Though we aim to make this as spoiler-free as possible, there might be details you still don’t want to know.
Last night, at a special reception at Skywalker Ranch, select members of the press were given a sneak preview of 28 minutes of footage from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Gareth Edwards introduced the footage room in the infamous screening room at Skywalker Sound and lamented the fact that he couldn’t show us the whole movie. That will have to wait until next week and the Hollywood Premiere.
Much to do has been made about how the film opens, lamenting the fact that it doesn’t begin with a crawl. But the film starts with a gasp, a chord of music and we’re into a prologue before the title is shown. With a film this personal, the prologue gives us all the information we’d need from a crawl.
The music we hear from Michael Giacchino is scintillating, though some fans might bristle at the hints of the Star Wars main theme as the title card finally plays to revised hints of that iconic theme. But the score is inherently Star Wars in its feel. The shots and camera placement, the use of lenses to draw sharp focus to objects in the midground and blur the fore- and backgrounds is something we almost haven’t seen in Star Wars before and it works to chilling effect. The film is gorgous and the opening shots and notes of music will be talked about.
But after the prologue, we’re very much in war film territory. It evokes the feelings of both a James Bond picture and a movie like The Dirty Dozen. It moves so fast, you almost don’t have time to catch your breath. There is so much in the trailers that we’ve seen that simply doesn’t appear in this span of time and this half-hour left me scratching my head (in a good way) as to how they’d cram it all in. It’s shocking at times, too. Characters aren’t always what we’d think they are, they’re not all as they seem. But it’s wholly consistent with the sorts of work they do.
There are stylistic choices that might rub some viewers the wrong way, certainly some winks and nods to other parts of the Star Wars saga that most fans will embrace and others will say goes too far. For my part, it was all so enjoyable. The film feels fun and dangerous. And isn’t that what you want from the first ever Star Wars war film?
If I were going to create a viewing/reading list of things I think would help give you a better understanding of the film and would add to your enjoyment the way they added to mine, I would recommend:
- Catalyst by James Luceno
- The Onderon Arc – The Clone Wars Season five, episodes 2-5
- Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
- Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope
- The Dirty Dozen
- The Guns of Navarone
- Blade Runner
- And everything involving the Death Star on this playlist I wrote for StarWars.com
There is so much here that richly ties into the rest of Star Wars that we’re now starting to see the fruits of the labors of a story group that makes sure everything is connected in a way that makes sense.
They showed us what seemed to be the first 12 or 15 minutes, then another chunk from later in the film of about the same length, and then a new trailer I hadn’t seen to get us pumped. There are certainly ideas in here that will have fans of the Star Wars lore talking for a long time.
I don’t want to say too much more, other than I think many of you will enjoy this in a way you weren’t expecting, and we’re going to have a lot of new Star Wars fans coming after this.
For a more detailed, but still spoiler-free, discussion of the footage and my time at Skywalker Ranch and the press conferences happening at Lucasfilm, be sure to listen to the next episode of Full of Sith.