| Veknoid_Outcast said: I really appreciate your analysis of the symbolism of Rogue One. I haven't read anything like that before. Very cool :) I do think you're giving the movie a little too much credit, though. Yes, the movie introduces some moral gray zones but it never really unpacks them. The ethical problems of rebellion aren't really teased out. Neither are the relationships between characters. Jyn's connection with her estranged father fizzles out. Her complicated partnership with Saw is even less developed. I think that's the overarching theme of Rogue One: underdevelopment. Sub-plots are introduced and dismissed with expediency. There are too many characters with too few understandable or interesting character traits. Some will call Rogue One a "war movie," as if that excuses its lack of good storytelling and sympathetic characters. It doesn't. I'd be fine with a Saving Private Ryan-esque war drama set against the Star Wars universe, but it would need to feature characters I cared about and a focused, entertaining narrative with set-ups and pay-offs. |
Thank you for the compliment. :) It's true enough to say that I'm one of those people who has many unorthodox views.
As to your critique, I think that, in judging the quality of all movies by the exact same set of criteria, you (and a lot of other people as well) fail to appreciate what this movie actually sets out to do. You're taking what is essentially a humanist approach to analyzing the quality of movies: one which argues that there is a single criteria with which we can judge the quality of all movies, and perhaps all art in general for that matter, and that it is character development. I disagree with that simplistic, formulaic way of thinking. For example, Carol is a much more character-driven movie than is Mad Max: Fury Road, but does that necessarily make the one film better than the other? Is Fury Road setting out to be a primarily character-driven movie? You see what I'm getting at? Art is best appreciated on its own terms. It's quality is best judged then based on the extent to which the given work achieves what it sets out to do.
To highlight what I think is an even more directly pertinent contrast, while we cannot imagine character-driven video games like Undertale or Oxenfree working out without a host of especially solid, interesting characters, do titles like Journey or the Portal games set out to achieve that same goal or is the player of the latter titles propelled emotionally instead by the atmosphere those games create; the mood they put you in? I view Rogue One the latter way: as an atmosphere-driven story that is just as much about the Rebellion and the course and feel of their overarching struggle itself as it is about its cast of major characters. Indeed, this elevated concern for the masses themselves is a major part of what separates Rogue One from other Star Wars movies where we more often than not see their struggles and even cataclysmic deaths in anti-septic ways. For example, are we emotionally gripped in any way by the Death Star and Star Killer blasts in A New Hope or The Force Awakens? No, because we never see any of the people on the ground or know anything about them per se! How about the Death Star blasts in this movie, by contrast? You see? The lives of the masses don't actually matter to the creators of the main Star Wars films, but only really those of the superpowered Jedi and those immediately connected to them. They matter to Rogue One director Gareth Edwards though.
And though Rogue One doesn't set out to be a truly character-driven story, it does nonetheless have its moments in connection to its major characters, like the crucial argument between Jyn and Cassian after Jyn's father is killed in a Rebel strike and Chirrut's sacrifice that exposes the closeness of his friendship with Baze, for example. The ending (spoiler: all of the Rebels who participate in the key mission, including all the film's main characters, die) took me a little aback as well. Contextually, I knew that the cost of the battle for the Rebels would be high (based on what was said about it in A New Hope), but I didn't actually expect both Jyn and Cassian to die as part of that. And therein lies another big part of the merit to this being an original, separate story within the overall Star Wars saga: it's not limited by the same predictability. For example, we know that, since the new main trilogy that's begun with The Force Awakens is, in a fundamental sense, narratively similar to that of the original trilogy (Episodes 4-6), it will therefore have a happy ending wherein the main character, Rey, is, for instance, unlikely to die. We likewise knew that the prequel trilogy would have a sad ending from the outset, given that we'd already seen the fourth episode in the series and therefore knew the crux of what was coming, just not how it would come about. But Rogue One's main characters Jyn and Cassian are both original and exclusive to this movie and the storyline is dissimilar from that of other Star Wars movies, so there was no way to really know how their arcs would end in advance, which left us to presume a happier or at least more nuanced ending based simply on the fact that most movies in general have at least one of their main characters live happily ever after.
I also see just a touch of social pertinence to what the major character's arcs are actually about. It bears some resemblance to what many post-apocalyptic films strive to convey thematically. Our major characters (especially the lead) start out as rather untrusting, cynical characters that have been jaded by the course of their lives and instinctively therefore are inclined to focus simply on their own personal well-being until events (typically in the form of a common enemy) overlap their respective well-beings until genuine connections develop between them and they resultantly drop their cynicism and become willing to sacrifice themselves for others in their group and/or the masses themselves. We see that kind of relational arc also conveyed, for example, in post-apocalyptic movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and the Hunger Games novels and films and I see the balance in Rogue One resting somewhere between that in the two examples just mentioned. Mad Max: Fury Road ultimately conveys a positive, trusting view of the masses, while the Hunger Games series suggests that they are more gullible, but that you've got no choice but to trust their judgment anyway for the sake of your own psychological well-being. What Rogue One has in common with the Hunger Games series is that it's very much about the relationship of the actions of the main characters to those of the masses and vice versa, while its overall level of faith in the people is similar to that conveyed by Mad Max: Fury Road's conclusion.
The meaning behind the theme of trust that many if not most post-apocalyptic movies revolve around (trust versus distrust of people or certain groups of people, trust versus distrust of technology and/or the course of science, etc.) lies in the fact that ours, this age of their proliferation, is a very cynical and jaded time where people increasingly distrust everyone and everything. These post-apocalyptic movies have different messages in many ways, but often also share an interest in finding solutions to that cynicism and jadedness. Each suggests a particular take on what the appropriate level of trust in people, places, things, and ideas is while also suggesting a course that can lead to that restoration of the appropriate level of trust. That, in addition to whatever political commentary and whatnot that may be offered, is very much at the heart of post-apocalyptic movies broadly, and Rogue One is, in many ways, a post-apocalyptic movie. I like both the politics (as discussed in my last post on this thread) and broad, if nuanced, faith in humanity conveyed by this movie.
This type of theme stands in contrast to other Star Wars movies in many ways. Other Star Wars movies typically have our protagonists know little about their backgrounds (e.g. have little or no idea who their parents were, etc.); a set-up that results in cataclysmic events like the loss of loved ones (e.g. Luke's it turns out surrogate parents in the original trilogy) resulting in them accepting a role in the larger conflict based upon having nothing left to lose. By contrast, the opposite of that trajectory is true of Jyn and our other protagonists in Rogue One: they all know where they came from (Jyn's arc revolves precisely around the fact that she knows exactly who her father is) and, as a result, participation in the conflict has jaded them by exposing to nothing but pain and suffering rather than pain and suffering plus curiosity. The issue then becomes that of unjading them, which is rather more pertinent to the psychological state of real world. Most people, after all, know who their parents are or were and are rather cynical these days.
That was my take.
