison Shearmur

Yall have no idea how excited I was when Paul told us we could cover Star Wars. I was jumping up and down excited ok? Needless to say I am a huge Star Wars fan, have been for many years. So I have some bias. Ok maybe a lot more bias than most. But that’s mainly towards the expanded universe, which we might get to later down the road, but not today. Today we’re here to talk about Rogue One!

Let’s talk about the characters first. We got some really awesome, funny characters like Chirrut Îmwe(Donnie Yen) and K-2SO(Alan Tudyk). I personally really like Jyn Erso(Felicity Jones), though some people say her character wasn’t developed enough. But K-2SO really did steal the show for everyone, including me. He was funny, sarcastic, and could back up all the C-3POesk comments he made, especially with the slap to Cassian Andor(Diego Luna) before they all met Saw Gerrera(Forest Whitaker). Yen also had one of the favorite characters, with the quotable “I am one with the Force, the Force is with me”. I heard people saying that for weeks after the movie was released.

The story line was well written to me, I enjoyed it. A major complaint for some people was that we don’t know much about these characters, and they die in the end, so what is the point of this movie? Well for one, this movie is days before Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and we don’t see these characters in episode IV, so why would they survive? And for two, this is a war movie; people tend to die in war movies, and not many survive. Finally, there is a chance we could see these characters in other “between” movies, (between episodes three and four). We already see Jyn Erso in some of Disney’s Star Wars Forces of Destiny TV shorts. It’s possible to see the Rogue One team before the movie, so don’t give up on possibly seeing them again.

The costume and set design looked perfect to me, they tried their best to mimic the feel of episode IV, so that was a real plus to me. The CGI to recreate Peter Cushing didn’t look too terrible, he looked incredibly gaunt at times, but it didn’t look bad, I didn’t see what the fuss was about him. But the CGI to present a younger Carrie Fisher, that looked bad. It looked way too fake, and too sculpted. Plus the hair buns didn’t look at all like Leia’s in episode IV, I mean come on; to me that should have been a no brainer.

Darth Vader was awesome, the lightsaber work was really phenomenal in the ending scene. I also liked seeing his castle on Mustafar, I thought that was a nice touch. Was Vader’s presence necessary, probably not. But I still thought it was pretty cool. Also I really wish we would have seen some of the stuff they cut out of the trailer in the film, like Erso’s “I rebel line”, or maybe even the TIE-fighter shooting at Jyn. I just thought those were awesome shots in the trailers, and they could have worked in the movie. It’s part of the reason I tend to stay away from trailers now, preferring to see what the movie has first, so I can judge it cleanly.

Overall not terrible, definitely better than the prequels.

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