Rogue One

My latest movie rental was Rogue One ...

a 2016 American epic space opera film .... It is the first installment of the Star Wars Anthology series, set immediately before the events of the original Star Wars film. The cast includes Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Jiang Wen and Forest Whitaker. Rogue One follows a group of rebels on a mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, the Galactic Empire's superweapon.

There was so much publicity when the movie came out that I was aware of the storyline, the actors, and the technical stuff long before actually seeing the film. The movie seemed an effort to be a more grim and gritty version of Star Wars .... one of the main characters, Cassian Andor, is shown murdering someone in cold blood for the sake of expediency near the beginning, and in the end he and all the main character end up dying for the cause. It was hard for me to find anyone to really like and my favorite character soon became the resident robot, K-2SO ... Why ‘Rogue One’s’ sassy new K-2SO is the droid we’ve been looking for



Sort of notable was that Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen was in the movie - he was recently also in Doctor Strange. I recall him from the past King Arthur which I posted about here: King Arthur, student of Pelagius :) ...




And one thing that I was interested in was the CGI creation of characters from the original Star Wars movies for this film ... How ‘Rogue One’ Brought Back Familiar Faces. I have to say that I found the attempt a bit creepy and Carrie Fisher's CGI Princess Leia looks to be deep in the uncanny valley to me ...



But anyway, the film was very popular and got good reviews ... here's one from The New Yorker: “Rogue One” Reviewed: Is It Time to Abandon the “Star Wars” Franchise?

And here's a trailer ...