Welcome back to my series “Why I love Star Wars”. This is a series that was inspired by reading Ken Napzok’s Why We Love Star Wars: The Great Moments That Built A Galaxy Far, Far Away, a countdown of the top 100 moments from Star Wars that made him love it all, including canon stories from every medium. As I was reading this book, I found myself thinking of some of my own favourite moments and wanted to discuss them.
While there are certainly some films that I do not like as much as others, every movie has some wonderful moments that I would always say outweigh the bad, so for that reason I wouldn’t say that I hate any of the Star Wars films. With the way that too much Star Wars talk has gone down a dark hole in recent years, hopefully reminding ourselves of the great moments and focusing on the positives will help the fandom recover.
Why I Love Star Wars:
- A New Hope
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Return of the Jedi
- The Phantom Menace
- Attack of the Clones
- Revenge of the Sith
- The Clone Wars
- The Force Awakens
Unlike in the book, I will not put the moments in any specific order (I do things like that enough in my Top 10s!) as the order would probably change on every viewing. Today I will be looking at Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Beware: this will contain spoilers for the movie!
The fleet arrives at Scarif
What has been so great about the Disney-era movies is how the CGI has improved to look much more realistic and how they allowed us to take things further than ever before. Probably one of the best moments to show this was seeing the Rebel fleet arrive at Scarif, being able to see all the ships jumping into the system (with the planet in view) and seeing such a variety of ships helped to show that this was going to be a major engagement – it almost feels bigger than the Battle of Endor. And as if that wasn’t good enough, Rebels fans like myself had the joy of seeing the Ghost very clearly within the fleet. If ever there was a fist-pump moment in the movie, this was it!
Blast from the past
As if having the Ghost in the Rebel fleet wasn’t enough, there were a couple of other familiar faces we got to see when the fleet arrived at Scarif: Garven Dreis and Jon “Dutch” Vander. With the Battle of Scarif being so close to the Battle of Yavin, it made perfect sense that they would be flying in the battle, so it was great to see them here, while it was also so impressive to see footage from the 70s fit so seamlessly into the movie – I showed a friend the scene and told them that 2 pilots in their cockpits were footage from the 70s and they couldn’t figure out which they were!
The Death Star destroys Jedha
“Oh, it’s beautiful”
Not gonna lie, I can’t help but agree with Director Krennic when I watch the scene of the Death Star destroying Jedha City. The cinematography is perfect, with the Death Star causing an eclipse then the green beam of the laser hitting the surface. The way that we hear Galen Erso’s message to Jyn about the battle station as we watch if anything just adds more emotion to the scene than if we focused on the destruction like we had in A New Hope.
Vader’s hallway scene
Oh my god, this may be one of my favourite moments in the whole of Star Wars! With the Profundity being disabled, a group of Rebel troops download the Death Star plans onto a disc and begin to take it through the hallways, but the power cutsout as they open the door, leaving it open only a few inches. While a group tries to manually open the door, we hear a familiar breathing coming from the dark end of the tunnel, before a red lightsaber blade ignites to reveal Vader. What follows is a sequence that would not feel out of place in a horror movie as Vader slashes his way through the troops, while the ones around the door beg for their colleagues to help and, eventually realising they are out of time, pass the plans through the gap they’ve made just before they are impaled by Vader. The troops rush onto the Tantive IV and release from the Profundity just in time, leaving Vader watching them escape. A wonderful scene and Vader at the dangerous best we have always hoped to see, while I absolutely love the score in this scene, with a chorus singing a slowed down version of the Imperial March before the music builds to the Imperial March we are familiar with.
No mouthing off!
Finally comes to a moment that I always enjoyed, but now love even more having heard some of the behind the scenes stories. K-2SO is escorting Jyn and Cassian through Jedha City, when they encounter a group of Stormtroopers. The troopers believe Kay-Tu is escorting prisoners so asks where he is taking them. Not being great at improvising, K2 tells them that “I am taking them to imprison them… in prison.” Cassian tries to jump in to help but K2 smacks him in the face and warns him “There’s a fresh one if you mouth off again!” As well as being a funny moment in itself, hearing that it was an improvised moment made me appreciate it even more and I love now noticing how Diego Luna appears to be trying not to laugh behind his hand.
What are your favourite moments from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story?
Thanks for reading. May the Force be with you…
The Canon Padawan 