ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (original title, ROGUE ONE; vt STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE). Gareth Edwards, dir. Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy et al., script. John Knoll and Gary Whitta, story, "based on characters created by George Lucas." Doug Chiang and Neil Lamont, production design. USA: Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Motion Pictures et al. (prod.) / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (US and most of the world, dist.), 2016. See IMDb for details of production and distribution.

Carries on the tradition going back to FORBIDDEN PLANET of impressive shots of human beings inside huge machines; here, as in earlier STAR WARS films, the key shots are on a Death Star, so the containment within a huge machines is negative though not in itself threatening, aside from necessarily imaging human diminution and the literal threat within the world of the film of falling to one's death — more than balanced by heroic success of the positive (Rebel Alliance) characters. ROGUE ONE also continues the tradition that the human(oid) cultures in the Galaxy long ago and far away have the concept of the wheel — e.g., as noted by Steven Schaufele, the Jawas' Sandcrawler in A NEW HOPE — but often use bipedal or quadrupedal vehicles (or science-fictional hover technology). Edward Carmien notes that "There are wheels" in ROGUE ONE: "a six-wheeled monster vehicle in which Our Hero is being transported to some labor facility and out of which she is rescued. On screen for maybe two seconds"; and Regina Hansen's son and I independently spotted a tank-like vehicle "with treads"; on Earth and among the Jawas, "continuous tracks" are run over wheels.

RDE, et al., 21-22/XII/16