Forced

Starting late as I just got back from an opening-night screening of Rogue One, which is also, apparently, a Star Wars story. Maybe you're thinking: hey, doesn't that not come out until Friday? To which I would answer: technically, yes. But as capitalism is wont to do, it's decided that "days" are a vague and poorly understood concept and an underused exploitable resource, as measurements of time go. So Big Movie figured a few years ago they could pack out three or four screenings on Thursday evenings for the event-type films and still count the proceedings against the "weekend" opening box office. So that, plus inflation, plus adding markups for IMAX and 3D, it's apparently justifiable to charge $18.50 for one adult ticket on a weeknight at a suburban AMC screen warehouse and every weekend's a goddamned record-setter.

So yes, I did just blame capitalism for making me take my kids out on a school night in lieu of homework and an adequate amount of sleep. Hey, they weren't complaining. That's always a sign of good parenting, in my experience.

The movie then... well, it conveys a lot of information and plot-type points, many of which may be contained below. BEWARE SHOULD YOU NOT WISH TO IN ADVANCE LEARN OF THESE THINGS, EITHER DELIBERATELY, EXPLICITLY OR BY INFERENCE. CONSIDER THIS SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO CONTINUE READING.

It's a clumsy and wordy warning, but I don't want there to be any misunderstanding. Hey, if you can think of a faster way to say it, I'm all ears.

The movie is about Star Wars stuff, sure. And that part of it was all pretty close to 100% awesome. There was some decidedly unconventional material in it for a Star Wars movie too, especially the great cast, lovely acting and real, immediate stakes. The last part was the most surprising and the biggest break from the established playbook for making one of these things: in Rogue One, the stormtroopers do not always miss. Even when you'd really prefer that they did.

The film ends literally just before the events of the original 1977 Star Wars begins. In the opening of that movie, the stormtroopers break into the Tantive IV (welcome, nerds!) and pretty much wreck shop. Then they go to Tatooine and fuck up some Jawas and blast Luke Skywalker's old-ass aunt and uncle to charcoal. And then... that's it. From the time Luke makes a wincey face over Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's crispy remnants, something magical happens and all stormtroopers forget how to aim. Maybe it's the force awakening or some shit to protect the protagonists and all the protagonists' sidekicks. Who can say? But in Rogue One, some motherfuckers get capped by the imperial space police.

Felicity Jones and Diego Luna are pretty good as the main leads, although as the main leads they generally have to carry the plot forward, with less time to be quirky and interesting, like Alan Tudyk or Donnie Yen. To be fair, Tudyk cheats by being a CGI motion-captured digital robot puppet. He also cheats by being extra super talented and having played Wash on Firefly. Nobody else had much of a chance to compete with that. And Donnie Yen gets to wreck some fools with a stick. Win.

Darth Vader also shows up AND does more than breathe menacingly at people. But he's not the only nostalgia pill you'll be forced to swallow. There are a couple of embarrassingly shoe-horned in cameos by recognizable figures from other films, a couple of whom are prominently featured and, bizarrely, recreated by a mixture of live-action body work and CGI face-drawing. It's creepy and distracting and HOLY SHIT STOP IT. I get it, Peter Cushing was exceptionally weird looking and hard to recast. But Ewan McGregor don't like nothing like no Alec Guinness and we were all fine with that. And I'd like to note we were fine with JUST THAT about the prequels. Nothing else. I said nothing.

Lots of fighting occurs and days get saved, more or less, just with a lot of death for a Star Wars movie. This one doesn't just dick around with Lucas' weird hand-stump fetish and maim everyone. They get completely dead. Some at the hands of a raging Darth Vader, for the first time ever in the suit getting his full Sith on. That part was pretty great.

If I have to criticize anything about the film, it was that it introduced almost as many plot holes as it attempted to fill. And more damning, we got there plenty early and stood in line for an hour before anyone told us it was the wrong line and our showing had already seated. I mean, AMC had one sign at the head of the line for ALL the showings, including 7:00 and 10:00. We got there at like 5:15 and the line had already transitioned to the 10:00 showing line, but nobody said or made any indication. So we stood outside in a SoCal winter deluge* for like an hour and, once we got inside, the theater was practically full, so the four of us couldn't even all sit together. As a result, I was really mad during all the trailers and decided they were all stupid. Fuck you, Dunkirk. You made me root for the Nazis for two and a half minutes.

SEVEN STARS OUT OF FIVE.

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*I was touched by exactly 11 raindrops. I counted.