Rogue One! It’s a Star Wars film, that’s for sure, and yet in many ways it has eschewed the tropes of the standard “Saga” movies with a style all its own. Of course, that was the intention of Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and director Gareth Edwards in introducing this first standalone Star Wars movie, i.e. a story set outside of the Skywalker family soap opera.
So let’s take a look at some of the things Rogue One did differently than the rest of the Star Wars movies to date -- from little things like onscreen text changes to bigger stuff such as music, digital character creation, and [spoilers!].
Yes indeed, some major spoilers follow.
That’s right -- it never says “Star Wars” during the opening of the film. The traditional Lucasfilm logo followed by the full screen “Star Wars” and the blaring fanfare just isn’t a part of Rogue One. And when the Rogue One title (finally) appears onscreen, there’s nary a sign of the subtitle “A Star Wars Story.” It’s just “Rogue One.” And it’s pretty cool.
This one was no surprise as we’d heard a lot about it prior to the film’s release, but the lack of the opening crawl info dump is another early departure in the film which ties directly into our next point.
Rather than utilizing the crawl to give us the back story, Rogue One provides another first with an extended sequence (involving a young Jyn Erso and her parents) before the name of the movie even appears. Conversely, the filmmakers resist the modern temptation to offer up a post-credits scene; there is none, which is obviously in keeping with Star Wars tradition.
The previous Star Wars films have typically taken place in a sort of void regarding real time. How much time passes in A New Hope between Luke and Ben Kenobi meeting Han and Chewie and the destruction of the Death Star, for example? Days? Hours? That’s also true to some degree with Rogue One, but the film avoids that sense somewhat by featuring the first big-screen time jump in the franchise’s history. Young Jyn’s scenes contrasted with her adult self’s modern-day adventure inform each other, but also give the story a bigger -- and at the same time, character-intensive -- scope.
Whether you’re frightened by ILM’s sorcerer's ways or not, Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin lives once again in Rogue One. As does a young Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. The Star Wars films have long paved the way in the realm of visual effects, including digital character creation (Jar Jar lives!), but this is a new frontier for them, and pretty much for movies in general just in terms of the amount of screen time Tarkin in particular gets. He’s a full-on supporting character in Rogue One… though clearly one that fans will be arguing over for some time.
Similar to the digital revival of characters, the film also recycles actual shots and dialogue from A New Hope. Footage of Rebel pilots from that film pop up in the climactic battle of Rogue One, eliciting cheers from eagle-eyed fans (and puzzlement for those who don’t know why everyone else is cheering).
Star Wars and composer John Williams have practically been synonymous since the first film was released in 1977, with the Oscar-winner (for A New Hope among other scores) working on each film in the series… until now. In order to further differentiate Rogue One from the Skywalker saga, Michael Giacchino -- who has collaborated extensively with Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams -- took over the musical chores this time. (Though Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla composer Alexandre Desplat was originally intended to take the job before being replaced when Rogue One went into extensive reshoots.) Of course, some of Williams’ iconic themes still make it into Rogue One, but by and large the film features a significantly different soundscape than its seven predecessors.
The many locations of the film are conveyed to us in a new way, with the names of the various worlds appearing in the bottom left of the screen. It makes you wonder how we all knew what Hoth was back when!
Yes, it happens in a dream, but Jyn’s flashback to the days when her dad Galen was an Imperial officer on Coruscant along with his pal Orson Krennic is a new convention for Star Wars. The typically linear style of telling these stories on the big screen hasn’t allowed for such methods previously. (And no, we don’t think Rey’s Force vision counts as a flashback as much as a series of feelings and images she can barely process.)
One of the stylistic aspects that really established Star Wars as Star Wars was George Lucas’ embrace of wipes, a relatively old-fashioned cinematic transition tool (Lucas took his inspiration from Akira Kurosawa in using it). Even J.J. Abrams used the wipe to a lesser degree in The Force Awakens, but Rogue One has, ahem, wiped away the wipe.
No, Vader doesn’t count since he, you know, helped kill most of the Jedi. Star Wars has always focused on Jedi or would-be Jedi, and while the Order is referenced and weighs on the film to some degree, Rogue One decidedly does not have a sad devotion to that ancient religion. We almost didn’t even get any lightsabers in the film… almost.
Yes, Boba Fett showed up on the Holiday Special for a weird one-off appearance before he was in The Empire Strikes Back, and The Clone Wars animated series shared some characters with the prequel films after they were released. But this is the first time that animated characters from ongoing series, such as Saw Gerrera from Clone Wars and Chopper from Rebels, have made the transition to the live-action movies.
Yep, that’s new too.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
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