2 out of 5

Directed by: Gareth Edwards

The worst sin I’d think a popcorn blockbuster can commit would be to be boring.  With all the money that goes into – and the massive amounts of hands dawdling with – these projects, those that emerge with more than a threadbare plot or a cast-for-talent-and-not-branding crew are rare, much less those that succeed in achieving an actual unique identity.  But I don’t think we necessarily expect any of that of our Transformers spectacles; just distract us for a bit while we don 3D glasses, munch on snowcaps, and optionally shut off our brains.  90 – 120 minutes of explosions, one-liners, and good looking people later, we exit the theater (or, uh, kill the Netflix app or whatever) and tweet that so-and-so movie sucked.  But hey! – you were able to watch most of the flick prior to that tweet, so score one for Hollywood.

Sincerely, that’s my base expectation for a big release.  We can criticize the Marvel machine for being formulaic, but they’ve successfully leveraged that formula over a sprawling, consistently entertaining franchise.  How is that other Disney property – Lucas film – doing?  I skipped out on The Force Awakens, but I’ve found J.J. Abrams to be another popcorn-makin’ auteur, and I spent my time as a kid watching and rewatching the original trilogy, so it’s still a film of interest for me.  The quick one-two punch of expanding on this reboot (or whatever you’d call it) with a side story – Rogue One – seemed suspiciously similar to trying to work the Marvel magic (like every other franchise startup at this time…), but since they’re under the same parent company banner and since, of anything, Star Wars likely has the same historical built-in mythology of a comic verse by this point, there’s potential.  I wasn’t impressed by Gareth Edwards debut, and I haven’t seen his Godzilla, but I respect the choice of an ‘artsy’ director.  I still haven’t answered that How Was It question, have I?

It was boring.  In case my intro didn’t make that statement inevitable.

Rogue One should be a standalone, but it suffers from an identity crisis.  Was this based on existing lore?  It sure seems to be, which is fine, except that translates to screen by forgetting to establish any connection for the viewer to the characters, and thus by extension their motivations.  All we’re really left with, then, are some acceptable special effects sequences – which are frankly staged with the same passionless choreography of those oft-denigrated team-produced Marvel sequences a la the opening of The Avengers 2 – and the “cool” factor of the story explaining (and leading into) one of the silly conventions from the original flicks.  But whether this is previously established canon or new retroactive canon, at this point… it just doesn’t feel like it matters.  Not enough to carry the film, anyway.  While the story attempts to weave some stirring concepts about family or loyalty into the mix, via loner Jyn Erso’s (Felicity Jones) long lost pappy or the way she butts heads with rebel fighter Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), it feels incredibly paint-by-numbers – show scene A to establish scene B, insert joke, insert flashy fight, now scene C – and the constant slew of recognizable faces in bit roles for seemingly no real reason was an incredible immersion killer.

Flitting between locations – printing a planet name on the screen without any context – set a tonal precedent early on: that we should just care about this planet or colony because.  Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) is kidnapped by the alliance to work on a secret weapon, which we’re told is the Death Star up front, and his wife is killed because.  His daughter is left behind in hiding, raised (we’re told) by Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who, flash forward years later, is now a serious deal on planet <insert title card>.  When I realized, 60 minutes in, that this was, indeed, all we’re doing with the story – stringing Jyn along toward the “secret” you’ve already demystified, expecting Star Wars music stings and nostalgia winks to keep us enthralled – I admittedly gave up hope that I was watching a good movie.  Scenes thereafter played out exactly as expected.  One Darth Vader scene was cool, though.

The fallacy of this thing is best summarized by the computer-skinned use of deceased actor Peter Cushing.  A classic character, inserted into the film by technology.  Yes, the timeline matches, but I’m sure there were ways around this.  Alas, he needed to appear as such… because.  Do Leia next!

I’m not judging the franchise on this flick, especially because I don’t want to fall out of love with Rian Johnson, who’s helming the next entry.  But Rogue One…?  Maybe these side stories don’t need to be movies, and can take another Marvel cue of retreating to the small screen.