Rogue One: 8 Reasons To Be Excited Even If You Aren't A Star Wars Fan

6. The Story's More Relatable Than Previous Movies

Star Wars Rogue One young Jyn
Lucasfilm

Star Wars often gets criticized for relying too heavily on its force-enabled characters. They're usually portrayed like Gods, super-powered beings who can do anything and fight their way out of any sticky situation with apparent ease. Consequently, it's hard to properly relate to them - it's difficult to imagine them with problems, worries and vulnerabilities since they always seem so stoic and impenetrable.

And it's easy to see how this would put Star Wars newbies off. How can they become engaged with a movie wherein the protagonist relies upon a set of vaguely defined, suspiciously convenient abilities? The Force Awakens arguably worsened this effect with Rey, who drew a lot of flack for coming across as a little too capable in some scenes, despite not having any force training whatsoever.

Fortunately, Rogue One is taking a very different approach in this regard. The movie is very much a ground-level tale revolving around the efforts of a group of humans, without focusing too much on the more magical side of the Star Wars universe. And that's the key - they're humans, and they have flaws, like we all do.

From the trailers we can see that Jyn has parental issues and she isn't perfect (hell, she's in jail in the latest trailer), unlike many of the Jedi featured in the previous seven movies. Because Rogue One is shaping up to be a more personal, grounded story, that should make it more accessible for moviegoers who are turned off by the idea of another Star Wars movie that leans on force-capable characters.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!