A Star Wars Tour: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going ft. Rogue One

In classic fashion, I wanted to have this article written like… several weeks ago for when Andor premiered, and then for reasons good and bad I got delayed and haven’t had time to sit down and write. And now that Andor has, in fact, premiered, my stance on this whole thing has shifted slightly because Andor is deeply good and I think that’s interesting in the light of Rogue One, which is largely, well… frustrating.

The space combat in Rogue One is truly something else. That Gareth Edwards touch is definitely still felt here.

See, I’ve always liked Rogue One. I think it’s fine, it’s fun, and I think it’s frustrating. Because for the most part it’s a pretty well-made flick with some gorgeous direction and some of that stunning Greig Frasier cinematography and creative action and a great score, but it feels like it’s lacking a lot of substance beyond that. And being frustrating might just be the worst thing a movie can be. Like, I’ve seen a fair share of bad movies, but they mostly wash off me and I move on with my life – maybe write one big essay and joke about it a little and then stop really thinking about it. But frustrating movies stick in my mind, sitting in some uncanny valley of quality where I keep trying to figure out why it went wrong. Maybe, if I’m being generous, that’s why people five years later are still gung ho to talk about why they hated The Last Jedi? Maybe they’re just trying to figure out why it didn’t jive with them? I’ve certainly been there a few times – I wrote a lot about The Eternals, trying to make sense of the Chloe Zhao bits that I adored and the corporate MCU stuff that I hated. This is also how I feel about Infinity War – the more people praise it the more frustrated I am with it, because it’s only half a movie! It doesn’t have a protagonist! And I don’t care what the screenwriters said, Thanos is not a protagonist because he has no journey and none of the movie is directed from his perspective and he never goes through any challenges or has to change at all so even on the off chance he was a protagonist he’s a deeply boring one- And this is where frustrating movies get you. Because I liked Infinity War when it came out; it’s fun, it's fine. But it has barely any interesting character work in it and it’s all spectacle and five years out, the spectacle has all passed. But every day, people claim it’s the best thing since sliced bread, and that’s frustrating, too.

Alan Tudyk continuing to corner the "quirky voice-acted companion" market.

Thus, too, my relationship with Rogue One. It’s a fine movie – but it’s far from “the best Star Wars production in the Disney era,” nevermind the best Star Wars movie of all time which some people have claimed. I’m even more baffled by the insistence on comparing it with The Last Jedi, when the two movies couldn’t be any more different; one is a character-driven psychological study, meditating on the direction of everyone in its main cast and how their experiences reflect the world around them, while the other is a set-piece driven action flick, more focused on tying the world together and having a good time. I think Rogue One is a lot of fun, but it never really rises above being fun. In fact, there are a great deal of issues just below the surface that keep it from reaching real greatness. Trying to put it into a conversation it’s wholly unequipped to be in has only done it a disservice in my eyes. It would be like trying to talk about The A-Team in the same conversation as Michael Mann’s Heat; I like The A-Team a lot but they’re simply in different ballparks. Yet, people continue to swear by Rogue One and it has only made me more confused over time. So, in prep for Andor, I rewatched Rogue One hoping to resolve the tension I felt about it.

Love, love, love Mendolsohn in this movie. And I love Andor continuing the trend of the Empire being a bureaucratic nightmare.

So what was Rogue One? Rogue One probably released at the best possible time for a movie like Rogue One to release. The advertising campaign for The Force Awakens had been insane, and it had launched in theatres with massive acclaim. While it was still settling in the public’s general consciousness, people were mostly positive about it. Sure, it retreaded some familiar ground, but it was largely a delightful thrill ride that brought people back into the world of Star Wars and introduced them to a great new cast of characters. There’s very little objectionable to be found in The Force Awakens. Many were excited about the plan at the time for a new Star Wars movie every Christmas. A year later, Rogue One was set to broaden the definition of what the franchise could be. Here was a movie without any Jedi, with no lightsabers in the marketing, with no hero’s journey in sight. Instead, it was being pitched as a gritty war movie, focused on the ground troops we often skim past. It promised a colourful cast of characters, both in metaphor and actuality, promoting the most diverse group of actors seen in a Star Wars movie. Rogue One had to perform well – this was going to be the first test of the “A Star Wars Story” brand, and if it didn’t land, everything after it would fall, too. It seems the people in charge knew that; Rogue One had a wild production, almost as messy as Solo’s or Rise of Skywalker’s.

