Star Wars: 10 Things Rogue One Did Best

A Darth Vader cameo in Rogue One was pretty much a given but the real question was “what about Tarkin?”. It was a tricky situation: It takes place right before A New Hope and Tarkin is the big cheese on the Death Star, but it takes place right before A New Hope and Peter Cushing died over twenty years ago.

Thanks to eighteen months of hard work from Industrial Light & Magic and an excellent casting choice in Guy Henry, Rogue One came up with an impressive if not completely perfect solution. Because Rogue One and A New Hope are so close together and Tarkin is so prominent in both films, recasting the character would be kind of jarring. But recreating Peter Cushing digitally (however imperfectly) makes for a stronger connection between the two movies.

And because of the decision to use Tarkin so prominently, we also see him as a more developed villain than A New Hope allowed. We already knew he was the bad guy but by making Krennic his enemy, we get this other side of him as a schemer working his way through the ranks of the Empire. Except he uses a planet-killing laser to get promoted rather than inter-office politics.

The effects used to create Tarkin will age, there’s no doubt about that. But Rogue One took that hit to help move the technology forward. It’s a technique that’s proven to work and means that future Star Wars movies could include cameos from characters we never thought we’d see again.