Copyright Anne Lancashire 2018, revised copyright 2019
Anne Lancashire
Professor Emerita
University of Toronto
Rogue One, a Star Wars "anthology" or "story" film--i.e., a cinematic offshoot from the main Star Wars Episodes (I through VIII so far), dealing with characters and events in the broader Star Wars universe--was advertised, at its release in 2017, as a "stand-alone" Star Wars movie. Audiences of Rogue One supposedly would not have to rely, to understand the film, on previously-released Star Wars films. This was basically true in terms of Rogue One's plot, which was developed from the opening crawl to Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). The crawl tells us that, in a period of civil war, Rebel spaceships have stolen the secret plans to a major weapon, the Death Star, belonging to the evil Galactic Empire; and A New Hope takes off from that point. Rogue One is entirely about the stealing of these plans and their transmission to the rebels. It ends just where Episode IV--George Lucas's first Star Wars film--begins, with its action completed, even though for the full narrative and emotional impact of its conclusion Rogue One most certainly depends on the audience's familiarity with A New Hope. The film's narrative ending has considerably more impact when the audience knows that the transmitted plans are used by the underdog rebels in A New Hope to destroy the Death Star; and the emotional payoff especially of the final sequences, which lead narratively and visually into the start of A New Hope, for Star Wars fans comes above all from experiencing once again the familiar locales, characters, and actions of the opening sequences of the 1977 film. Also, to add to fan enjoyment, many details throughout Rogue One are based upon visuals and sequences in Lucas's original (1977--83) trilogy (1). Rogue One can indeed, however, narratively stand on its own, without reference to previous Star Wars films, as a spectacular action-oriented film, with enough focus on the characters to make us care about them to at least some extent, with some humor (largely from the droid K-2SO, a replacement for C-3PO in Lucas's Star Wars trilogies), and with considerable narrative tension, achieved largely through cross-cutting. The film is also purposely distanced from the previously-released Episodes through measures such as the absence of an opening narrative crawl and of old-fashioned editing techniques such as wipes; also, unlike Episodes I--VI, it has an ethnically diverse group of main characters against the Empire (2); and, above all, in genre it is, as many reviewers have pointed out, an impossible-mission war film, rather than, like the Episodes, a mythological and metaphoric "quest" film with multiple levels of meaning (3).
Rogue One does, however, like its predecessor Star Wars films, have meaning beyond story, action, humor, and spectacle, and this meaning becomes clear in significant part from its Star Wars context of Lucas's Episodes I--VI. Its writers and director have not tried to work on as many levels as Lucas's two trilogies do; Rogue One is not at all as sophisticated and complex as they are. In picking, however, one major Star Wars issue, war, and in working within the narrative arc of Episodes I--VI and the ethos of the Star Wars universe, its creators have made of Rogue One both a political and a moral bridging segment between Lucas's two completed trilogies and a Star-Wars-compatible indirect commentary on the politics and immorality of war in the real world today. Moreover Rogue One, in its focus from the start on war's politics and immorality, is heir especially to the much-maligned prequels trilogy, Episodes I--III (1999--2005), although its ending and many details throughout refer, as noted above, to sequences and details in Episodes IV--VI (4).
The original Star Wars trilogy focuses on the mythology and metaphor of personal growth: the progress of its protagonist, Luke Skywalker, on a hero's journey/quest from boyhood innocence of the potential evil within himself, to adolescent anguished self-knowledge (Darth Vader as his metaphoric as well as narratively literal father), to mature acceptance and control of his own flawed human, i.e., mixed good and evil, nature. Politics and war serve as background to personal development. Luke and his friends--Han, Leia, and Lando Calrissian--all go through the same journey of self-discovery, to maturity, in the narrative context of helping a small band of rebels to defeat the evil Galactic Empire. Verbal references to the Republic and the Senate, American character types, accents, and genre associations (e.g., with the Western) for Luke and his friends, British accents for major Imperial characters, and Battle-of-Britain visuals for the aerial dogfights in both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, associate (though they do not equate) the rebels and the characters' quests with the historical past of both the 18th-century American rebellion against the British Empire and the 20th-century Allied fight against Naziism; but the historical-political associations remain as background only (5).
In the second-made Star Wars trilogy, however, politics comes into the foreground, sharing the main focus with the major characters. As Anakin Skywalker tries, and fails, to mature as Luke does in Episodes IV--VI, falling from being trained as a Jedi (a self-controlled and compassionate keeper of peace and order in the galaxy) to becoming the apprentice (uncontrolled and self-centered) of a Sith lord (power-hungry and ruling through fear, anger, and hatred: the evil Emperor by the end of Episode III, Revenge of the Sith), so also the Galactic Republic falls from democracy to dictatorship, failing, like Anakin, to recognize its own potential "Dark Side," and slipping through greed and fear into a political hell mirroring Anakin's personal hell seen metaphorically in Episode III on/as the fiery volcanic planet of Mustafar. The actions, dialogue, and visuals of the prequels trilogy constantly focus on political democratic decline: e.g., on the plot-initiating actions of the manipulative Senator Palpatine, who is scheming to turn the Republic into a dictatorship with himself as emperor, on the eagerness of corporate groups (the Banking Clan, the Trade Federation, and the like) to promote war in order to increase their profits, and on the fascist visuals of massed stormtroopers and war machines as an initiative led, in the name of the Republic, by the increasingly powerful Palpatine (6). "So this is how liberty dies--with thunderous applause," says Senator Amidala towards the end of Episode III, as the Republic's Senate, having handed over sweeping emergency powers to Palpatine, hears him declare that the Republic now will be "reorganized into the First Galactic Empire." George Lucas's interests in the prequels trilogy are indeed--to the disappointment of a good number of fans of the original trilogy--at times more with politics than with his human characters, as when Anakin and Amidala, in a romantic alpine meadows sequence, have a serious discussion about democracy versus dictatorship, with an accompanying visual, at the discussion's end, recalling a similar alpine meadows shot in the film version of The Sound of Music, a story about the coming of Naziism to Austria (7).