Presenting: A shot that's not in the final cut of this movie.

Rogue One went through extensive rewrites and reshoots, almost entirely reshaping the direction of the movie. Tony Gilroy (writer of the Bourne trilogy and writer/director of movies such as Michael Clayton and Nightcrawler) was brought on to direct the reshoots, and was so involved that he was given a screenwriting credit. To get a screenwriting credit, you have to have contributed at least 33-50% of the script, meaning that whatever Gilroy did, it was substantial. In interviews he’s described the production as “in a swamp,” and when you watch the initial trailers almost none of the footage has survived to the final cut. It also bears noting that Gilroy is the head creative behind Andor, so clearly he was involved enough to get attached to this character. I mention all this to stress that when I point out the weird holes that are in this movie, it’s not without reason – clearly something was happening to this movie. And I’d also like to stress that I do think Rogue One is good, and that fact alone is a miracle under these conditions. Michael Giacchino was given four weeks to write the score for this film and I love it a lot. By sheer luck, this movie came together into a largely cohesive package, and audiences loved it. But this is far from a perfect product.

Andor also continues the very good trend of Cassian having nice jackets.

For example, our guy, Cassian Andor. When they announced he was getting his own show, I was largely very confused. Because Andor as presented in Rogue One never really felt like he had a lot of interiority to him. He was definitely interesting – his first scene presents him as a surprisingly dark reflection of a Rebellion we’d only seen in squeaky clean light previously. Andor’s mere presence suggests an arc to the Rebellion that had never been considered before, that this organization started as a shady underground movement before slowly growing into the heroic champions of justice we see them as by A New Hope and the full-on fleet in Return of the Jedi. But Andor himself doesn’t really go along with that arc. See, we do start with him as a dark backwater spy and end with him sacrificing himself for a higher cause, but there are no points that transform him along the journey. The idea of Andor’s character is cool, but the execution is lacking. He and Jyn start the movie in conflict, he plans to kill her father and while he doesn’t fill the trigger himself, he is responsible for Galen Erso’s death. But then, two scenes later, he stands up for Jyn for no apparent reason and joins her on the mission to Scarriff. They have one brief argument about it on the ship, but their conflict is never resolved, just forgotten. Jyn herself jumps from an angry, grieving daughter who doesn’t care about the war to a heroic true-blood Rebel giving stirring speeches between scenes. There are vast chunks of this movie that just feel missing, and that reverberates through all of these characters. And yet people still really like Cassian, despite the fact that his development doesn’t quite make sense and there’s little connecting the beginning and end of his arcs. And part of the reason for that is that Diego Luna is very good at this. The show is proof of that. But also, while Rogue One struggles to maintain a sense of interiority, it does a great job at establishing exteriority. I don’t really think Andor as presented in Rogue One is a fully realized character, but the idea of him is very cool and he brings such interesting questions into the world of Star Wars. What was the Rebellion? What did it used to be and how did it become the thing it is now? Evidently, those questions are potent enough to create an entire new show to answer them.

For real, I can't tell you a single thing about Chirrut other than his base concept, and yet I do agree that he's the coolest.

This sense of exteriority is, I think, Rogue One’s secret weapon. This is the edge it has on The Last Jedi, and this is the thing I think people mean when they say it feels the most like Star Wars. Because this franchise has always been about this sense that anything in the story could have its own story. That’s what made the Mos Eisley Cantina so exciting. That’s why the worldbuilding of the Prequels always lands because Naboo and Coruscant etc. all feel like fleshed-out universes. And that’s the thing that, admittedly, The Last Jedi doesn’t have. It’s locked into its characters and the themes it’s exploring, but as a consequence, it’s not actually all that interested in teasing out future worlds. Rogue One, however, is packed full of characters and ideas that don’t fully feel complete in and of themselves but are interesting and exciting to think about. Chirrut Imwe is probably the best character in the movie, and he doesn’t really have an arc or anything, he’s just a non-Jedi Force user, and that’s cool and neat and makes you ask a lot of questions. Krennic and Galen’s relationship is such a delight, partly because Mendolshon and Mikkelson are amazing actors, but also because of that sense that there’s a lot lurking around the corner. Even Jyn, our protagonist, feels lacking – she’s almost entirely passive throughout the movie, and as a result, we never get a clear sense of who she is or what she believes in, other than being a vague centrist troublemaker who wants to fulfill her father’s legacy. She and Saw have an entire contentious relationship that isn’t at all established until the two are in a room together, and then it’s never developed or expanded upon. But while Rogue One is often flawed and feels hollow in its characterization and story beats, it often makes up for it but that core sense of wonder it instills.

