***SPOILERS AHEAD: PROCEED WITH CAUTION***
Just in case you missed the massive bold lettering overhead, there are plot details ahead. If you have not seen the movie, now is a good time to leave this article and hopefully return to read it upon watching the newest Star Wars flick. You have been warned. Now that that little formality is out of the way...
As one can probably assume by reading the article and preceding paragraphs, I recently had the pleasure of seeing the new blockbuster movie: Rogue One. In reading the title of this article, one might assume I was displeased with the experience in question. On the contrary however, I was startlingly overjoyed with the film as a whole. The script was well-written, the acting was wonderful, the cinematography and directing were off the scales, and all-in-all I found it to be one of the best movies I have seen in recent years.
Now, if you're still reading this article you're probably asking yourself something along the lines of "well if you liked the movie, how is this a study of the biggest issue in Hollywood blockbusters?" and you would be right to do so. It is true that I enjoyed the acting in Rogue One. It is true that I enjoyed the script, and the cinematography, and the directing, and so on and so forth. Regardless, there was one facet of this movie that I appreciated above all others, and that facet is the issue in question today.
As a general rule, blockbuster movies are an experience with very few major stakes. The guy gets the girl, the hero beats, and very few major characters ever actually die as a consequence. As evidenced in some of my previous articles, I am a major fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With that being said, even I can acknowledge that the continual trend of seemingly "killing" main characters only to reveal they never died or they were somehow brought back with a newfound macguffin is growing more and more tiresome (Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Bucky Barnes, Groot... I could continue, but that deserves a whole article of its own).
Going into Rogue One, I honestly expected this to be yet another movie with very few stakes. Considering it takes place before Episode IV (the first Star Wars movie ever made, for those less acquainted with the convoluted numbering system of the Star Wars movie), we all knew going in that the heroes would inevitably get the plans for the Death Star. How would we possibly achieve any real stakes when we knew their journey would be successful before even entering the movie theater?
I am pleased to say I have never been so wrong about a movie in my entire life.
While it's true that we knew the heroes would fulfill their mission from day one, never in my life did I consider that they would actually die along the way. One of them maybe, but every single main character in the movie? This, in itself is the true flaw in the modern Hollywood experience: Failure in the mission is somehow more realistic to our minds than the death of a main character.
We go to action movies and expect guns, car chases and explosions. We go to superhero movies and expect alien invasions and schemes for world domination. We watch bounty hunters in sci-fi movies and nightmarish creatures in horror movies. Between guns, car chases, explosions, alien invasions, schemes for world domination, bounty hunters, and nightmarish creatures, one might look at the list and very plainly see that we go in expecting deadly situations. Yet, as we go in expecting these deadly situations, we never go in expecting death. We are conditioned by the Hollywood cop-out to think that death is not a possibility, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
War is a gruesome reality, and is all too often romanticized in the creation of Hollywood blockbusters. Death is not something that can be escaped when the time comes, and it is not something that is a mere afterthought. It shakes those watching to their very core, and it affects everything around it. Death is potent, and when we view it on a screen it is shockingly powerful. The audience sees every single major character die in Rogue One, and it heightens the tension. It makes the events they're seeing matter - even though we already know they'll succeed.
Why do we never feel this kind of tension in other movies with stakes that should be just as high, if not higher? The answer to that questions lies in the Hollywood cop-out: at the heart of it, Hollywood doesn't have the guts to kill a character off. Killing a character off means they can't return to the inevitable cash-cow sequel, and how will they sell tickets without their star power? Far too often, blockbusters are not about art or emotion or consequence, but about money. Instead of a message, we get a profit - and I, for one, think the modern movie could learn a thing or two from Rogue One.
