How Rogue One made me care about the Star Wars story again

This movie has heart, which is exactly what the series needed

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story fixed almost everything that was wrong with The Force Awakens and (for this viewer, at least) deepened and recontextualized A New Hope, for which it's a kind of prequel. As a bonus, it snapped that old classic into new and urgent focus: Some scenes in the 1977 film will make a lot more dramatic sense than they did before thanks to some surprisingly crafty writing. Basically, Gareth Edwards achieves something those iconic yellow sentences introducing the 1977 film couldn't: He anchors the entire franchise with unforgettable stakes. I care more about Star Wars now, and in ways I hadn't before. That's no small feat for a "standalone film" featuring all new characters.

Not everyone loved it: This unexpectedly divisive movie is missing some of the goofy screwball dialogue of the other films (although Alan Tudyk slays as reprogrammed Imperial droid K-2S0). It doesn't dwell on the planets it visits nearly as much; there are fewer aliens and less in the way of gratuitous but pleasurable races, markets, and taverns. And no lightsabers! On the plus side, its characters aren't quite as dead in the face from being oppressively beautiful, and it has plenty that fans love in a Star Wars movie: X-wings, aggrieved British droids, epic violence, Death Star anxiety, Empire wardrobe malfunctions, thrilling cameos, Easter eggs, and cheesy CGI. Most importantly, though, it has heart. J.J. Abrams' reboot was a charming but superficial remake. Rogue One captures and develops the epic yearning and philosophical difficulty of the original series' DNA.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.