Friends and even work colleagues kept bugging me
about Rogue One
for over a year now. “It’s the best of them,” they all said.
“If you had to see one of the new movies, it’s definitely Rogue
One! You’ll love it!”
So I watched it.
First thing I noticed: the laws of physics are
different with Disney. Two star destroyers of equal mass collide in
orbit, and the first ship cuts through the second one like a red-hot
spatula across a
slice of thin-crust veggie
pizza. That’s just plain impossible. If two objects of equal mass
collide, both are supposed to sustain equal damage. Where the hell is
this big heap of
nonsense coming from?
Then we have the destruction of Jedha. It’s a
small town on top of a canyon, the size of seven or eight modern city
blocks – the fallout of that destruction isn’t supposed to be
that immense, and
it cannot continue for, like, six entire
minutes. It reminded me of that J.J.
Abrams film with the enormous (literal) train
wreck, and railcars that keep falling out
of the sky for an entire two-minute scene. No kidding. There’s even
some dialogue between the characters in the meanwhile – and then
another train wagon comes
crashing down behind them, boom. Physics 101, guys. Breathe.
Second thing I noticed: the tower of Orthanc. What
the heck is Darth Vader doing in friggin’ Isengard? The Disney
people decided that Vader should have
his own awesome villain’s lair and that
it was long overdue, so they gave him a
whole volcano planet with a sinister pointy black tower in the middle
of nowhere. That’s ridiculous. Darth Vader ought to live on
Coruscant near the Emperor’s palace, or even in
that palace. Bormann was in Berlin, with Hitler. Pence lives in
Washington, near Trump. Think about it. His own isolated planet with
a vaguely Muslim name – if that’s not the most counterproductive
thing ever, I don’t know what is.
So, Darth Vader is Saruman, the good Maia (Jedi)
who turned evil and allied himself with Sauron (Darth Sidious). Did
they figure that out two years ago, or did they give the tower of
Orthanc to Vader unconsciously? Either way, this is incredibly lame.
Third thing: consistency. They think
they have it right, but they sure don’t. In ‘77, it was an
“intercepted transmission” Vader was looking for. Now it’s a
hard drive that is passed from hand to hand down the length of a
corridor, all the way to the hatch of Leia’s consular ship. That
right there is one BIG inconsistency.
Leia’s ship jumps into hyperspace; Vader’s
star destroyer jumps into hyperspace; Leia’s ship exits hyperspace
near Tatooine; Vader’s star destroyer also exits hyperspace near
Tatooine – and captures Leia.
Okay. Fleeing isn’t an option anymore.
Strangely enough, that is the part that irked me
the most. In the Star Wars
universe, once your ship jumps into hyperspace – you’re safe. You
are gone. No enemy will be able to track you, unless they know your
ship’s exact course beforehand, which, in the case of Leia’s ship
at the end of Rogue One,
is absolutely impossible.
But Darth Vader’s ship is still in pursuit
during the opening sequence of A New
Hope, right? How can that be? Why then
didn’t Vader pursue the Millennium
Falcon at the end of The
Empire Strikes Back? This would have
gotten him straight to the Alliance fleet!
If we posit that Scarif is located along the Manda
Merchant Road, then Leia’s ship disappears somewhere towards the
Western Reaches. That general direction offers a lot of
possibilities: Tatooine, Geonosis, Naboo, Dagobah, Bespin, Hoth,
Endor, and scores of other systems. Where’s the Rebel base in all
of that? It’s like trying to find a needle in a galactic haystack.
Vader has to guess.
Maybe that ship isn’t going back to the Rebel base right away. But
why wouldn’t it? Maybe Alderaan? What’s more important and
pressing than securing the stolen plans that just cost them so many
lives? What’s the exact bearing of the Tantive
IV (Leia’s consular ship), and how
long do they intend to remain in hyperspace – because, of course, a
difference of a few minutes may take you to the next system, and a
difference of one degree may take you through a red giant star!
How did Vader get it right? And don’t say, “The
Force,” either. He couldn’t sense the Rebels on Hoth without
wasting millions of Palpatine’s precious dollars on probes.
Look at what Disney did here. They wanted to
seamlessly link the end of Rogue One
with the beginning of A New Hope,
and they wanted this so bad, they broke something fundamentally canon
in order to achieve it. Bravo, guys!
Other
noteworthy failures
Why is Galen Erso stepping up to prevent evil
Imperial engineers from being
executed? It makes no sense at all.
This guy built a flaw in the Death Star’s reactor that will
eventually kill eighty thousand
stormtroopers and other Imperial personnel, but he draws the line
at... six Imperial engineers?
Make up your mind, Galen. Do you want the
Imperials to perish, or not? You know you can’t win if you’re not
sure, don’t you? You need to be sure. You need to be adamant. You
need to be consistent.
There’s also a huge problem with Grand Moff
Tarkin. The man is just too much for me to digest, really. Who the
fuck does he think he is? He orders the bombing of the Imperial
laboratory on Eadu, and then uses the Death Star to completely
destroy the main Imperial data center on Scarif. By my rough
calculations, it amounts to 5 billion
dollars’ worth of infrastructure.
Man, I’d love
to be a fly on the wall during his next audience with the Emperor...
PALPATINE:
“Approach, Governor Tarkin. It has been quite a while, isn’t it?”
TARKIN:
“It has, Your Highness.”
PALPATINE:
“You appointed yourself
as commander of my new battle station?”
TARKIN:
“A temporary decision, Your Highness. Purely informal. Krennic was
untrustworthy. Of course, you can now appoint anyone else you want to
that post.”
PALPATINE:
“I probably will, Governor. Maybe you are of a mind to govern the
whole Empire, are you?”
TARKIN:
“Of course not, Highness. I’d never think that––”
PALPATINE:
“You also blew up our base on Scarif.”
TARKIN:
“A necessary sacrifice, Your Highness. Rebel intruders got inside
the Tower...”
PALPATINE:
“How many Rebels? Five hundred?”
TARKIN:
“Uh, more like five, Your Highness.”
PALPATINE:
“You vaporized sixteen thousand officers, highly trained
technicians, troopers and Imperial droids, just to get rid of five
Rebels?”
TARKIN:
“Uh...”
PALPATINE:
“This facility was worth billions,
Governor. Did you ever think about that?”
TARKIN:
“You don’t understand, Highness––”
PALPATINE:
“Thread lightly, Governor. What is it you think I don’t
understand?”
TARKIN:
“...”
PALPATINE:
“Go back to the Death Star, there to await my orders. Do not blow
anything up on a whim. It is a battle station, not your personal toy.
And the cost of rebuilding Scarif and the crystal refineries on Eadu
will, of course, be deducted from your pay.”
TARKIN:
“...”
Final word
I did it. I saw “the best of them all”. I honestly don’t
feel the urgent need to watch the others. One movie a year, that’s
a bit too much. As for The Last Jedi, from what I read on
Twitter, critics loved it, but the fans, not so much. Why am I not
surprised? Critics won’t bite the hand that feeds them.
Let’s not forget one thing here. The new films
are written by fanboys and fangirls: people like me, who saw Star
Wars back in the late seventies when
they were kids. Now, unlike me,
they work at Disney and they’re on a high – blinded by their
sheer love of the franchise. But a fan movie remains a fan movie,
whatever the Intellectual Property documents might say. Same way a
cover band remains a cover band, even if you happen to legally
acquire the
rights to the songs you play. “Dave’s Iron Maiden” will never
be Iron Maiden, despite Dave’s very best efforts.