The whole of the prequels trilogy speaks to the dangers of the democratic Republic--like the ancient Roman Republic, which some of its visuals (such as the Geonosis amphitheater in Episode II) invoke--turning, through greed and fear, into a dictatorship, and associations with America include the nomenclature (as in Episodes IV--VI) of Republic and Senate, iconic American visuals such as those of the diner in Episode II (Attack of the Clones), an emphasis upon profit-focused corporations, and comments by Obi-Wan Kenobi on the untrustworthiness of politicians generally, on the venality of senators (caring to please only those who fund their election campaigns), and on politicians' interest in war heroes (8). A night chase sequence through Coruscant, in Episode II, also invokes associations with Blade Runner's 2019 Los Angeles (9); and Anakin Skywalker declares in Episode III, as he turns from Jedi to Sith, that "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," echoing George W. Bush's 2001 post-9/11 declaration, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" (10). Through the decline of the Galactic Republic into an Empire, Lucas warns of what can happen to a democratic nation such as the United States when uncontrolled greed, fear, and other self-centered motives and emotions--even those which at first appear to be well-intentioned--begin to rule public policy. Palpatine is greedy for power; the Trade Federation and its corporate allies are greedy for profits; the Senate hands over political power to Palpatine through fear; and Yoda's desire to save Anakin Skywalker and his friends from death in Attack of the Clones--his inability to accept their loss--may at first seem emotionally positive but results in Yoda leading stormtroopers into battle and thus in beginning the Clone Wars because of which Palpatine is able to become emperor. Yoda himself mourns the political results of his action: "Victory? . . . not victory. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun the Clone War has" (11). As George Lucas himself has pointed out, in the prequels trilogy the Republic isn't conquered by the Empire, the Republic becomes, through its own moral and political choices, the Empire (12).
Rogue One follows on, in its dark focus on war and politics, from the prequels trilogy; its action, planetary locations, and characters are all defined in relation to war. As previously noted, Rogue One, unlike Star Wars Episodes I--VI, is not mythological; and it is not, also unlike Lucas's trilogies, metaphorically psychological overall. Although occasionally it introduces single psychological metaphors (13), its characters' struggles between contradictory good and evil impulses, e.g., Cassian's as he hesitates about his orders to assassinate Galen Erso, are not expressed through metaphors such as, in Episodes I--VI, giving the protagonists both good and bad father figures, but are on the surface of the narrative plot and characterization (14). Also Rogue One, unlike Episodes I--VI, is not spiritual beyond the basic narrative level; the Force in Rogue One is handled simply as a religious faith, it is not explained, as it is in the Star Wars Episodes, as a morally-neutral energy field--a power--permeating the galaxy, which can be drawn upon by both the Jedi and the Sith to enable them to acquire superhuman abilities. But Rogue One, like Star Wars Episodes I--III, is highly political (15); and in its focus on war, like the prequels it gives us not a war between good and evil, as the original Star Wars trilogy narratively does, but a war in which, at the beginning of the film, as at the end of Episode III, both sides are morally defective. In the original trilogy, the Republic and the Empire are moral as well as political opposites; but in the prequels the Jedi, who are supposed to be "keepers of the peace, not soldiers" (as Jedi council leader Mace Windu says in Episode II, after the assassination attempt on Amidala), gradually become, morally and politically, like their war-loving opponents. With good intentions, they nevertheless begin to use trickery, want Anakin--their apprentice--to spy for them, lead stormtroopers, and aggressively pursue their enemies. Thus they destroy themselves and the Republic they guide. Near the trilogy's end, Mace Windu even rejects legal justice and advocates the immediate killing of Senator Palpatine because he is "too dangerous to be left alive"--the same words used by Sith lord Palpatine, near the start of Episode III, in relation to Count Dooku; and we also see, in a montage, the Jedi's troop leaders across the galaxy being killed by their own troops, i.e., being destroyed by their own aggressiveness. By the end of Revenge of the Sith, the fall of Jedi apprentice Anakin Skywalker into Sith apprentice Darth Vader has occurred in parallel to the fall of the Jedi order itself into Sith-like behavior. The Republic has become the Empire; the Jedi have largely died or--Anakin and, earlier, Dooku--have become the Sith; in tactics, even Yoda has become aggressive, not only having led stormtroopers into battle in Episode II but in Episode III, in his duel with Palpatine, having drawn his light saber first (a sign of Sith-like aggression throughout Star Wars I--VI) and, with Palpatine, having physically wrecked the Senate chamber (i.e., metaphorically, having destroyed the Republic's governing system) (16). The Clone War in Episode III is not simply a war involving cloned stormtroopers, it is a war in which the two sides, because of the Jedi's moral decline, in their behavior and emotions overall have come in significant part to resemble one another (17).
