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A Galaxy Not Far Enough Away New Star Wars film struggles with identity By Br yan VanC ampe n Rogue One, directed by Gareth Edwards, playing at Ithaca Stadium 14.
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must have written thousands of words expressing my displeasure at George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels (I am a casual fan of the first trilogy). But comedian Patton Oswalt only needed eight minutes to explain why those movies were dramatically inert. As Oswalt said, Lucas’s big story move, which only ever worked in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, boils down to “Hey, you get to see (fill in the blank) as a little kid!” Constant Companion tends to like everything he sees. If he tags along, he’s already in, and even he had to admit that Rogue One, the first stand-alone Star Wars adventure, is the least involving and exciting film in the entire series, serving as conclusive proof that foregone conclusions aren’t that interesting as stories. Then again, he’s been griping about the over-use of the Death Star since we saw Return of the Jedi on opening day. But more on that later.
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I had a sinking feeling that this would happen, given that I liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens so much. That film may have been a fan-fiction remake of the original Star Wars, but it introduced some good new characters and reconnected me to something I liked about the franchise. Rogue One’s plot involves the ragtag band of rebels who managed to steal the plans for the original ’77 Death Star, a story that always struck me as not that suspenseful, since fans of SW know that the plans were found, so how much tension and conflict can be mined here? It’s really like watching a joke for twoplus hours, but you’ve already heard the punch line. It’s particularly a shame given that Rogue One feels like the most diverse cast in any SW film to date, with lead roles played by Diego Luna, Forest Whitaker, Donnie Yen, Jimmy Smits, Mads Mikkelsen and many others who seem game for anything. I applaud the direction in casting that the series has taken, however I found Felicity Jones’ lead character not particularly well-defined. To go from an
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embittered orphaned prisoner to a rebel talking about hope is quite a stretch, and I never really bought into her character the way I responded to Daisy Ridley’s Rey. There are compensations here and there. The film is very well made on a certain level, though light years past what Lucas could do in ’77. Donnie Yen has star moments as a blind Jedi, and Alan Tudyk voices a very cool new deadpan droid. The problem is the feeling that Star Wars maybe doesn’t have as big a playing field as we might think, and the farther the stories get from the core, the less effective they are, The attempts to bring back some of the characters from the ’77 SW, most notably the late Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin, are convincing but ghoulish.
Felicity Jones stars in “Rogue One” (Photo provided)
For me, a lot of the cameos were as ineffective and poorly used as the cameos in this summer’s Ghostbusters remake. As I understand it, the series will continue annually, with two more chapters in the current saga, and a young Han Solo movie in the works, which will take the films through to 2019. There are no plans after that, but the Lucasfilm crew plans big meetings in January to plot their next moves. I can only hope that the Death Star finally gets retired, the series stops taking these little baby steps away from the center, and we find out if there really are any other stories to wring out of Star Wars. •
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