We live in the era of #hottakes and Thinkpieces, where every piece of pop culture seems to be turned over and examined and used as the foundation for some kind of social or political argument. And certainly, if you really strained yourself, you could take “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and apply its story of rebels versus the Empire as some kind of metaphor for various uprisings around the world. But if we’re being honest, the film’s political texture — and it’s certainly there — is more broadly applied, or in another words, to say that Darth Vader is Donal Trump (for example) would be a bit silly. And Disney head honcho Bob Iger shoots down any notions that ‘Rogue One’ is making any kind of pointed, specific polemic.
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“Frankly, this is a film that the world should enjoy. It is not a film that is, in any way, a political film. There are no political statements in it, at all,” he told THR last week.
The comments came in the wake of ‘Rogue One’ screenwriter Chris Weitz posting — and deleting — a tweet that declared, “Please note that the Empire is a white supremacist (human) organization.”
Again, you could paint the Empire with that brush if you wanted to, but for me, strictly defining their evil in such a manner makes them less interesting, less fearsome — I’d argue the terror they can unleash is more deeply felt if you don’t know the boundaries of how far they’re willing to go.
At any rate, a character in ‘Rogue One’ who has simply seen too much war is Riz Ahmed‘s Bodhi. A defector from the Empire, and somewhat rattled by the war he’s seen, he spends much of the picture in a state of anxiety, perhaps brushing against PTSD psychological issues. And according to director Gareth Edwards, it was Bodhi who changed the most through the long production of ‘Rogue One.’
“….if I look at the poster and go, ‘Which one is the most different than how we started?’ – Probably Bodhi, Riz’s character. We just knew we wanted a character that was in a war that wasn’t supposed to be there. What happens, you like to go to ‘Star Wars’ and pretend you’re Han Solo or Luke Skywalker or Cassian or Jyn and the reality is… you’re not really. You’re more like Bodhi. So I wanted to put someone in there that reflected that,” the director explained to Screen Rant. “He started off like a Dennis Hopper in ‘Apocalypse Now‘-type character and it just evolved because Riz is so fantastic. He just brought loads of ideas and things to the table and somebody was like, ‘OK, we should be reacting to this because this is really strong.’ And it changed quite a bit for him, I think.”
Fascinating stuff, and given how much was altered during reshoots (seriously, go back and look at the trailers, there’s a lot of footage and alternate cuts of stuff not in the finished movie) it’ll be interesting to find out what other characters transformed.
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” opens on December 16th.