In Rogue One, following Episode I--III's gradual acquisition by the Jedi of Sith characteristics and tactics, and the Republic's movement into becoming the Empire, at the film's beginning there are numerous similarities between the Imperials and the members of the Rebel Alliance: the latter consisting of the remaining active supporters of the old Republic. Both kill when this is expedient for them: the initial sequences on a dark planet show us troopers, led by Death Star managing director Orson Krennic, killing the wife of the scientist, Galen Erso, whom they are co-opting back into Imperial service, and shortly thereafter we see the head of Rebel intelligence, Cassian Andor, without hesitation killing a Rebel Alliance informant. Somewhat later the Rebel Alliance's General Draven secretly orders the assassination of Galen Erso. (In the prequels, assassination is a Sith tool only, until Mace Windu becomes Sith-like in his desire to kill Palpatine.) Both sides use blackmail, force, and torture: Erso, e.g., rejoins the Death Star scientists because he fears for his daughter's life otherwise; Jyn, his daughter, is violently rescued by the Alliance from the Imperial labor-camp vehicle on Wobani solely because it wants to make use of her connection with Rebel extremist Saw Gerrara, in return for which it will free her, or otherwise send her back to the Imperials. ("Congratulations," K-2SO tells Jyn, after he has flattened her to the ground, "you are being rescued. Please do not resist.") Both sides fear treachery and betrayals; and Gerrara tortures defecting Imperial cargo pilot Bodhi in order to find out whether he is telling the truth. The Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma says that Gerrara, as an "extremist" who broke with the rebellion over tactics, has created problems for the rebels with his militancy in their cause, but that they have "no choice" (words which in Star Wars Episodes I--VI usually signal a bad choice) other than "to mend that broken trust" with him now that he is holding a defecting Imperial pilot who has information about a new Imperial super-weapon. The Imperials have destroyed much of Jedha; Gerrara's urban fighters are also destructive of the city and its civilians. Cassian shoots at both sides when he and Jyn become trapped in a Jedha street battle. The first problem-solving impulse on both sides is to attack and destroy: whether it be the Imperial commander Tarkin calling for the destruction of Jedha city in order to kill the defecting pilot Bodhi being held there, or the Rebel Alliance aggressively striking Eadu to kill Galen Erso (not knowing that by now he is on their side). Both sides also have internal conflicts, although among the Imperials the main cause is power-hunger and among the Rebel Alliance members it is mistrust and fear. Most notably, the Empire's Darth Vader and the rebel Saw Gerrara resemble one another in the breathing masks both must use and in their metal replacements of human body parts. Presumably both are now "more machine . . . than man, twisted and evil" (as Obi-Wan Kenobi says of Vader in Episode VI) (18). Saw indirectly refers to how war, in the service of the Rebel Alliance cause, has damaged him. Suspicious and fearful of all, even thinking that Jyn may have been sent to kill him, he notes to Jyn that "there's not much of me left;" the statement is literal, in physical terms, but is also implicitly about morality (19). In one of Rogue One's trailers, Saw has an even darker line, predicting that continuing involvement in war will also damage/dehumanize Jyn. "If you continue to fight, what will you become?" he says to her, although in the finished film he urges her to become involved in the cause and to "save the rebellion, save the dream." (Reshoots for some parts of the film, when it was first finished, are said to have made it less dark than originally planned.) The film's depiction of Saw's headquarters even visually quotes from the throne-room sequence in Return of the Jedi in which Luke Skywalker comes to see Jabba the Hutt, and thus implies Saw's guerilla base to be a kind of hell, since the Episode VI sequence is visually modelled on the traditional Christian depiction of hell: an underworld with devil-monsters, imprisonment, and torture (20).
Likewise all of the protagonists in Rogue One who in the end acquire the Death Star plans for the Rebel Alliance are at first, like their Imperial opponents, morally defective, coming from the world of the end of the prequels, i.e., from the victory of the Dark Side at the end of Episode III. Neither Jedi nor innocents (unlike Obi-Wan and Luke at the start of A New Hope, or Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Anakin at the start of The Phantom Menace), they are all criminals or near-criminals at the film's start: as in 1967's The Dirty Dozen, an impossible-mission World War II film in some ways analogous to Rogue One, in which a small band of convicts undertakes, in return for their freedom if they survive, what is likely a suicide mission into enemy territory, in aid of the Allied cause against the Nazis. Rogue One's heroine, Jyn Erso, has a lengthy criminal record, and agrees at first to help the Rebel Alliance only because she wants her freedom (21); Cassian, when we first meet him, is a cold-blooded killer; the Imperial pilot Bodhi, who joins Jyn's group, has only recently defected from the Empire; Cassian's enforder droid, K-2SO (tall and menacing), is a reprogrammed Imperial droid. Near the film's end, the Rebel Alliance fighters who volunteer to accompany Jyn and her companions on their mission to Scarif to retrieve the Death Star plans are, as Cassian describes them (and himself) to Jyn, spies, saboteurs, and assassins (22). And Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus, who join Jyn's group in Jedha, are temple guardians who seem to have turned into partial con men to survive, for Chirrut on first seeing Jyn demands "pay" from her for what resembles a magic trick, and Cassian describes Chirrut and Baze as causing problems for everyone (although Cassian is not necessarily to be believed in his judgments at this point in the film (23)). Significantly, the Japanese cinematic character of Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman, upon which Chirrut is based, has a criminal past (24).