I mentioned Edwards above, and his eye for depicting a sense of scale is really off the charts in this movie.

Rogue One’s second skill is in the way it recontextualizes nostalgia rather than just simply repackaging it. To be clear, it sometimes fails – the endless cameos feel grating after a while, especially the ones that don’t aid the plot at all but purely exist for fandom applause. But for the most part, Rogue One has a neat knack for repackaging familiar elements in a fresh new light. It constantly reframes classic imagery with dazzling modern effects, especially in the many cool and unique ways the camera lingers on the Death Star. The story itself is built out of reinterpreting what we thought we knew about the Death Star and the events prior to A New Hope. In a time when people weren’t sure what this new generation of Star Wars would offer, Rogue One promised that the old ways weren’t going away forever. Compare, for instance, Jedha with Jakku. Both are Disney Star Wars desert planets that in some way invoke the imagery of Tatooine. But while Jakku never really escapes that basic inspiration (it’s Tatooine but with more junk, I guess?), Jedha feels like a new, exciting location. Sure, it’s a desert planet, but it’s a desert planet in a completely different way than Tatooine is – this is an occupied world, the location of a former Jedi temple, where guerrilla fights break out in the streets. It’s familiar, but it’s also very new.

Another shot that's not actually in the movie.

Perhaps my favourite instance of this is in Giacchino’s score. As a whole, Giacchino works to bridge together A New Hope’s motifs with the wider, modern scope of Star Wars themes, such as reintegrating the classic Imperial motif into the iconic Imperial March theme Williams introduced in Empire. In particular, Giacchino introduces a “Hope” theme, first heard during the initial title splash, which is clearly modelled after the Main Theme for Star Wars while deviating significantly. On first listen, this has a kind of off-beat feel, especially considering this was the first Star Wars movie without an opening crawl. But on closer inspection, what Giacchino is doing is brilliant. The Main Theme that we all know and love was originally composed as Luke Skywalker’s theme, and it takes that role most prominently in the action cues of A New Hope. In Rogue One, however, Luke isn’t yet in the picture. So rather than keep the triumphant heroism of Luke’s theme, Giacchino’s “Hope” theme is plaintive and reaching, stretching out for something that isn’t yet tangible. This is the entire theme of the movie, fighting for hope even when all hope is lost (It’s interesting to note that in the Expanded Edition of the soundtrack there is an alternative take on “A Long Ride Ahead” wherein Giacchino tries a completely different version of this theme, one that inverts the Main Theme for a far darker and more dramatic effect). At its best Giacchino’s score, like the rest of Rogue One, takes familiar elements and recontextualizes them to tell exciting new stories, reminding us of where we’ve been and ushering us somewhere new.

Truly, what is Forest Whittaker doing in this performance? This is, mind you, another deleted scene, so maybe there was some arc that is entirely missing.

However, at its worst, Rogue One proves itself to be a dark portent for what’s to come from Star Wars. When the nostalgia falls flat, it falls hard. The two cantina residents showing up ion Jedha for literally no reason, the obligatory C-3P0 and R2-D2 cameo, the entire Bor’Gullet sequence which seems to only exist to keep up the tradition of having monsters in Star Wars movies. More than that, Rogue One began the tradition of digitally resurrecting characters and likenesses. Both Tarkin and Leia are reconstructed by replicating or aging down the appearances of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher, and both are… uncanny. The CGI Tarkin especially is distracting every time he’s on screen, drawing attention to how wrong he looks. But rather than learn their lesson, the producers seem bent on repeating their mistakes. The Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett have insisted on puppeting a replica of Mark Hamill instead of simply recasting a younger Luke Skywalker, to the detriment of both shows. More recently, Obi-Wan Kenobi created an AI to reproduce James Earl Jones’ voice for their version of Darth Vader. In all these cases, the digital replications feel hollow. I get no sense of joy watching a fake digital Luke give stilted AI-generated dialogue to a CGI frog. For all the ways it re-introduce Star Wars in a fresh way, in many fashions it convinced either audiences or the producers that the best way to continue Star Wars as a franchise is to set up familiar characters Weekend at Bernie’s-style instead of letting elements of the world age out naturally.

