#rogue one#star wars#my creative writing class thinks this is a bad ending#because everybody dies#and they remind me that at the beginning of the class I told them cliche endings like โit was all a dreamโ and โeverybody diesโ were bad#THIS IS THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE I try to tell them#maybe one day theyโll learn#anyway#perfect ending is perfect
Hold my beer while I try (and probably fail) to articulate this.
This movie is somewhat unique in my experience because the death of all the main characters seems like the good and necessary end to the plot, and I think part of the reason this is true is because, basically, they donโt die for shock value or because Anyone Can Die, they die because this is a war and they are people who exist solely in the context of the war. ย I love AUโs where Bodhi meets Finn and Chirrut explains the Force to Luke as much as the next person, but within the context of the characters that we are given, in order to complete their personal arcs to satisfaction, they all haveย to die in this war. ย
You have Chirrut, who is the last relic of a religion whose lifeblood has been stolen to power a weapon of the enemyโhis only peace as a character is to die bringing that weapon and that enemy to its knees. ย There is no Temple for him to guard, there are only a handful of kyber crystals left in the galaxy, and thereโs no way for him to change that. ย Characters need closure, itโs what makes an ending satisfactory, and Chirrutโs onlyย closure is to do what he can to right this impossible wrong, thereโs nothing else for him, and that means he has to die bringing the weapon down.
You have Baze, who doesnโt even have his faith anymore, all he has is Chirrut and his gun. ย Well, we just established that Chirrut has to die to close his personal arc. ย Baze has nothing to tie him to the world without Chirrut, because the war has taken everything from himโhis people, his home, his faith, and now his partner. ย Baze is, I think, very much a story of loss, so his closure comes from knowing that he has reclaimed some part of that, and there is no wayโgiven his character and what we see of himโfor him to reclaim any of that except in the face of death, when he is able to lay claim to his faith again. ย And thatโs only possibleย because, at the last moment, Baze has nothing except the faith that Chirrut held for him all this time. ย And of course he can only take that back in the face of certain death.
You have Bodhi, who is the one with the message. ย Thatโs what his wholeย arc is about, getting the message to where itโs supposed to go. ย I think Iโve talked about this before, but Bodhiโฆheโs pretty much burned all his bridges, his home in Jedha is gone and heโs a traitor and a rogue, all he has left is the message and the hope that someone is listening. ย For his narrative to end the moment he gets confirmation thatย โYes, Rogue One, we hear youโ is a very clean, natural close, because it offers him the assurance of a task completed.
And then you have Jyn and Cassian, who are very much creations of the war in their own ways. ย They exist because of the war. ย They would not tolerate being out of the war, because theyโve never known anything but. ย There is no future for them, the way theyโre portrayed in the movie, exceptย to win the war at the price of their own lives. ย Theyโre not villains to be redeemed or heroes to be lauded, they are people who have been carved so much into the form and function of a weapon that they wouldnโt know how to be anything else anymore. ย And we get that impression very much over the course of the movie, with the way that absolutely everything is second to Cassianโs mission and the way that even at her most removed Jyn is still a soldier at heart. ย They are Achilles, not Odysseusโthere is not a safe haven and a home waiting for them. ย They are destined to challenge the unbreakable city and die bringing it down.
And K-2โฆK-2 is Cassianโs imaginary friend, in a lot of ways. ย He created K-2, he taught K-2, he fed love and humor and duty, always duty, into K-2โฒs circuits until there was no empty space left. ย Of course K-2 dies for Cassian. ย Of course he does.
So Rogue One works becauseย these are all people whose personal narratives are crafted and supported by the war, and because these are all people whose closure is a grave. ย Theyโre not Luke, who closes his arc with saving Vader, or Han, who closes his arc with finding something to fight for and someone who loves him, or even Leia, who closes her arc by avenging her planet through the saving of another. ย Theyโre not the heroes of a grand and sweeping epic. ย They are the martyrs whose stories could only end in peace when they died doing their duty.
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