Rogue One, beginning in the world of the prequels, eventually becomes, however, a bridge between that world and the world of Episodes IV--VI, as Jyn and her companions, all of whom have previously rejected the Empire, finally also "go rogue" from the morally-defective Rebel Alliance. Determined to stop the Death Star at all costs, they escape from the Alliance's base, trick their way into enemy territory at Scarif, and in heroic self-sacrifice acquire the Death Star plans for the Alliance. As in The Dirty Dozen, these characters who begin the film as criminals are in the end morally redeemed (25); and they also redeem the Alliance, which, having previously rejected any attempt to acquire the plans, finally chooses after all to support Jyn's group. Having begun at the low moral point the Republic-turned-Empire has reached by the end of Episode III, Rogue One thus reverses the downward movement of Episodes I--III, and moves upward towards the beginning of Episodes IV--VI. In keeping with the ethos of the first two Star Wars trilogies, successful maturity/victory in individuals is only possible in life when, as with Luke in Return of the Jedi, an individual stops fearing loss, including his or her own death, and acts with self-controlled love and compassionate self-sacrifice for others: and this individual morality then carries over into political movements as well. Once Luke achieves this maturity in Episode VI, refusing to kill his father, the Rebellion is able to destroy the Death Star. (The sequence of events in the Episode VI final battle is metaphorically important (26)). Anakin is unable to achieve this maturity in the prequels trilogy and becomes Darth Vader; he finally achieves it, with Luke, at the end of Return of the Jedi. Chirrut and Baze, Jyn and Cassian, and the rest, achieve this maturity in the near-final sequences of Rogue One, as they die as part of a courageous team, trusting one another and focused on communal self-defence (eventual destruction of the Empire's Death Star). They become, like the rebels in Episodes IV--VI, a kind of family. (Jyn says to Cassian, as the group around them agrees to go rogue, "I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad," and Cassian replies--in an overly-sentimental dialogue line--"Welcome home.") And the Alliance, having originally backed away, through fear of loss (a major impetus towards the Dark Side in Episodes I--III), from pursuing the Death Star plans, finally chooses to help its own members on Scarif, in part through Admiral Raddus sending a squadron of Alliance fighters to support Jyn and her companions, in what turns out to be another suicide mission. The Alliance here goes through the same development as Jyn and her group: moving, because of them, from a morally compromised Resistance to a Resistance of moral courage. Revenge, anger, and hatred (all aspects of the Dark Side, as Episodes I--III explicitly tell us) are dismissed, on both the individual and group levels. "Leave it," Cassian tells Jyn when, at the top of the Scarif tower, she starts towards the wounded Krennic, presumably to finish him off, and she does leave him, just as Obi-Wan Kenobi leaves Anakin still alive after their duel on Mustafar in Episode III; and similarly Alliance members such as General Raddus are shown as acting not in anger or hatred but in support of Jyn and her companions. Individual and group moral choice is as important in Rogue One as in all previous Star Wars films. The Sith tempt with "destiny" (fate, absence of choice, as in Darth Vader's temptation of Luke on Bespin in Episode V, and Palpatine's of Anakin in Episode III); the Jedi believe in choice ("You must do what you think is right," Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke near the start of Episode IV). Indeed the importance of moral choice is made explicit (even overly explicit) in the dialogue of Rogue One as well as in the plot: for example, in the debate between Jyn and Saw, in Saw's Jedha headquarters, about political involvement versus political avoidance; in Jyn's criticism of Cassian, after their escape from Eadu ("You might as well be a stormtrooper"), for thinking to obey morally wrong orders; in Jyn's declaration, "My father made a choice," in the Rebel Alliance council debate on whether to pursue the Death Star plans; in the decision of Jyn and her companions not to accept the fear-induced decision of the Alliance council but instead to go rogue. We also see the characters individually, and the Alliance as a group, struggling over their moral choices--which, as in Star Wars Episodes I--VI, are not always, at the time, clearly right or wrong, but which, if wrong, can be corrected by other choices further down the road. Cassian, for example, at first accepts General Draven's order to assassinate Galen Erso; later, on Eadu, he makes a different choice (27).
More generally, evil as displayed here in war--power-hunger, anger, hatred, aggression, and immoral obedience--is shown in Rogue One, as in both of Lucas's Star Wars trilogies, to be ultimately self-destructive. Tarkin's strike against Jedha city frees Jyn and her companions--who will eventually defeat Tarkin--from imprisonment by Saw, as the blast permits them to open the locks to their cell doors. All the Imperial scientists who worked on the Death Star, other than Galen Erso, are shot by their own side (the Empire); and Erso is killed by the assassination-prone Rebel Alliance he is trying to help, as the Alliance agressively attacks Eadu in order to kill him. (The Alliance thereby also almost destroys all of its own members and allies with knowledge of the Death Star plans.) The Imperial shield on Scarif is pierced, allowing Jyn to transmit the Death Star plans to the Alliance, when one Star Destroyer is rammed by an Alliance ship into another Star Destroyer, causing both Star Destroyers to become a weapon against their own side, plunging down through, and thus breaking, the shield gate. Krennic in the end is killed by Tarkin directing Krennic's own creation, the Death Star, against the Empire's own base, Scarif.
Rogue One, although nominally a stand-alone film, is thus very much a part of Lucas's Star Wars moral universe, and a moral and political bridge from Episode III, in the world of which it begins, to Episode IV. And, moreover, like especially the prequels trilogy, Rogue One also implicitly comments on politics and war in the world today: through its use of visual allusions to war movies from the 1940s to the present and to general types of scenes in contemporary war documentaries and television news broadcasts. Unlike The Force Awakens (Episode VII, 2015) and The Last Jedi (Episode VIII, 2017), which are extraordinarily insular movies, in their cinematic and other allusions almost entirely confining themselves to previous Star Wars films, Rogue One models itself on both of its predecessor Star Wars trilogies in using visual allusions to move beyond the fictional Star Wars universe, opening itself up to historical and contemporary real-world meanings (28). In its opening sequence, indeed, with Krennic and his troopers, Rogue One immediately signals its intentions in this respect, in echoing the opening of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds: a film dealing with the World War II occupation of France by the Nazis (29).
Most notably, as many reviewers of the film have commented, the visuals of Jedha in Rogue One invoke today’s warring conflicts in the Middle East, with street scenes familiar, from those conflicts, both to television news watchers today and to movie audiences of films such as The Hurt Locker and Eye in the Sky (30). Jedha is “a war zone,” Jyn says as she and Cassian are leaving for it; and an Imperial Star Destroyer hangs, like an armed attack drone, above the “holy” walled city, which, surrounded by rocks and desert, and perched upon a summit, is visually Middle Eastern and is under Imperial occupation (31). Streets are bustling with vendors and with women in headscarfs and long gowns; buildings are low and alleys are canopied, as in a bazaar. A guarded Imperial cargo vehicle, tank-like, moves down a street; it is ambushed by Saw’s urban guerillas, IEDS are thrown, and snipers are positioned on rooftops; civilians are caught in the cross-fire. A medium-size drone has been brought down and lies crashed in a street; troopers from the occupying force (the Empire) surround it; the visuals here are specifically reminiscent of those depicting the downed American helicopter in Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down (2001), and thus also invoke the 1990s conflict in Somalia (32). Both sides are associated with terrorism. In the film’s opening sequences, when Krennic refers to the Death Star as an important part of the Empire’s bringing of peace and security to the galaxy, Galen Erso responds, “You’re confusing peace with terror;” and Saw Gerrara’s men use hoods (terrorism-associated visuals) for the suspects they pick up and take to their headquarters for questioning and, in the case of the defecting Bodhi, torture. The tactics and weaponry of the Empire are similar to those of the US in the Middle East and Africa today, taken to an extreme in the total obliteration of Jedha city; the tactics and weaponry of the extremist rebels are similar to those of Middle Eastern and African guerilla forces. Both sides are culpable, although the film directs our sympathies more towards the underdog rebel extremists, who are resisting occupation; and although the mainstream Rebel Alliance has previously disowned the extreme methods of Saw and his men, Cassian’s killing of an Alliance informer, General Draven’s orders that Galen Erso be assassinated, and Mon Mothma’s new acceptance of Saw’s group link the Alliance morally with the guerillas. The indirect commentary on the behaviour of both sides--though especially of the occupiers--in current conflicts in the Middle East and Africa is clear (33).
