His daugher, Jyn escapes to a pre-prepared panic room bunker and is later retrieved by Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) who then takes the role of foster father. Don’t worry though, there’s no orphaned child growing up being emo montage (they already did that and called the parts Phantom Menace, Something I’ve forgotten because it was so bad and Revenge of the Sith).

Later we pick up with Cassian Andor, a rebel intelligence officer who receives some information that the Empire might have a super weapon and that Saw Gerrera has captured an Imperial pilot who is trying to defect to the rebels. They bring Jyn in so that she can provide an introduction to Gerrera who has splintered off from the rebels because he’s too extreme (also paranoid).

From that point, the plot rolls on at a great pace as they find out more about the weapon and the Rebel Alliance Council decide they can’t face off against it. So if they’re not going to do anything, what about a bunch of rebel soldiers, an intelligence officer, Jyn Erso, some kind of Force Monk (Chirrut Îmwe – Donnie Yen being far cooler than any Jedi is) and his sidekick. They also bring along the absolute best character in the film, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) a re-programmed Imperial combat droid.

Well, they’re not supposed to but you probably won’t be surprised to find that they decide to go and try and stop the end of any chance the rebellion might have and get the plans for the Death Star. There’s even a reason their call sign is Rogue One.

Cast, Comedy and Action

Most if not all, of the best lines in the film, go to Alan Tudyk, as K-2SO an Imperial battle droid whose been wiped and reprogrammed to join the rebels. During that process, he lost any filter between his thoughts and speech so they use that throughout the film to deliver great one-liners, including references to earlier films. He’s also treated like an intelligent being by more than one character and they show human emotions towards him.

That’s important because very often the Star Wars Saga films treat droids and other non-human beings brutally and I don’t just mean the Empire. They’re supposed to be evil but Obi-Wan, in particular, behaves in a completely sociopathic manner toward droids. Even Gail Organa casually orders someone to wipe R2D2 and C3-PO’s minds, the monster.

Diego Luna and Felicity Jones squeeze every ounce of human emotion you could realistically imagine out of their short character arcs. Donnie Yen and his sidekick Jiang Wen provide comedy and tragedy alike, and the monk is the only force user the rebels have. According to the official Star Wars wiki, he just believes in the force and is not a user which is nonsense because otherwise, he couldn’t do the things he does in the film (despite what Zatoichi may have lead you to believe).

The villains are great too, particularly Ben Mendelsohn as Orson Krennic the Project Manager for the Death Star (who so badly wants to blow up a planet it even creeps out two of his superiors, both of whom are pretty bad guys the audience will be familiar with).

There are quite a few references back to the original films as you’d expect, bearing in mind it leads to the events immediately after the opening crawl and I suspect there’s a lot more than most of us will spot on first viewing.

War, what is it Good For?

Absolutely nothing, apart from deposing dictatorships like the Empire. War is awesome in Star Wars, large parts of this film harken back to the battle on Hoth only without some flashy Jedi git trying to steal the show. There’s lots more going on this film and after the first time watching it I think it’s got a better and more interesting take on war in the Star Wars universe and it definitely opens your eyes about the rebel alliance.

During the prequel trilogy it seemed like rebelling against the Republic wasn’t at all worrying (because weirdly they don’t have a real army, yeah, right). But rebelling against the Empire that can build not one, but two Death Stars at the same time is terrifying. You get to see just how the rebels would have to fight their war against insane odds (not cleverly but maybe there’s a reason they don’t just assassinate the Emperor).

4DX 

Yeah, it’s awesome watching a Star Wars WAR story in 4DX. This sort of film is made for it, you’ve got ships moving in space, people splashing through water, rain and wind. Umm, also wind in space early on at which point I had to try hard not to laugh really loud lest I be lynched by angry Star Wars fan. But hey, in Star Wars there’s sound in space, which implies it’s not a vacuum so space wind is ok, right?

3D

The 3D was pretty good though it’s hard to concentrate on working out how that’s going watching such a good film. I’d like to watch it again to see how much of an impact it has in the long scenery shots and the space sequences. I do recall that it worked really well for the credits floating above the star field at the end but that’s probably not important.