Friday 23 December 2016

THE NEW ROGUE AWAKENS



It’s not a Star Wars Story it’s a prequel. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

It doesn’t get much more ‘pre’ than having a creepily rejuvenated Princess Leia stood clutching a floppy disc and mouthing a large proportion of the first instalment’s title at you. Perhaps that's what a Star Wars Story is: a cruelly curtailed prequel in which anyone with aspirations to appear in the follow-up gets vaporised on a beach.

Rogue One, like all the worse kinds of prequels, obsesses with answering questions that no one has asked.

Want to know why it was so easy to blow up the Death Star? 

No.

No really, do you want to know why it was so easy to blow up the death star?

No, I really don’t.

Okay then. You interested in how those rebels got hold of those plans? 

No.

Actually I’m more interested to know why a basic wireframe graphic heralding from the age of Atari won’t fit on a USB stick. Or hasn’t the Empire got round to inventing those yet? Preferring instead to pour its tech budget into jaw droppingly elegant shuttle craft to whisk it’s bad guys around the galaxy. And a pointlessly spacious apartment built over flowing lava to contain its arch villain’s disabled shower unit.