Rating: B+
Dir: Gareth Edwards
Star: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen
‘A long time ago…’ (…tah-da-dah daaar-dah dada-daaah-dah…) …and after a great opening shot, followed by assorted chaos, we are introduced to a humble farmer, Old Ben Ken… nope, sorry… Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), who definitely does not want to resume his career as a Hero of the Empire. Which is a pity as the Empire’s latest project, designed to bring peace to the galaxy, has run into a few snags, and they are very keen that he comes back to help out. His wife is also not happy for him to be conscripted back and decides to… <!pew!> …sorry, was not happy…
“You’re confusing peace with terror…”
“Well, you have to start somewhere…”
The hustle and bustle of the tumultuous world of Star Wars is well done, thrown impressively up onto your screen along with some truly (mostly) top notch CGI, with musical highlights and themes straight from the canon. So, Star Wars fans will feel well at home, doubly so with the many small scenes/characters/moments dotted here and there that take from the original materials. All in all it’s very slick and well polished. And an enjoyable romp.
What does weave through the whole film is ‘the grand entrance’. Each one a small cinematic tour-de-force, where sweeping grandeur introduces us to some new element, be it planet or ship or bowl of soup. And. To be honest. It gets a bit ‘…yeah-yeah! Just get on with it already…’ quite quickly, as does the introduction to so many moons/planets/bases that they all blur into one broadly confusing minestrone. There was a point where I began to wonder if the film was made up of anything other than such glittering confections.
The story revolves around our protagonist Jyn Erso (Jones) who, as a young girl, escaped the Empire’s visit with help from Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a rebellion fighter. Jyn is now a young woman who we meet again whilst being rescued from a prison transport by the rebellion, for they need her help. The Rebellion wants to use Jyn to find Saw (now estranged from the rebellion) to locate and ‘rescue’ Galen, as it seems that he has used a defecting pilot to convey a message warning of the construction of ‘a planet killer’.
And then we hit the uckyness inherent in this film. Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher both appear. Or at least their GCI reincarnations do. And for me neither rang true, and in both cases these avatars made me feel oddly queasy, and from my notes “Peter Cushing’s ghost sits uncomfortably in his opening scene”. Similarly Darth Vader also seemed… erm… not Vader enough. To offset all this we have the excellent K2SO (Tudyk), the glibly sarcastic and sardonic ‘droid, providing the much needed light relief in what might otherwise have been very dry fare. The nub of the story is Jyn and others’ mission to find and retrieve the plans for the planet-killer for delivery to Rebellion HQ, as Galen has engineered into the “that’s not a moon” a fatal-flaw.
Well, that’s enough said. If you have even a passing affection for Star Wars then I suspect that you’ll enjoy this film – I do and did – as overall there’s much to enjoy with more than enough call-backs to other films… “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”, “…punch it…”, “…why does no-one tell me anything R2?” There’s also plenty of zoomy-zooming pew-pew, “…it’s a trap…”, and even a blind Jedi Master to enjoy along the way.
This film is, as intended, the perfect segue into “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope“, and the running time of 2:15 flew by for me.
Phil’s score: 1 pint (not really needed) to enjoy. Popcorn (large) essential (obviously).