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Someone expressed surprise about my Rogue One love. A short thread on why this is an excellent, indeed one of the best, Star Wars movies:
The worldbuilding! You get a strong sense here that the story of the Star Wars universe extends beyond just a handful of Extra Special families with fancy Force powers. There are a lot of basically ordinary people who need to make a decision to fight, or not.
Somewhat similarly, you get a textured, interesting view of the Rebellion. There are competing factions, disagreements about tactics...and also, a sense that running an insurgency is, in fact, a morally complicated business, in which people do some not great things.
And also, relatedly, it's a movie that isn't afraid to let its characters die, isn't embarrassed about the fact that revolution involves sacrifice.
In this sense it reminds me of one of the greatest movies about insurgency ever made, the Battle of Algiers.
In this sense it reminds me of one of the greatest movies about insurgency ever made, the Battle of Algiers.
I'm not saying that Rogue One is on the same level of that masterpiece, of course. But just that you have a formal similarity: the heroes all die, yet they make the revolution's eventual victory possible - even though their own heroism and deaths will be relegated to footnote.
(Also, whether one finds it fully satisfying, it does help explain why the Death Star has an obvious, dumb design flaw!)
Part of this, too, might be that I never found the Jedi lore stuff the most compelling part of the Star Wars story. It was the Rebels vs the Empire that captured my own imagination.
