So on my Rogue One rewatch last night, I came around a bit to the Vader scene. Here’s how:

Many people discuss that scene by itself, which is totally fair. For fans of Vader, it’s an amazing scene showing his power and terror the likes of which we haven’t seen up (1/7)

to that point in Dec. 2016. However, what makes it work for me is the context it’s placed around: we saw the entire Rogue One crew perish on Scarif to succeed in their mission of getting the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. Now we see the Imperial effort to prevent (2/7)

those plans from reaching Rebel High command, led by none other than the literal embodiment of death, Darth Vader.

While I’ve ragged on the scene for being fairly inconsequential, on my rewatch, I definitely felt a twinge of terror as he cut the Rebels down and the (3/7)

one Rebel pleaded for the plans to be taken before he, too, got killed by this monstrosity. However, the Vader scene beautifully contrasts with the Leia scene both visually and storywise. A beacon of white light and hope being shown after this black monstrosity of death (4/7)

bathed in red is incredibly effective visual storytelling. But the beauty of it comes around in this exchange:

“What is it they’ve sent us?”

“Hope.”

To hear that gets me emotional. But Vader’s slaughter makes it much more effective because it’s (5/7)

the “darkest before the dawn”. No matter how much the darkness of the Empire will engulf the galaxy and keep their tyrannical ways the status quo, hope will always prevail. The dawn of hope the plans represent given to one of the most resilient and (6/7)

hopeful people in SW. It’s so wonderful.

The ending of Rogue One is incredibly effective storytelling that is so true to Star Wars. (7/7)