Rogue One

Instead of just making more money by producing new Star Wars, Disney intend to bring the cinema audience stand alone movies set in the fictional universe of Star Wars as well.This is the first of them. It takes place in between Star Wars episode three and episode four. Familiarity with those films will naturally help you get more from this one. Although chances are you will have seen them if you are reading this.At the start, we meet a young girl whose father fled the empire. But who finds he can't hide forever. She becomes a young girl forced to grow up fast. Fend for herself. And want to get revenge on the empire.Years pass, and said young girl is now Jyn Erso [Felicity Jones] who gets the chance she has been waiting a long time for, when given an offer by a group of rebels. To help them steal the plans of a new weapon of mass destruction the empire is building. A mission she has a bit of a personal connection to.The imperial forces will stop at nothing to ensure they prevail. This might just be a suicide mission...There's no opening title scroll to fill the viewer in on any exposition, and without that, and a lot to set up at the start, it does take about fifteen minutes to really get into this. Early on the interest is held by the pragmatic and forthright K-2SO, [voiced by Alan Tudyk] who has a delightfully entertaining way of speaking. But action and laser gunfights come along whenever the script needs. And Felicity Jones carries the lead role pretty well.Steadily, though, as it goes along, this does get pretty good and pretty involving. And it's all worth it for the final quarter. Which has some excellent non stop action. It doesn't pull it's punches. It consistenly grips. There are stunning visuals. And it's very much a war movie that tries to be as realistic in it's depiction of combat as it can.All of which results in a film that ultimately hooks and ends up being excellent entertainment. It also rather smartly tries to fill in a few of the blanks and join up a few dots, as it were. But it never compromises anything from earlier films when doing that. Which is as it should be.Thus fans get their fun and everyone else gets their entertainment.This does get past the problem of one cast member from the original no longer being with us by means of digital trickery. The technology is impressive to say the least, but how you feel about it being used this way is going to be a matter of opinion.There are no extra scenes in the end credits.If all of these stand alone movies are as good as this, then Disney are onto a winner. It's not a cash grab. It's good entertainment. And hopefully more will follow.The disc has the following language and subtitle options:Languages: English. Spanish. English audio described.Subtitles: English, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Portugese, Spanish, Swedish.The dvd goes straight to the main menu when loaded, with no adverts or trailers.It has no extras whatsoever.

I was utterly blown away by this film; I'd mistakenly thought they couldn't do much with the concept in terms of story, and I was SO glad to be wrong. It shows a different, darker side of the Rebellion, making it clear - as the original trilogy did not and really COULD not - that the Rebels sometimes had to compromise their ideals and stoop to the Empire's level if they were to stand any real chance of winning....or, in the face of something like the Death Star, any chance of even surviving. This actually made for a much more mature film which could still appeal to the younger audience without whom the originals would never have been so successful and so popular to this day.The visuals were superb - the ringed planet Lah'mu (not named, for some reason), the final stage of the Death Star's construction, the terribly beautiful sight of the entire plateau of Jedha City erupting in a miles-high plume of destruction, Star Destroyers colliding (I doubt that could ever have been realised with practical modelwork, as much as I love the old-school techniques)...terrific stuff.Saw Gerrera was an absolutely realistic response to a totalitarian regime; in every revolution there are always extremists, but Saw was more honest than most - and still held to "the dream" even as Jedha's landscape exploded around him. Cassian, too: ruthless to a fault, but always with the core of his beliefs staying intact, not apologising to Jyn for his intent to assassinate her father, not excusing his actions either - but realising himself that it was not the way to go. Besides, what would be the point? The Empire had already built the Death Star and therefore no longer needed Galen anyway.As for Jyn - I can't help but see her as a sort of female, angry Han Solo, i.e. having lost faith in pretty much everyone and everything, expecting nothing from anyone...and very surprised to find she's nowhere near as cynical as she thinks. A very powerful character; one can only hope she found peace in the Force.Chirrut Îmwe was an absolutely brilliant creation. He could, if not written or played properly, have been a cliché if not a caricature - the blind pilgrim with mad combat skillz - but I can only wonder how deadly he could've been with a lightsabre and true Jedi training. He was most formidable with just a staff! (It would've been nice if his comment to Jyn, "The strongest stars have hearts of kyber", had been explained - as it was in the novelisation - as something Lyra once told her, i.e. 'how did he know that?!')The only minor point was that the rivalry between Krennic and Tarkin could and perhaps should have been expanded upon; left as it was Krennic seemed almost childish, which isn't really fair - again, the novelisation depicts this in more depth. Oh well.It might have been the greatest retcon in movie history, but at last the Death Star's fatal design flaw makes SENSE. (Again referring to the novelisation, there's a very clever chapter detailing communiqués between Galen and his superiors, which show how he in fact TRICKED them into APPROVING the thermal exhaust port!)Oops, I nearly forgot the brilliant K2-SO, brought to life so superbly by Alan Tudyk, beloved to Firefly fans the world over as Wash. A greater contrast to C-3PO they surely could not have come up with, even given that he was a reprogrammed Imperial droid ("and there's a fresh one if you mouth off again!" - priceless!).I am NOT getting into the whole issue of bringing deceased actors into play via CGI, beyond saying that I actually thought Tarkin was very well-executed indeed; I was taken completely by surprise, knowing as I did that Peter Cushing passed away in 1994. In fact I didn't even KNOW at first they'd used CGI; I assumed at the time they'd created a lifelike prosthesis and/or found a near-identical lookalike. But Peter had such a distinctive look that simply putting a new actor in his place wouldn't really have worked; what they did, DID work.But the final scenes with Darth Vader proving once and for all just how truly badass he was - just ELECTRIC! You can just imagine what those doomed Rebel soldiers thought when they saw his lightsabre ignite: "By the Force, what is THIS?!" followed quickly by "Oh, we are SO dead, we are utter bantha poodoo!"Yet they DID THEIR DUTY. They stood their ground and fought, even though they were so far out of their league it was like setting a kitten against a rabid tiger, and bought the time needed for the Death Star plans to be safely dispatched. Heroes of the Rebellion, every one.All in all, a wonderful film, told differently from the originals yet, in a way, even more effectively.

As this reviews title reads “I Dig This ‘Star Wars Story’ Movie” I just think that it’s crucial to the main movies storyline especially’Episode IV’ anyway to which it is directed linked & spoken of & then that has sequels which run are the continuing story. After seeing it many years ago for the first time I’ve always believed that the ‘Star Wars’ movies should have been 10 movies long with this coming in after ‘Episode III’ making it ‘Episode IV’ leaving A New Hope as ‘Episode V’ & so on & I still do think that this is how it should have happened personally.It’s a great film & I was very pleased to see it come in at number 4 in a recent poll of the worst through to best of the 11 Star Wars movies (this & Solo were included in the poll amongst the trilogy of trilogies) to be beaten by only the three movies from the original trilogy.As for the DVD it was very well priced & it’s must have for the ’Star Wars’ fanatics & it’s just a great watch as a film, very entertaining.