In the final sequences of the film, as Rebel and Imperial forces battle one another on Scarif, reviewers have seen visual allusions to tropical beach landings by positively-portrayed American forces in movies involving the Pacific theater of World War II and also to Vietnamese beaches under attack by negatively-portrayed American forces in films such as Apocalypse Now; and a list of specific cinematic influences on Rogue One, confirmed by Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, includes both The Thin Red Line and Apocalypse Now (34). The moral allusions are thus mixed at first, the film's depiction of war becoming more morally ambiguous than previously; then the visuals of aerial dogfights and of Imperial Walkers help to move the audience towards the world of the first-made trilogy, as the underdog Rebel Alliance, now at last supporting Jyn’s group, begins its moral ascent into becoming the US-associated liberator alliance of Episodes IV–VI. More importantly, however, the Pacific-like war setting of Rogue One is part of the film's final indirect commentary on the most threatening aspect of real-world warfare today: the possibility of nuclear annihilation. The Death Star in Rogue One--as not in Episodes IV–VI--is an extreme version of the atomic bombs dropped by the US in World War II’s Pacific theater in 1945 (35). Although a fictional, far more destructive weapon than the atomic bomb, the Death Star is shown as having been built, like that bomb, by a group–which we see in mid-film–of white male scientists, at least one of whom, Galen Erso, has regetted his initial involvement in the project. As the key scientist in the project originally, with regrets about it later, Erso is clearly based on J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of World War II’s Manhattan Project (which developed the atomic bomb) and later an opponent of the development of the hydrogen bomb, who also famously later said of himself (translating a line from the Bhagavad Gita), “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” (36). Also, although the Death Star can destroy whole planets/worlds (as it does in A New Hope and threatens to do in Return of the Jedi), in Rogue One it is specifically limited by Tarkin in the film’s Jedha sequences, when Krennic suggests blowing up the whole of the moon of Jedha, to destroying the city only, and in the final battle sequences is aimed solely at obliterating the Imperial base at Scarif. That is, like the 1945 US bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it destroys two specific sites; we are given visuals, both times, of the blast wave; and the second time, we see Jyn and Cassian holding one another, on a beach, as the blast wave approaches and dissolves them: an image familiar to audiences from both documentaries and other films dealing with nuclear warfare. As Rogue One’s Jedha sequences allusively criticize today’s wars in the Middle East and parts of Africa, its Scarif sequences allusively point to the threatening potential of nuclear super-weaponry (37).
To summarize: the Republic at the start of the prequels is allusively likened to the democratic United States on the edge of a possible decline into a fascist dictatorship, a decline–brought about by greed, anger, and fear--which is then shown in Episodes I–III, as war is initiated and politically the Republic becomes the Empire, with the opposition to the Empire, the Jedi, becoming infected by what they are fighting against. Only a few individuals, such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, remain largely untarnished. In Episodes IV–VI, however, a moral Rebel Alliance, in defensive battle against the Empire, is allusively associated with the victorious United States in its struggle for political freedom first against the eighteenth-century British Empire and then against twentieth-century Naziism in World War II. Rogue One manages the moral pivot from Episode III to Episode IV by showing a small group of morally-defective but family-oriented individuals rehabilitating both themselves and the morally-defective political rebellion against the Empire, while also commenting--like Lucas’s trilogies--on the politics of war in the real world today and on the Dark Side potential of aggressive militarism (38). Rogue One‘s political allusiveness, its warning against militarism based on greed, anger, and fear, and its emphasis on family as the key to the morality both of the human individual and of the state are central to the significance of Lucas’s Star Wars films as a whole.
But there is also an important departure, in Rogue One, from Lucas’s Star Wars episodes, and especially from I–III. Significantly for both the moral and the political points being made, the key individuals we see in action in Rogue One (as some reviewers have pointed out, and with the exception of Darth Vader, largely at the very end as the film segues into Episode IV) are ordinary human beings–not biologically superior Jedi or Sith drawing on powers not available to humanity at large. In Episodes IV–VI, Jedi and Sith are extreme examples of good and evil, both on the metaphoric level (as aspects of human nature) and on the mythological and narrative levels; but in Episodes I–III they are also associated, through Lucas’s unfortunate introduction (in Episode I) of the midichlorians, with biological determinism. Midichlorians are microscopic life forms living within an individual’s cells; and only Jedi and Sith, through having (from birth) significantly higher midichlorian counts than most individuals do, can strongly access the Force (39). Rogue One, eschewing (as previously noted) mythology and metaphor, also avoids midichlorians; it depicts ordinary individuals rejecting greed, anger, and fear (the basic Dark Side emotions), and working successfully together, without any special biological make-up, to empower a whole movement against fascist aggression. The Force is portrayed as a strength available to, and giving support to, all who believe in it. Ordinary people, not Jedi and Sith, make the important choices and lead the action.
