THE GIST: The Galactic Empire has started building the Death Star, a super weapon capable of destroying entire worlds. A scientist reluctantly working on the weapon's plans secretly builds a fail-safe that would cause a fatal chain reaction. His daughter, Jyn, is interrogated by the Rebellion about her father's work. She eventually joins their cause and tries to get her father's plans in order to give the Rebellion a leg up.After purchasing Lucasfilm, Disney announced they would produce a trilogy of sequels to the original films as well as standalone episodes that could be origin stories of well-known characters or simply related to the Star Wars universe at large.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the first such standalone film and belongs to the latter category. It is actually a smartly developed and well written backstory that fleshes out one of the most intriguing events of Star Wars lore, the destruction of the Death Star.
Felicity Jones does a very good job playing Jyn, leading a great cast that includes Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, and Jimmy Smits.
THE BOTTOM LINE: A deserving entry in the Star Wars canon that blazes the trail for Disney to branch out and produce more movies that are only tangentially related to the original trilogy (and the prequels). More fun for us!
Grade: 8
No comments:
Post a Comment