Nearer five than fifty shades of grey
At least that's the main impression I was left with after our regular Saturday gaming fixture was cancelled so we could all troop off to the cinema. Do I need to tell you what we went to see? And you know what, it was pretty damn good.
Right from the off it was clear that this was at least trying to be a different kind of Star Wars movie. No thunderous intro music or title crawl, but a tense confrontation on a bleak and misty moorland planet that seemed to be making more than a nod to Inglorious Basterds. This grittier tone develops from there, as we get to meet a bunch of rebels who blur the line between freedom fighter and terrorist and see a pragmatic side of the Rebel Alliance that wipes some of that goody-goody polish off their bodywork. There are subtitles to tell us the name of each new planet as it enters the plot, which makes the film feel more like a serious thriller. The general mood is darker, and the humour played down, with most of the one-liners going to the only droid in the main set of characters.
But it is still Star Wars. There's obvious continuity with the main saga through the appearance of familiar ships and vehicles (I particularly liked the AT-ST striding down a city street), established alien species and some individual characters, including a very well CGI-ed Peter Cushing. There's even a cameo by a couple of nasties from A New Hope. Familiar musical motifs occasionally creep into an otherwise original music score. And it all ends in a big battle fought both on the ground and in orbit with the clock remorselessly ticking though it's hard to get too excited about that when you know the good guys can't fail without breaking the continuity. Oh, and Imperial storm troopers are still rotten shots. No change there.
If Rogue One is asking us to take Star Wars a bit more seriously, I'd say it succeeds. Yes, it's still a family-friendly sci-fi action movie, big on death (mainly storm troopers) but devoid of blood and gore. The good guys are fittingly heroic, the bad guys aptly villainous. The film is, however, largely shorn of the more ridiculous antics and exasperating tweeness that brought down the first two trilogies. There was only scene that had me sighing in my seat. But whereas the first six films gave the impression that all this running around shooting people and blowing things up might actually somehow be fun, Rogue One never loses sight of the fact that war and rebellion is a pretty grim business. Heroes can die. More than a few of them do.
I'm not quite sure if this is the best Star Wars movie yet. In its downbeat tone it's a close match to The Empire Strikes Back, for spectacle it's at least the equal of The Force Awakens. To say it's better than the prequels would be meaningless, since there are Carry On movies better than the prequels. If Rogue One is any indication of the direction the franchise is heading in, things are looking good.
Right from the off it was clear that this was at least trying to be a different kind of Star Wars movie. No thunderous intro music or title crawl, but a tense confrontation on a bleak and misty moorland planet that seemed to be making more than a nod to Inglorious Basterds. This grittier tone develops from there, as we get to meet a bunch of rebels who blur the line between freedom fighter and terrorist and see a pragmatic side of the Rebel Alliance that wipes some of that goody-goody polish off their bodywork. There are subtitles to tell us the name of each new planet as it enters the plot, which makes the film feel more like a serious thriller. The general mood is darker, and the humour played down, with most of the one-liners going to the only droid in the main set of characters.
But it is still Star Wars. There's obvious continuity with the main saga through the appearance of familiar ships and vehicles (I particularly liked the AT-ST striding down a city street), established alien species and some individual characters, including a very well CGI-ed Peter Cushing. There's even a cameo by a couple of nasties from A New Hope. Familiar musical motifs occasionally creep into an otherwise original music score. And it all ends in a big battle fought both on the ground and in orbit with the clock remorselessly ticking though it's hard to get too excited about that when you know the good guys can't fail without breaking the continuity. Oh, and Imperial storm troopers are still rotten shots. No change there.
If Rogue One is asking us to take Star Wars a bit more seriously, I'd say it succeeds. Yes, it's still a family-friendly sci-fi action movie, big on death (mainly storm troopers) but devoid of blood and gore. The good guys are fittingly heroic, the bad guys aptly villainous. The film is, however, largely shorn of the more ridiculous antics and exasperating tweeness that brought down the first two trilogies. There was only scene that had me sighing in my seat. But whereas the first six films gave the impression that all this running around shooting people and blowing things up might actually somehow be fun, Rogue One never loses sight of the fact that war and rebellion is a pretty grim business. Heroes can die. More than a few of them do.
I'm not quite sure if this is the best Star Wars movie yet. In its downbeat tone it's a close match to The Empire Strikes Back, for spectacle it's at least the equal of The Force Awakens. To say it's better than the prequels would be meaningless, since there are Carry On movies better than the prequels. If Rogue One is any indication of the direction the franchise is heading in, things are looking good.