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Rogue One Review: It's Like Someone Made 2016 Into a Star Wars Movie

• https://www.wired.com

No Star Wars movie worth its blaster skips a good test of faith, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story doesn't disappoint. Early on in the film, young rebel Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is being grilled about her allegiances by the Alliance she's about to join. Her response? "I've never had the luxury of political opinions." If you believe Disney CEO Bob Iger, this is true. But if you believe almost anyone else—the alt-right, the writers of the film, the writers of the Internet—the problem isn't that Jyn doesn't have the luxury of political opinions, it's that she no longer has the luxury of existing without having those opinions ascribed to her. Her journey in the movie, being thrust into the position of helping steal the plans for the Death Star, pales in comparison to her real-world role: lightning rod. No other movie this year has been even remotely as intertwined with the toxic journey that was 2016.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, or simply Rogue One, is an upcoming American epic space opera film set in the Star Wars universe, produced by Lucasfilm, distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and is intended to be the first film in the Star Wars

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Let's back up, though. Rogue One started as a simple, smart concept: Make a standalone movie—an "anthology" flick, in official Lucasfilm parlance—based on the line in the opening crawl of 1977's Star Wars about Rebel spies nabbing the plans for the Empire's superweapon. And that's exactly what it is. The Rebellion first recruits Jyn as a way to get to her father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), a man who happens to have invented the Death Star. In true hero fashion, she's reluctant, only joining their cause after receiving a message from her father that he put a weakness in the weapon's design. But when she learns there's a way it can be defeated, she assembles a team of Rebels that includes her recruiter Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), the pilot who delivered her father's message (Riz Ahmed), and Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), a blind fighter strong with the Force. Retrieving the plans, of course, means a showdown with the Empire, and this one happens to be one of the most visually epic final battles of the entire Star Wars saga.

Because the story—or at least its conclusion—is so familiar to fans, its prospects were strong from the outset. But because not much was known about the "Rebel spies" in the Star Wars canon, Lucasfilm/Disney was able to bring in a whole new cast of characters and, for the first time ever, make a woman the team's leader.


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