I have been watching the new Star Wars films with my dad lately. We have watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi so far but before we watched The Rise of Skywalker, I thought it would be good to watch the spin-offs so we decided to watch Rogue One. I was too fussed about Rogue One when I watched it at the cinema, I don’t think I hated it as much as some people but I also didn’t love it. I have some thoughts on it and how watching it made me think about what I want from Star Wars in the future.
Rogue One is a prequel about the rebel mission to get the Death Star plans. This film tries to explain why there was a flaw in the Death Star that they could exploit in the first place and the answer is that the guy who designed it did it on purpose to help the rebels. I didn’t really think we need an explanation for it in the first place since I just assumed that it was there for a reason to do with helping the ship run like how a car has an exhaust pipe that it needs but you could also put something in it to break the car.
I think this is really nice looking Star Wars film and I was in awe at a lot of the shots but also I think that when the establishing shots are more interesting than the characters then that’s probably not a good thing. I know some people said that the characters don’t need to be interesting because they were going to die in the end but I think the opposite, you need to care about them more if anything because you want to feel the weight of their sacrifice.
Some of the characters are interesting like Chirrut Îmwe, played by Donnie Yen. Chirrut isn’t a Jedi but he believes in the Force and that belief helps guide him through life. I think that is an interesting idea to add to the Force. I am a strong believer that Force is something everyone should be able to connect with, not just the Jedis. I also think he was the best relationship in the film with his friend Baze, played by Jiang Wen. When everyone else talks to each other about how they are mates, I don’t buy it but I do with Baze and Chirrut. Baze has a line where he calls Jynn Erso, played by Felicity Hardy, “little sister” and it felt way too soon to be calling someone that.
While watching Rogue One, I thought about what I wanted from Star Wars in the future because I think this film did do some things that I would like to see going forward but it also did some things that I want them to not do. I would like to see more Star Wars films that ignore the Skywalker story because we’ve had 9 films of that so don’t need any more of that. I want them to make very little if any references to the past films and I want them to move forward with their own path. The universe is so big that you tell a completely different story within this universe. You could have Star Wars film that’s part of a different genre like a Star Wars rom-com or Star Wars horror film.
I also think they need to look at hiring more black and female directors so that they can offer a different perspective on this universe. I want them to hire different people from the usual people. I like Jon Favreau but the fact he got to make films for Disney, Marvel and Star Wars is wild. I don’t want them to just get someone who has done Marvel films to do Star Wars films, get some new talent involved and support their vision for the film. I think Star Wars so much potential moving forward now that we’re done with the sequel trilogy, I just hope they hire some interesting people to work on these films so that we can something a bit more interesting.
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