Rogue One certainly has flaws: such as the over-sentimentalizing of Jyn’s group from mid-film on, the abrupt extreme change in Jyn’s character from hardened criminality to a dependence on love, hope, and trust, and an overabundance of allusions to Episodes IV–VI. Nevertheless, on the narrative level alone it has well-done spectacle, action, humor, and suspense; and beyond that level, it fits morally and politically into the Star Wars universe of Episodes I--VI, avoiding the great flaw of both Episode VII and Episode VIII: insularity. Politically and morally beginning where Episode III ends, and moving in both ways upward, providing a bridge to the start of Episode IV, it gives us credible human actions and faith, displayed in science-fiction/fantasy locations reflecting those of our own planet (40), while it opens outward, through its plot and visual allusions, to comment , in connection with war and its weaponry, on individual and group moral choice in our real, non-fantasy world: past, present, and potentially future. In its allusive political commentary, it follows the lead of the prequels more than that of the original trilogy, far surpassing the insular Episodes VII and VIII; and in its focus on ordinary individuals it moves from the epic level of Jedi and Sith to the realistic level of the world of its audiences.
Notes
(More of the web sources cited here than those so noted may have become archived since they were originally accessed.)
1. Fans will recognize many plot details and shots similar to those in Episodes IV and VI especially: e.g., the opening starscape and camera pan (also in other Episodes); the accessing of Scarif, and of its archives tower, compared to the accessing of Endor in Episode VI and of the Death Star in Episode IV; the many aerial battle shots similar to ones in both IV and VI; the leap by the two main protagonists across a manmade shaft (as in the Death Star in IV); stormtroopers searching city streets in Jedha (as in Mos Eisley in IV). Yavin 4 also reappears, as a location, from IV; and see also below on Saw’s Jedha headquarters as echoing Jabba’s palace in Episode VI. There is also one hugely imaginative visual allusion to the two-setting-suns shot near the beginning of Episode IV: a short sequence in which the Death Star, as a second sun, momentarily eclipses the actual sun, as it positions itself to destroy Jedha city. For a fairly lengthy list of Star Wars “Easter eggs” in Rogue One, see Andrew Liptak in www.theverge/2016/12/16/13981128/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story
2. The diversity of the main members of the cast of Rogue One is a notable departure from the norms of Episodes I–VI, and has been much commented on by reviewers, who point out, e.g., that the actors of Jyn, Cassian, Chirrut, Baze, and Bodhi are, respectively, British, Mexican, Chinese, Chinese, and of Pakistani heritage.
3. The mythological level of the Star Wars Episodes has been recognized from the start; see, e.g., the seminal article by Andrew Gordon, “Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time,” Literature/Film Quarterly 6 (1978), 314–326, and, for an excellent short summary in relation to Episodes IV–V, Gerald Clarke, “In the Footsteps of Ulysses,” Time, 19 May 1980: 52. For metaphor and multiple levels in Episodes I–VI, see, e.g., Anne Lancashire, “The Phantom Menace: Repetition, Variation, Integration,” Film Criticism 24.3 (Spring 2000), 23-44, also at anne.artsci.utoronto.ca ; and George Lucas has occasionally referred to the films’ metaphors: e.g., to Episode I’s Darth Maul as metaphorically “the evil within us” (i.e., within humankind)--see Bill Moyers’ “Of Myth and Men,” interview with George Lucas, Time, 26 April 1999: 48.
4. The prequels have been briefly referenced, in relation to Rogue One, by Darren Franich, www.ew.com/article/2016/12/12/star-wars-rogue-one-prequels , who correctly points out that Rogue One is narratively a sequel to Episode III and “honors the spirit of the prequels.”
5. See Anne Lancashire, "Complex Design in The Empire Strikes Back," Film Criticism 5.3 (1981): 38-51, and "Return of the Jedi: Once More With Feeling," Film Criticism 8.2 (1984): 55-66, both also at anne.artsci.utoronto.ca ; also Andrew Gordon, "The Empire Strikes Back: Monsters from the Id," Science Fiction Studies 7.3 (1980): 313-18.
6. The profit motivation of the Trade Federation and other such corporate groups is explicitly discussed–and overheard by Obi-Wan--on Geonosis (Episode II). The chilling sequence of the massing of troops and war machines before Palpatine and other leaders of the Republic comes at the end of Episode II.
7. For the political focus of the prequels, see Anne Lancashire, “Attack of the Clones and the Politics of Star Wars,” Dalhousie Review 82.2 (Summer 2002), 235–253), also at www.chass.utoronto.ca~anne , and Dan Froomkin, “The Empire Strikes Bush,” www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/05/16/BL2005051600615.html [archives].
8. For Obi-Wan’s comments, see the Episode II sequence on Coruscant in which he and Anakin are guarding Amidala’s bedroom, and the Episode III sequence where he and Anakin land back in Coruscant at the end of the initial battle.
9. A list of some films confirmed by director Gareth Edwards as having influenced Rogue One includes Blade Runner, although Edwards notes only its influence on interior rooms and ships; see http://theplaylist.net/10-films-that-influenced-rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-20161206/ [archives]. Coruscant by night is also a type of Gotham City.
10. Anakin’s “If you’re not with me” line is from the Episode III sequence in which Amidala and Obi-Wan arrive to meet Anakin on Mustafar, A statement similar to Anakin’s occurs, however, near the beginning of the film Ben-Hur, a source both for Episode I’s pod race specifically and for the whole of the prequels trilogy, so the parallel between Anakin’s line and Bush’s may have been fortuitous, at least as first written. (For Ben-Hur as a source, see Lancashire, “Phantom Menace,” pp. 31–2.http://anne.artsci.utoronto.ca )
11. Coruscant, sunset, near the film’s end, following the battle on Geonosis and just preceding the massing of troops and war machines before Palpatine and others. The dialogue of Episode II is explicit about the need to accept death as “a natural part of life,” and its non-acceptance as due to greed; see Yoda’s talk with Anakin after the latter’s nightmare of Amidala dying in childbirth (“Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is”). Yoda, not heeding his own precepts, is very much fallible in the prequels.
12. "It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic" (italics mine). See Richard Corliss and Jess Cagie, "Dark Victory," Time, www.time.com.time/covers/1101020429/story.html [archives].
