The Wheel and Axle

Continued From:

Rogue One, Part 1: The Gray Side

Spoilers, young padawan!

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, despite being a stand-alone film almost divorced from the main film series in terms of tone and the characters who populate each one, is essentially a direct prequel to the original 1977 film, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Some have even joked that if you wanted spoilers to Rogue One, all you needed to do was watch and read the opening crawl of A New Hope.

And it’s a pretty accurate statement, too. See for yourself. (continue reading…)

Spoilers, young padawan!

Star Wars – especially the main episodic film series – has been known for its fantastic lightsaber fights, its mystical subtext, its galaxy-spanning tales of heroes and tragedies and triumphs. In many ways, it is a family epic – the story of the Skywalker family, from Anakin to Luke and Leia to Kylo Ren (and, if speculations are correct, even Rey).

Despite its primary depiction of one’s struggle to remain good and to resist the temptation to turn evil, it has also largely been a story that is pretty black and white in its morality. Good vs. Evil. Light vs. Dark. The Heroic Rebels vs. The Villainous Empire. The struggle has always been about simple right and wrong, and with perhaps the exceptions of Han Solo (who, in being a mercenary, was in it for the money and not for a sense of justice, at least until he developed over the course of the series), Lando Calrissian (whose initial betrayal was due to being compromised but in the end proved to be an ally), and Finn (the stormtrooper who turns his back on the Empire in The Force Awakens) the majority of the characters have either been plainly good or bad.

(continue reading…)

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the best Star Wars movie since The Empire Strikes Back. The 3D/4DX audience that I was a part of last Saturday actually even applauded heartily when the credits came up.

And I shed some tears. I’m not even going to pretend.

Watch out for my full review soon.