10 Reasons Rogue One Is The Smartest Star Wars Movie Ever

10. The Morally Ambiguous Alliance

Contrary to what the marketing gurus over at the House of Mouse would have you believe, Rogue One isn't a simple tale of good vs evil. Obviously the delineation between the Rebels and the Empire is made stark by the fact that, you know, the latter has an actual planet killer in their arsenal, but the Alliance to Restore the Republic isn't without its own flirtations with the Dark Side, epitomised in full by Rebel Intelligence and its not-so-merry band of spies, assassins, and saboteurs.

We first get a taste of the Alliance's seedy activities when Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) unceremoniously blasts his rebel contact in the face in order to escape from an impending imperial force, and the ambiguity only unravels further as General Draven (Alistair Petrie) conspires with Andor to assassinate, rather than extract, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen). Add in another rebel faction under the stewardship of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) - a man regarded as an extremist by both the Rebels and Empire alike - and you get the sense that this rebellion isn't the fairy-tale resistance we all initially perceived.

Apart from emboldening the prevailing sense of desperation that permeates Rogue One's narrative, the decision to fundamentally alter the ideological makeup of the alliance engenders a dramatic parallel between the Original Saga, and the events that immediately precede it. By the time Jyn and her rag-tag band of rebels have beamed the Death Star plans to the alliance fleet, you get the sense that we're dealing with a different kind of rebellion altogether - one that can actually afford to hope, and to straddle a lighter path than what was wholly capable before.

Indeed, as Rogue One's transformative influence on the saga begins to impact, its revisionist approach to the Alliance's history is bound to comprise a part of its most memorable aspects.