Featuring Sir "why is he appearing in this film."

Perhaps the most contentious bit of nostalgia comes in the final scenes of the movie. After every main character in Rogue One has died, the plans sent up to the fleet in space, and the goals accomplished, in comes Darth Vader. A lot of folks loved this scene, a lot of folks hated it. Mostly I think it’s fun, but I get why people have issues with it. In reality, it contributes nothing to the movie. It’s a weird epilogue to a story that’s already had its emotional climax. Rogue One could survive just fine without Vader at all – none of our main cast meet him, he doesn’t affect the plot in any way. The Vader hallway sequence is pure fanservice. And I’m okay with that, in concentrated bits, but post-Rogue One, “Vader hallways sequences” quickly became a dime a dozen. The Disney+ shows, especially, grew focused on this fashion of glorifying old characters at the expense of the story. Appropriately, this is best exemplified by Luke’s “hallway sequence” at the end of The Mandalorian Season 2. Skywalker shows up and suddenly the entire show is about him, fully upending all the emotional resonance of Mando and Baby Yoda (I refuse to speak his name) separating. Book of Boba Fett, despite itself being centered around a fan-beloved character, can barely keep the camera on Fett before turning away to Luke and that whole deal. It’s just exhausting that the past few years of Star Wars seem so uninterested in telling original stories with original characters. We keep going back to Tatooine, back to Luke, back to these elements that we’d grown beyond. And as much as Rogue One was a step into reinterpreting our past, it also began a cycle of having to fill out every single square corner of the story. It’s telling that people describe Rogue One as fixing a “plot hole” in A New Hope – as if the fun mechanics of an old 70’s movie are problems we need to solve. Obi-Wan Kenobi was bound to this as well, creating a dumb elaborate reason why Obi-Wan refers to Darth Vader as “Darth” in A New Hope, because everything weird moment needs stated lore explaining it, we can’t let it just be a kind of goofy movie that came out in 1977.

I don't think he's in this image, but I wanted to spare a quick thought for Riz Ahmed's Bodhi Rook, who is truly given nothing to do and has his arc dropped halfway through. Give Riz more to do.

And so as much as I like and enjoy Rogue One, it always feels like a fragment of the thing it could have been. I can’t help but see the gaps and the holes in the screenplay, hurriedly filled with cameos and irrelevant fan service. The action is great and the movie does feel like Star Wars in that sense of wonder, and it does a great job teeing up A New Hope and fleshing out the world behind those opening few minutes. But it is a movie deeply flawed, and a dark shadow of what was to come over the next few years. It’s a delightful tour of the past and a scary prediction of the future. For a while, it seemed like we were destined to live in this era of Star Wars forever, a reactionary mess trying to chase its own tail in a madcap scheme to please everyone with diminishing returns. I was pretty prepared to be checked out of live-action Star Wars for a while, thinking that nothing would be able to take the franchise back to the highs of 2017.

But then, Andor happened.

I love the choice to make Andor a total washup. Nobody on Ferrix seems to like him but nobody can quite live without him either.

