Story
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set just before the very first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. After the movie’s opening text, ‘In a galaxy far far away …, the story begins with a young girl, Jyn (Beau Gadsdon), running towards her home after seeing an Imperial ship fly over. When she gets home she finds that her parents are already aware of the danger and are preparing for a hasty departure. Jyn’s father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), says goodbye to Jyn while her mother, Lyra (Valene Kane), sends a message to a rebel named Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). The message says, ‘They have come’. Jyn and Lyra escape and run into the hills, while Jyn’s father Galen goes to confront the Imperial soldiers.The Imperial force is led by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), an Imperial senator. Krennic insists Galen return to the Empire to finish building a super weapon (the Death Star) that will enable the Empire to destroy all who oppose it. At first Galen refuses, but after Krennic orders Lyra to be shot dead and Jyn to be hunted down and captured, Galen relents and submits to Krennic.Several years later, Jyn (Felicity Jones) is almost an adult and is being held captive in a cell by Imperial troops. She’s rescued by rebel forces, who use her to flush Saw Gerrera out of hiding. Jyn locates Saw and discovers that Galen, while pretending to be working for the Empire, was in reality designing and building a device hidden within the Death Star. This device can set off a chain reaction and destroy the entire station. Galen has sent a message imploring the Rebel Alliance to steal the plans to the Death Star and use them to destroy it.Believing in her father, Jyn pleads with rebel commanders to send a force into an Imperial stronghold and steal the plans to the Death Star. The rest of the movie follows Jyn as she achieves this aim, but at a tremendous cost.
Themes
Oppression and tyranny; rebellion; weapons of mass destruction; the supernatural
Violence
Rogue One has intense and extended sequences of battle violence that include many deaths, executions and assassination, mass destruction and the endangerment of young children. The leading characters die. For example:
Sexual references
None of concern
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
Rogue One shows some use of substances. For example, several men drink in a bar.
Nudity and sexual activity
Rogue One has some nudity and sexual activity. For example, there’s a brief hologram image of a humanoid alien female dancing in a seductive way on a table top.
Product placement
There’s no product placement of concern in Rogue One, but a lot of merchandise associated with this movie is being marketed to young children, for whom the movie is unsuitable.
Coarse language
None of concern
Ideas to discuss with your children
Rogue One is a prequel to the Star Wars movies. It explains how the Death Star came to have a design fault that enables it to be destroyed.
With its strong female lead, the movie is likely to be enjoyed by an older adolescent and adult audience, but it contains too many violent and disturbing scenes for children under 13 years, including the deaths of leading characters. We strongly recommend parental guidance for children aged 13-15 years, because some children in this age group might also find the movie too disturbing.
These are the main messages from this movie:
- Always maintain your dreams and your hope.
- We make our own prisons.
Values in this movie that you could reinforce with your children include selflessness, friendship and trust.
You might like to talk with your children about how the movie presents good and evil. That is, both sides in the conflict are responsible for deaths and atrocities.