13. In Rogue One, an explicit individual metaphor is introduced, e.g., when Chirrut Imwe tells Cassian, in Saw’s prison on Jedha, that Cassian seems to be a man who carries his prison around with him. The metaphor may then also implicitly refer, in retrospect, to Jyn, who earlier in the film is seen imprisoned in an Imperial labour camp.
14. In Rogue One, e.g., as with Luke Skywalker in Episodes IV–VI and Anakin Skywalker in I–III, Jyn has two father figures; but whereas Luke’s (Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader) and Anakin’s (Obi-Wan and Palpatine) are largely good versus evil, representing the two sides of the protagonists themselves, Jyn’s–her biological father, Galen Erso, and the man who brought her up, Saw Gerrara--are narratively as morally mixed as is Jyn herself. Galen has helped to build the Death Star, both before and after becoming appalled by his own creation, and becomes simultaneously an Imperial scientist and an informant to the Rebel Alliance; Saw uses guerilla warfare and torture in a “good” cause, and also both saves and abandons Jyn. As Jyn is told on the approach to Jedha (although in the film’s plot the statement is literal), “Find Saw, find your father.”
15. Although Disney CEO Robert Iger declared, when Rogue One upon its release was threatened with a boycott by Donald Trump supporters who believed that parts of the film had been reshot so as to imply criticism of Trump, that “it is not a film that is, in any way, a political film,” Iger was apparently insufficiently familiar with the film or was being disingenuous. (For Iger’s statement, see, e.g., Adi Robertson, www.theverge.com/2016/12/12/13924114/disney-ceo-bob-iger-star-wars-rogue-one-politics-boycott [hand-entry or archives].) On even the casting level, Rogue One is implicitly political, in its deliberate presentation of an ethnically diverse cast of positive main characters, the ones who “go rogue” from both sides in the conflict (see, e.g., MaryAnn Johanson, www.flickfilosopher.com/2016/12/rogue-one-star-wars-story-movie-review-high-price-hope.html ); and one of its screenplay writers, Chris Weitz, stirred up political controversy even before the film’s initial release, tweeting that it should be noted that the Empire is “a white supremacist (human) organization” (see Graeme McMillan, “Rogue One Writers . . . ,” www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/rogue-one-is-a-political-allegory-tease-writers-946638 [hand-entry or archives]).
16. At the end of III Yoda, recognizing his own culpability in the bringing about of war, declares, “Failed I have.” Anakin meanwhile has “become the very thing you swore to destroy” (Episode III: Obi-Wan to Anakin on Mustafar). Obi-Wan Kenobi comes best out of the debacle in Episode III; even on Utapau, to which he brings war on the orders of the Jedi Council, he maintains self-control (riding, i.e. using but controlling, a green beast representative of the passions; letting General Grievous attack first) and does not go beyond the mission he has been assigned; and when on Mustafar at the end of Episode III he defeats Anakin (who has attacked him; Obi-Wan has “the high ground”, as he himself tells Anakin), he believes that “I have failed you, Anakin” (because he was Anakin’s Jedi master), and does not kill him but walks away. By Episode IV he has become a complete Jedi, victorious against Anakin/Darth Vader through compassionate self-sacrifice.
17. The dialogue in Episode III is at times metaphoric about the moving of the Jedi (light) towards the characteristics of the Sith (dark). For example, “To a dark place this line of thought will carry us,” Yoda says to Mace Windu’s proposal, when news comes of Obi-Wan’s attack on General Grievous, that the Jedi take control of the Senate.
18. Episode VI (Return of the Jedi), final Dagobah sequence. In Episode V Luke himself acquires a mechanical hand–a sign of his own dark side–through his attack on Darth Vader on Bespin and his discovery of his relationship to Vader.
19. Saw’s paranoia echoes Anakin’s in Episode III after Anakin becomes Palpatine’s apprentice; there, near the end of the film, Anakin accuses Amidala of bringing Obi-Wan to Mustafar to kill him.
20. For Jabba’s palace as a type of hell, with visual allusions to the Christian story of the harrowing of hell, see Lancashire, “Return of the Jedi, p. 58. Jabba’s throne room in Episode VI also deliberately recalls the Mos Eisley cantina sequence in Episode IV, making of it as well, in retrospect, a type of hell; and two figures from Episode IV’s cantina are seen in Rogue One in the streets of Jedha city, thus here extending the idea of hell into the situation of the city as a whole. (Saw’s headquarters also includes a version of the holograph chess game–in which might (though comically) makes right–played by Chewbacca and R2-D2 on the Millenium Falcon in Episode IV.)
21. See the Yavin 4 sequence in which Jyn is interrogated.
22. For Cassian’s description, see the Yavin 4 sequence immediately after the Rebel Alliance council decides not to attack Scarif for the Death Star plans.
23. Cassian is here still an assassin, and also indiscriminately kills both Rebel extremist fighters and Imperial stormtroopers in the street battle in Jedha.
24. For Zatoichi, see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Franchise/Zatoichi?from=Main.Zatoichi .
25. Rogue One is darker than The Dirty Dozen, however, as all of its “criminals” die whereas in The Dirty Dozen three survive. Reviewers have also referenced other impossible-mission war films in which most or all of those on the mission die: e.g., The Guns of Navarone, The Dam Busters.
26. See Lancashire, “Return of the Jedi,” pp. 61–2, and “Phantom Menace,” p. 30.
27. The moral ambiguities in Episodes IV--VI, especially, are not always recognized, because all is well by the end of Episode VI. But, e.g., is Luke in Episode V, fearing for the lives of his friends Han and Leia, right to go to Bespin, against Yoda’s and Ben Kenobi’s advice, or does he make things initially worse? Similarly, in Rogue One, is Galen right to return to Death Star development because of his fears for his daughter? This work, Saw tells Jyn many years later, eventually put her into danger. In both cases, subsequent decisions alter events. In Episodes I–VI, only the Sith proclaim that destiny rules; the Jedi emphasize ever-changing opportunities for moral choice. “Always in motion is the future,” Yoda tells Luke in Episode V (Dagobah sequence in which Luke has a vision of Han and Leia in danger on Bespin). Obi-Wan Kenobi also tells Anakin on Mustafar, in Episode III, that "only a Sith deals in absolutes."