In a shocking move, the Show About That One Guy Who Died in That One Movie is kind of the best thing to happen to Star Wars in a hot minute. It feels somehow reminiscent of Loki, the least necessary-feeling MCU show, actually being the best of Marvel’s Disney+ stuff. Somehow, Andor bridges the wide gulf that existed between Rogue One and The Last Jedi, between the wonder of Old Star Wars and the innovative joy and potential of New Star Wars. Andor is not just the best live-action Star Wars entry since 2017, it’s one of the best television shows that I’ve seen come out in the past few years (mind that I still need to watch Succession and Better Call Saul). At the very least, it’s easily the best show on Disney+, if for no other reason than it feels like television should. It has weighty episodes that have beginnings, middles, and ends. There are practical sets and characters who have interiority to them, who feel alive. It has themes and arcs and ideas and it’s mature in the best way. Not in the sense that it’s ultra-violent or gory or anything, just that it trusts its audience and treats its world and characters with sincerity. More than anything else, Andor is confident. My biggest issue with the Disney+ platform is that every show has had to rely on cliffhangers and hooks to keep the audience going, teasing out cameos and such in order to maintain interest. But Andor simply believes in its cast – and for good reason! Everyone here is excellent. Diego Luna is proving that Cassian truly is a guy with a lot of depth, with interesting nooks and crannies he explores in every episode. Stellan Skarsgard is absolutely killing it as Luthen, who quickly became my favourite character because every choice he makes is so fascinating. He’s passionate, multi-faceted, yet deeply afraid that at any moment everything he’s worked for will catch up to him. And I like the way he keeps calling the Empire “bastards” in the gravelly way he does, very fun (but truly, the way he says "don't you want to fight these bastards for real?" while Cassian has a gun to his head gives me chills and I have not stopped thinking about it since). Genevieve O'Reilly is back as Mon Mothma and finally has the chance to make her a fully developed character. In just a few scenes, Mon Mothma has gone from a neat Rebel lady with no real life to her, to a fleshed-out human was very real struggles that inform her choices. And every side character rocks. Karn, the all-too-eager company stooge, obviously stands out the most, but Byx, Vel, Brassa, Nemik, all of them read as established people with their own worlds and belief systems and perspectives. I’ve always been a character guy, and this show is really doing it for me. If Rogue One’s success was in creating interesting ideas for characters, Andor takes this and runs with it to make a cast of fleshed-out people who all deserve their chance in the spotlight.

Karn is such a believably punchable character. He's pathetic in the most interesting way and I am excited to see where he goes.

Moreover, Andor is a show that cares about the philosophy behind Star Wars. Lucas’ original trilogy was always about resistance, about standing against tyrannical systems of power, but seemed content to let those ideas rest in largely abstract spaces. But Andor breaks down the motivations behind rebellion. The first three episodes, which premiered together, function as a little mini-story about Ferrix, this planet watched by corporate enforcers, the glorified mall cops of the Empire. They keep an eye on all the worlds the Imperial Security Bureau doesn’t care about, and in these episodes, slowly tighten their grip until the planet snaps. Their interference only makes matters worse – they gun down the man who called them to the planet in the first place and instigate the populace of Ferrix until they begin fighting back. Andor himself is the perfect image of a man brought from melancholic indifference to radicalism. Had Karn not been so vigilant in his pursuit of violent “justice,” Andor would have probably continued to lay low forever. But now he is in this fight and is only going to get deeper into it over the course of the series. While this is a more serious entry than anything else in the franchise, it truly feels like Andor gets with Star Wars has always been about, and I’m excited to see where this goes.

I love Byx a lot and I really hope we haven't seen the end of her story.

In a lot of ways, Andor is what Rogue One could have been, and I wonder if this is the story that Tony Gilroy was trying to tell the whole time. It does everything Rogue One did with re-imagining old visuals so well; in the latest episode is a scene where a TIE Fighter comes screaming across the ground and it is captured with a sense of fear that we never had when TIEs were just fodder to be shot down. We have yet to see a stormtrooper or a Star Destroyer, and I can only imagine what it will be like once the Empire shows up in full. You can feel the cold grip of Imperial rule in every scene, coming down all around our heroes. And everything has a sense of purpose. Sure, Mon Mothma is a known character, but the show is doing things with her, she’s not just a fun cameo. There are fun easter eggs, but Andor resists the sort of fanservice that has dragged down the other shows. The dialogue carries weight and subtlety, where characters’ complex relationships are established just through a few lines. It’s truly fresh, and I hope this marks a new era of what this franchise can be. Sure, we can explore familiar eras – and to be fair, I have always liked the narrative potential of the “height of the Empire” era – but let’s do it with actual writing and depth and directors with a clear visual style and practical sets instead of doing everything digitally. Let’s have full episodes with real arcs, not to mention full seasons instead of these “6-episode events!” It’s so exciting to be on episode five and know that we still have a ways to go in this season. Andor is everything I’ve been wanting for a while. It gives me hope in this franchise again.

Stellen can do no wrong.

Maybe this will be the thing to bring the fanbase together. Maybe this will retroactively make Rogue One better, because we’ll have a better sense of Cassian as a character. Maybe, if nothing else, this will just be a really solid stand-alone show. I think I’m fine with that. I’m just excited. As much as Rogue One was a great preview of our past and a portent of the next few years, I have hope that Andor might be a good step into a better future. And perhaps that’s all that matters, rebellions are built on hope, after all.