10 Reasons Rogue One Is The Smartest Star Wars Movie Ever
It's just really clever, to be honest.
As a wise old friend once said, "only a Sith deals in absolutes." And whilst it's always apt to note the ironic inflections of Revenge of the Sith's most quotable line, it does denote something supremely important: nuance, or rather the lack of nuance, is one of Star Wars' most contentious aspects; its moral dichotomies a key exemplar of its own cinematic reverence. The rebels, so we were led to believe, are the vanguards of the Republic's utopian ideals, personified in extreme by the boyish charms of a young farmhand from Tatooine. They're the good guys, that's blatant.
But Rogue One begs to differ. In fact, it does a whole lot more than differ, it contravenes the entire status-quo of the original trilogy. Rogue One is not a cynical film by any means, but it is impeccably nuanced, so much so that I've been compelled to wake up early on a Monday morning to clutch my keyboard and do all the words humanly possible to convey just how intelligent the first 'Star Wars Story' actually is. It's just that good.
What Gareth Edwards and co. have accomplished is a blueprint to the successful creation of a fully-armed and operational Star Wars prequel. It's equal parts charming and terrifying, but that only adds to its many qualities, chief among which is its ability to juggle a myriad of complex themes to a successful, and indeed gruesome, end. Quite simply, there's no other film like it.
Spoilers follow, obvs.