10 Reasons Rogue One Is The Smartest Star Wars Movie Ever

It's just really clever, to be honest.

by Ewan Paterson
Star Wars Smarter
Lucasfilm

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.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.