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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Rogue One. This has got to be the most dramatic of the Star Wars movie I've seen so far... in fact, the portrayals here were so good that I am under the opinion that it's downright better than the movies in the official trilogies! 

I only realised that Rogue One was not part of the canon when I started watching it. The characters, for instance, were all new to me.

The story basically revolved around the exploits of Jyn Erso, the daughter of a research scientist who was being pressured to finish the construction of a Death Star. The scientist and his wife were killed by the Imperial forces but Jyn escaped through the help of Saw Gerrera, a mentee of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. So far, only Ob-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker were familiar to me. However, these affiliations put the story in context: Emperor Palpatine was still ruling and the Rebellion must be out there somewhere.

Jyn ended up in a labour camp for some reason. She was eventually freed and then tasked by the Rebellion to track down her father and retrieve the designs of the now fully operational Death Star. Galen included a flaw in the design and the Rebel forces had to take advantage of this to destroy the Death Star; it was up to Jyn to find and to transmit this information from the Imperial databank to the Rebellion at great risk of having her team. In the end, she was able to transmit the information just before the Death Star zapped the planet where the Imperial databank was.

The next scene was the eye-opener... the Rebel fleet was preparing to jump into hyperspace. Inside one of the ships, Princess Leia got hold of the information and concluded that it was going to be vital for the Rebellion's victory. This scene gave me goosebumps because this was when I realised that the events in the whole movie, Rogue One, happened just before Star Wars: A New Hope began.

Rogue One showed the extent to which pawns of the Rebellion were willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause they were fighting for. When the planet was about to explode, they did not cower in fear or found a way to save themselves; rather, they faced death on, accepting the inevitable. The higher ranking characters, on the other hand, apparently kept their cool... they saw the bigger picture and the consequences of actions of those aboard Rogue One. Because of Jyn's sacrifice, Luke Skywalker was able to defeat the Death Star.

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