They Promised Me A Star Wars Story and All I Got Was This Crummy T-Shirt
I’m in the minority. I know it. All the talk has been about Star Wars: Rogue One and while I’m not so much sick of it, I’m finding my eyebrow stuck permanently in a raised position.
Disney pulled the best Jedi mind trick since Obi-Wan convinced a Stormtrooper blockade these "aren't the droids you're looking for." Disney took a brand and re-launched it as something new – without actually changing the brand at all.
Hey, these tricks are pulled on the public all the time. Walmart started selling groceries – but it was still the same big box store you remember before except there were now thawing packages of mixed vegetables in the tech department. The effect is that it convinces the public that it’s a brand new store.
We were told Rogue One would be a ‘standalone’ story. We were told it would be a genre film with heavy doses of a war movie and a heist movie. Guess what? It’s really neither.
A standalone Star Wars film would have nothing to do with any of the characters or stories that have been told before. Case in point, the heaviest hitter of the Star Wars iconography: a standalone Star Wars movie wouldn’t have Darth friggin' Vader in it. A standalone film would have Ponfeb Gillbop, a dusty old smuggler looking to get out of the business but gets dragged back into it by his old pal L’k Eem’de’il, a sassy con woman looking to rob from the Hutts the score of a lifetime. I totally made that up (no sh*t). I didn’t need Vader, I had Ponfeb and L’k!
Worse yet, the film (quote) ends (unquote)! From a narrative perspective, the conclusion of a story and the ending of a film are generally two different things. In this case, where our characters' story ends and where the film ends are most definitely different things. The latter dashes any chance that the film could be considered its own, unique place in the Star Wars canon. The movie concludes on the typical note we should come to expect from all our blockbuster films - a blatant appeal to fans of the series, an 'Aha!' moment. In one fatal swoop, it establishes what we increasingly suspect the whole run time - that this is no standalone film, but an immediate sequel to the original trilogy in every way - and tells the audience, hey, thanks for paying attention to the misleading marketing of this film. We'll see you next opening weekend.
It goes deeper.
The rhetoric with which we describe blockbuster franchises as 'genre' now has become an easy marketing gimmick. While the refocus of these franchises as genre pictures has made them stronger (and without a doubt was the correct choice), it also gave them an easy cop-out to promote themselves as being original without being original. It's the case of being great or telling everyone you're great when you're, meh, just good.
When asked to describe the film, most have used the convenient categorization of it as a ‘war movie’. On the surface, a war movie could be described in broad terms as a movie with war scenes in it. By that logic, Gladiator is a war movie and so was The Last of the Mohicans. But wait, isn’t Inglorious Bastards a war movie even without the fighting? Yup, it is. So is Paths of Glory.
A war movie is, like an genre, a product of narrative types. There are certain characters that tend to appear: the cynical commander, the idealistic private, the man who just wants to go home. These are not requirements, but they are benchmarks. You would struggle to fit into a war moviea spoiled rich kid trying to fit in with the common man (although, you could try).
This is where the perception of Rogue One as being a standalone film and its promotion as a genre picture collide in an awkward mess. Many will point to the final third of the film as merits of this as a 'war' film. Except the battle in the final third has more in common with the final battle in Return of the Jedi than it does the D-Day sequence from Saving Private Ryan (space battles! ground battles!).
What about the ambush in the streets in the first third? That has some serious tight-knit, explosive 'war' flavor, right? Right!? To that I say, Black Hawk Down! Rogue One has nothing in common with that most high-level contemporary modern warfare picture (isn't it very convenient that our heroes notice the trap before the soldiers do {when is the last time you saw such stupid adversaries in a war film?}). We spend exactly (inexact use of the term 'exactly') five minutes in the streets of Jedha (Jed-ha, Jed-huh? Jed uhhh?), acclimating our eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of the alleys - its congestion, layout, and culture - before the fighting begins. Black Hawk Down (and most war films) do that for the entire runtime.
Ultimately, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is not a story all to itself or a 'war' picture - it pushes its war as the star, but it's still just a Star War(s).
Rhys Dowbiggin @Rdowb
Rhys has worked six years in the public relations industry rubbing shoulders with movie stars (who ignored him) to athletes (who tolerated him). He likes tiki-taka football, jelly beans, and arguing with Bruce about everything.