28. Cinematic allusions in the original trilogy which lead to real-world historical/political associations include, e.g., “Battle of Britain” aerial dogfight shots, in IV and VI (as previously noted), and, in the prequels, Roman Empire allusions in sequences such as the Ben-Hur-like podrace in Episode I and the Geonosis amphitheater sequence in Episode II. For Ben-Hur as a significant prequels source, see above, n. 10. Episodes VII and VIII, although, through visuals, overtly equating the Empire with Naziism (as Lucas’s episodes allusively do), largely allude only to earlier Star Wars films, Episode VIII being only slightly less insular than Episode VII in that it includes the issue of animal rights and also some dialogue comments on arms-dealing.
29. See, e.g., Travis Johnson, www.filmink.com.au/reviews/review-rogue-one-a-star-wars-story/ .
30. The list of films influencing Rogue One, as confirmed by Gareth Edwards (see above, n. 9), includes Zero Dark Thirty; and Rogue One cinematographer Greig Fraser was also the cinematographer for Zero Dark Thirty – although visuals especially of the Middle East and of the conflicts there are everywhere today in movies (both fictional and documentary) and on television. Resistance films on Edwards’ list of cinematic influences include The Battle of Algiers, which deals with urban guerilla warfare against France as a colonial power.
31. Neil Pond has pointed out the visual likeness of Jedha city to Masada and to ancient Jerusalem, both of which were attacked and destroyed by the Roman Empire in the first century CE: see http://parade.com/531747/movie-review-rogue-one-is-rollicking-prequel-to-original-star-wars-saga/ . The name Jedha is also, of course, in itself Middle Eastern; Jeddah is an actual city in Saudi Arabia. At the time of Rogue One's release in December 2016, audience members seeing the walled Jedha city might have thought specifically of Aleppo, with its citadel, which was then especially in Syrian war news, although in Rogue One the whole city, not just its citadel, is built on a rock plateau.
32. Black Hawk Down is also on the list of films (see above, n. 9) confirmed by director Edwards as having influenced Rogue One.
33. One of the many reviewers recognizing, in the Jedha sequences, visuals of today’s Middle East conflicts, has been David Edelstein, who also has pointed out that today in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq the US is the Empire. See www.vulture.com/2016/12/movie-review-rogue-one.html . In early April 2017 life astonishingly imitated art when TV commentator Brian Williams described (three times) the Pentagon’s images of US missiles launched and heading for Syria as “beautiful;” in Rogue One, Death Star director Krennic says “beautiful” as he watches the visual spectacle of the Death Star’s destruction of Jedha city. For Williams, see Margaret Sullivan, “The media loved Trump’s show of military might,” Washington Post, 8 April 2017 (online at www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-media-loved-trumps-show-of-military-might-are-we-really-doing-this-again/2017/04/07/01348256-1ba2-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html [archives]), and Derek Hawkins, “Brian Williams is ‘guided by the beauty of our weapons’ in Syria strikes,”Washington Post, 7 April 2017 (online at www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/07/beau ).
34. For the list, see n. 9, above. The list also includes Saving Private Ryan (with its noted Omaha Beach opening), although Ryan is not of course a Pacific theater war film and the list is not specific about its influence on Rogue One.
35. For two other critics’ observations of visual allusions to the atomic bomb, see Michael Sragow, www.filmcomment.com/blog/review-rogue-one-a-star-wars-story/ and Peter Canavese, http.grouchoreviews.com/reviews/5009 .
36. For Oppenheimer, see https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-Robert-Oppenheimer , www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Oppenheimer.shtml http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Oppenheimer,shtml, and James A. Hijiya, “The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144.2 (June 2000), 123–167, also at https://amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/Hijiya.pdf . See pp. 123 and nn. 2 and 3. In 1953 Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies (i.e., of going over to the enemy, as Erso does in Rogue One), and lost his US security clearance.
37. Significantly the war-movie allusions of Episodes IV–VI all involve the European theater of World War II (where the atomic bomb was not used), and there are no specific allusions in IV–VI, in which the Death Star can explode whole planets, associating the Death Star with the atomic bomb.
38. The rehabilitation of the Rebel Alliance by Jyn’s group is also noted by Paul Verhoeven, http://junkee.com/review-rogue-one-might-feel-like-slap-face-sure-entertaining/92230 . The cinematography of the Scarif sequences also moves from the earlier Rogue One norm towards that of Episode IV. For the dark side of militarism even in Episode IV, the first-made Star Wars film, see its concluding medal-presentation ceremony partially alluding, in its visuals, to fascist celebration. (For the visual allusion to Leni Reifenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film, The Triumph of the Will, see Lancashire, “Return of the Jedi,” p. 56 and n. 5.) The potential dark side of militarism is emphasized in Episodes V–VI; see, e.g., “Return of the Jedi,” p. 63.
39. In a 25 December 2015 interview with Charlie Rose, George Lucas called the Force a metaphor–as indeed it can be in the original trilogy--for what religion is; and in Episodes IV–VI the Force can indeed be understood in that way. The introduction in Episode I of the midichlorians was unfortunate, indicating that an individual's biological make-up, at birth, determines the strength of his/her potential future access to the Force. For the Charlie Rose interview, see https://charlierose.com/videos/23471.
40. In its visual locations, Rogue One is far closer to the films of the original trilogy than to the prequels, in that, as with Episodes IV–VI, its landscapes seem real because they are indeed, in significant part, real, shot as far as possible in real-world geographical locations. The Jedha exteriors were shot in part in Jordan, and the Scarif exteriors, in part in the Maldives. The landscapes of the prequels are largely CGI-created.