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Rogue One
a Gareth Edwards film
Plot (Spoiler Alert)The Empire is building a giant weapon that can destroy planets. A team of Rebel spies are sent on a mission to find out where it’s weak spot is in order to inform the Rebel alliance how to destroy it. 
Blaine: The idea for “Rogue One” came from John Knoll, the visual effects supervisor of ILM. After George Lucas retired and Kathleen Kennedy took over Lucasfilm, they announced they wanted to make these stand-alone movies. For a long time John Knoll had an idea from the opening crawl of “A New Hope” of stealing the Death Star plans and have it as a backstory. He thought it could be a compelling film just by itself. John would be talking to friends out in the hallway, pitched them a 30-second version of the movie and they wanted to see it. John pitched the idea to Kathy about Rebel spies that go in to steal the plans to the Death Star. Producer Kathleen Kennedy immediately said that this could be great and thought it might be one of the best stories to start off the new stand-alone movies. The fact that it kind of falls into the genre of a World War II type story, a heist movie. John Knoll hadn’t heard anything for a week and thought they may have turned it down. He thought “at least I tried to get it out there.” then he got an email saying they are really intrigued by the idea. They did a head start by working on the concept drawings of what it would look like. They still needed a writer and a director. They were interested in filmmakers who have really strong points of view when it comes to their visual take on things. For “Rogue One” they wanted the right person to tackle this particular set of events that are so important to what happens in episode IV. The producers watched a blu-ray movie in George Lucas’ screening room called “Monsters”, Gareth Edwards’ first feature. After they finished watching “Monsters”, it was official that they wanted Gareth. Because “Monsters” had a fresh, very interesting visual point of view, they thought that would make “Rogue One” special. The producers had Gareth meet with them about the project and they were surprised of how big of a fan he was of “Star Wars”. “Star Wars” is everything to Gareth and he never ever in a million years thought that he would be lucky enough to direct a “Star Wars” movie. Gareth has always wanted to join the Rebel Alliance and that’s what they were exploring this idea of the Alliance coming together. They wanted it to be an extremely diverse group of characters. It was a lot of fun for them to figure out these characters so that when they come together it feels like they’re all true Rebels. It was really important for them to know that they weren’t just telling the story of this super-weapon. That it’s about these people. The actors are a different nationality of people, English, Mexican, Australian, Chinese, Danish and American. I love Felicity Jones as the action hero and I am really impressed with her performance as Jyn Erso in “Rogue One”. She shows a lot in her performance especially with her teary eyes showing that Jyn Erso is desperate to be reunited with her father. I love how Felicity gets all emotional in the scene where her character is watching the hologram of her father’s message saying he has always loved her. Other times she disarms a Stormtrooper, knocks it on the ground and blasts at others. Felicity’s first memory of “Star Wars” was watching it at her cousin’s house and rediscovered it from being a part of “Rogue One”. She would go on Wookieepedia to get all of her “Star Wars” information and she has an affection for “Star Wars”. John Knoll described Jyn in his original pitch as a team leader, female, smart and tough, battle-worn. A little cynical and jaded from everything she’s been through. She’s seen it all and that makes her seem a little callous to those who don’t know her. Felicity said it was fantastic to portray a tough character like Jyn Erso and she would have done as much as possible including doing her own stunts. They were running out of trenches, doing loads of military training and they had a few bruises here and there, but it was all worth it because it was “Star Wars”. K-2SO is a smart alec, a terrible liar and also a similarity to C-3PO. K-2SO was in the original story pitch that John Knoll did. He described him as the kind of anti-C-3PO. C-3PO was used as the bumbling comic relief according to John, which is true he does talk a lot. What John wanted to do was take all those things that were implied as cool things that K-2 could do that a human being can’t. Designing K-2 was a huge challenge for them and they knew he was going to be an iconic character. John’s brief for K-2SO was that he was a black protocol droid or a kind of black C-3PO. Some of the early designs where just similar to C-3PO and they weren’t going for the look. So they looked through the sketch book of Ralph McQuarrie, the guy who did the concept art for the original “Star Wars” trilogy, and he had drawn these robots that never made it on film. They had thin limbs and were almost stylized. They said the voice Alan Tudyk chose to give K-2 fit really well. Alan Tudyk said that a lot of Empire guys are English and it just works better with an English accent. Felicity Jones said that Mads Mikkelsen is tremendous and has so many paternal qualities. Felicity would shout dad every time she would see him and she found that to be a bit disconcerting, but that’s because it was the fact that he was on Jyn’s side. Mads said his character, Galen Erso, abandoned his project because the Death Star will create peace, but at what cost? Well I don’t know how the Death Star could be peaceful, but my thoughts are Galen's daughter Jyn is the highlight of his life, feels she deserves better in life and is doing what’s best for his family. Forest Whitaker’s character Saw Gerrera was a character that George Lucas created in his “Star Wars” animated show, “Clone Wars”. Kiri Hart, the SVP developer suggested that add that character to “Rogue One”. Saw Gerrera came to the Rebellion early. He was an activist and he’s frustrated. Everyone saw him as a broken person after fighting the Empire for a life time. Forest Whitaker started his work on the character by watching the character in episodes of “Clone Wars”. 
