Star Wars: Rogue One - A Retrospective
This article was originally published on December 28, 2021
Written by Thomas Salerno
Five years later, I still vividly remember my exact reaction upon exiting the movie theater after seeing Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. My brother and I walked to our car, got in, and were silent for a moment. Then I turned to him with a huge smile on my face and exclaimed: “Ten out of ten — straight up!!!” To this day, I stand by that assertion.
It’s funny because I remember that in the lead up to Rogue One’s release, my expectations were a bit subdued. “A Star Wars spin-off?” I thought. “I don’t know… I guess it’ll probably be okay…” Little did I know that myself, my brother, and millions of other fans were about to be blown away by the finest Star Wars film of the Disney-era. Not only were its special effects superb, its musical score a triumph, and its characters fascinating and relatable, Rogue One accomplished in spades what 2015’s The Force Awakens, for all it’s merits, never quite managed: It recaptured the illusive magic of the original Star Wars trilogy while at the same time telling a fresh, new story with a distinctive feel and tone.
Rogue One is, for all intents and purposes, a classic World War II film set in the Star Wars universe. Its story beats and character tropes will be familiar to those who watch a lot of war movies. Its gritty, no holds barred approach to Star Wars actually fits in perfectly with the “lived-in universe” aesthetic of the Original Trilogy. Whereas the ships and gear and environments of the Prequels (and even to a certain extent the Sequels) look too shiny and clean, Rogue One successfully retains the realistic feel of the OT while taking full advantage of the marvelous advances in visual graphics and CGI since the 80s.
Rogue One also acts as the perfect prelude to A New Hope. Rather than creating confusing retcons and nonsensical plot elements like the Prequel Trilogy, Rogue One adds fascinating new characters and events to the lore and provides added context to the events of the OT, particularly to these lines from the opening text crawl of A New Hope:
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire’s
ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR…
Rogue One reveals these events to be Jyn Erso and her renegade strike team’s daring raid on an Imperial data vault and the resulting Battle of Scarif.
I love Rogue One for all of the reasons stated above, which combine to make a terrific Star Wars film. But I’d like to highlight perhaps the most important aspect of the movie, which, in my opinion, propels it to legendary status as the greatest Star Wars film since the OT: It’s thematic richness.
The overarching theme of Rogue One is self-sacrifice for a cause greater than oneself. In this way, surprisingly, the film acts as a prescient and poignant rebuttal to the tediously modern and morally bankrupt philosophy of “live free, don’t join” espoused (and never properly refuted) in The Last Jedi. Such a self-centered, ego-driven mantra should strike Christians as thoroughly anathema. Although radical individualism, absolute autonomy and self-invention are championed by much of the intelligentsia, media, and popular culture as self-evident values, this contemporary paradigm runs counter to the past two millennia of Christian moral thought. It also stands athwart the lessons of Scripture and the example of Jesus Christ himself.
On his way up to Jerusalem for his final Passover, Jesus admonishes his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25 Revised Standard Version) Christ came into the world to give totally of himself, to sacrifice his very life, every last drop of his blood, for the life of the world. At the Last Supper on the night before his betrayal and Passion, Jesus instructs the Twelve, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:12-14 RSV)
As followers of Christ, we are called to imitate him, to love and care for our neighbors as ourselves and to lay down our lives, if necessary, for their sake and for the sake of the Gospel. The early Christian martyrs understood this, as do the Christians who suffer and sometimes die in many parts of the world today, sacrificing everything for God and neighbor.
Almost every heroic character in Rogue One sacrifices their life for a cause worth fighting for. For the protagonist, Jyn Erso, this is something of an evolution for her character. Early in the film she is self-centered and disillusioned with the Rebellion. The following exchange between Jyn and her former mentor Saw Gerrera is revealing:
SAW: “You care not about the cause?”
JYN: “The cause? The Alliance, the Rebels…all it’s ever brought me is pain.”
SAW: “You can stand to see the Imperial flag reign across the galaxy?”
JYN: “It’s not a problem if you don’t look up.”
Jyn’s outlook soon changes after viewing a hologram from her father Galen Erso, a scientist forced by the Empire to work on its Death Star project. Galen admits that while he feels that much of his life “has been wasted,” he has passively resisted, playing the part of “a beaten man resigned to the sanctuary of his work,” all the while laying the groundwork for a Rebel victory: he engineered a fatal flaw in the battle station’s reactor and recruited the conflicted Imperial pilot Bodhi Rook as a defector to smuggle this crucial information to Saw. Galen ultimately gives his life for the Rebellion when he becomes collateral damage during an Alliance airstrike on his research outpost.
His daughter goes on to tirelessly champion his cause, telling the Alliance Council that if “you give way to an enemy this evil, with this much power, you condemn the galaxy to an eternity of submission.” Frustrated by the Council’s defeatism, Jyn leads a brave contingent of Alliance soldiers and operatives to steal the Death Star Plans from Scarif. The entire team dies valiantly during the course of this mission. They were willing to sacrifice everything for the restoration of liberty and peace. For them, to “live free” meant to join a cause worth dying for. This is what makes the climax of Rogue One so powerful and memorable.
Five years on, Rogue One remains a masterpiece of film making and an invaluable addition to the Star Wars canon. As Disney and Lucasfilm gear up for the next era of Star Wars films, I hope they will pay close attention to the successes they’ve had with Rogue One and with Disney+ series like The Mandalorian. Thematic depth and dynamic storytelling have not disappeared from the “galaxy far, far away.” Long live Rogue One!