The thing I’m most impressed with is the visual effects they did to bring back one of the characters from the original “Star Wars” film. That character is Grand Moff Tarkin from “A New Hope" and he was the Governor of the Imperial Outland Regions and commander of the Death Star. Tarkin was played by horror film actor, Peter Cushing who has been dead since 1994. John Knoll felt that Tarkin was important to the whole Death Star project and felt he had a big presence in “New Hope” that it seemed natural for Tarkin be in the film as well. They asked themselves could they do a substantial amount of close-up dialogue shots of Tarkin and have that be completely believable? It was the kind of challenge that they loved to do. I’m so impressed of how life like it looks that it feels like Peter Cushing is still among us and James and I were talking about how impressed we were after we left the theater. James also liked the effect of the planet Jedha slowly being destroyed. I like how the Stardestroyer and Death Star come out of the shadows when you first see them. The guy who portrays Tarkin is Guy Henry and he said he was gleaning everything he can from Peter Cushing’s portrayal of the character. It was a big challenge for Guy and frightening, but it was for a good cause because it was “Star Wars”. 
They wanted a villain that would die in the end and they couldn’t do Darth Vader because people know he doesn’t die until “Return of the Jedi”, so they introduced Orson Krennic played by Ben Mendelsohn. Gareth Edwards would talk to Ben on how Krennic has passion and investment in the Death Star project. Gareth also told Ben that this Death Star project is everything to Orson. Gareth Edwards had goosebumps when they were doing the camera tests and he could hear Darth Vader breathing. Gareth said you have to be really careful how you use Darth Vader because if you bring him in too early in the film you’ll probably just want Vader for the rest of the movie. It is really cool to have seen Darth Vader in “Rogue One” and James Earl Jones to return to provide the voice. The suit does look wider though. Before I saw “Rogue One” I herd there’s not much of Darth in it, but I felt I saw plenty of him. Plus you got to see him in action towards the end using his lightsaber. That’s my favorite part of the ending is seeing Darth Vader taking down those Rebel soldiers even though you don’t want him to get his hands on the Death Star plans, but he’s a cool villain. He’s a very popular character. It gives you an intense feeling as you are watching Darth Vader getting closer to the guy with the plans. It wasn’t till the AT-AT walkers and the Tie Fighters showed up on the planet, Scarif, that it felt like I was watching a “Star Wars” movie. John Knoll wanted the Princess Leia effect to look 100% believable and he believed he could do that because visual effects have been enhancing over the years that he felt they were ready for that kind of challenge. Princess Leia was played by Ingvild Deila. What they had to do with Ingvild to transform her into Leia was spent a lot of time on her hair, dyed it twice and then added some more hair on the forehead because Carrie Fisher’s hairline was a bit lower than Ingvild. They also added a big chunk of hair to make the buns on the sides. They had tones of takes and some of them didn’t work out. She only says one word at the end and it took a long time to get the effect right. I think Gareth Edwards has really outdone himself directing “Rogue One”. All the main characters Jyn, Cassian Andor, Chirrup Imwe, Bodhi Rock, Baze Malbus and K-2SO die, but their deaths have not been in vain for their mission has become a complete success of stealing the Death Star plans and making sure it arrives in the hands of the Rebels. I’m ok with them dying because they have honorable deaths. The ending is about sacrifice which is why I like it so much especially with Jye and Cassian hugging each other waiting for the shock wave to wipe them out. And again Felicity Jones shows emotion in her eyes during that last scene. Then Princess Leia receives the Death Star plans which gives the Rebellion hope to fight the Empire. Her ship, Tontine IV, detaches from another ship and goes into hyper space which leads to the beginning of “A New Hope”. The Rebel soldier who pulls the switch to have the Tontine IV detach from the main ship is director Gareth Edwards. “Rogue One” is a once in a life time opportunity because you're only introduced to these characters once and then their gone in the end, there’s not going to be a sequel, but there is a next chapter that everyone has seen a million times. My rating on “Rogue One” is five out of five stars. Music by Michael Giacchio |