#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 ‘it was all a dream’ and ‘everybody dies’ were bad#THIS IS THE EXCEPTION TO THE RULE I try to tell them#maybe one day they’ll 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 don’t 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. I love AU’s 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 have to die in this war.
You have Chirrut, who is the last relic of a religion whose lifeblood has been stolen to power a weapon of the enemy–his only peace as a character is to die bringing that weapon and that enemy to its knees. There is no Temple for him to guard, there are only a handful of kyber crystals left in the galaxy, and there’s no way for him to change that. Characters need closure, it’s what makes an ending satisfactory, and Chirrut’s only closure is to do what he can to right this impossible wrong, there’s nothing else for him, and that means he has to die bringing the weapon down.
You have Baze, who doesn’t even have his faith anymore, all he has is Chirrut and his gun. Well, we just established that Chirrut has to die to close his personal arc. Baze has nothing to tie him to the world without Chirrut, because the war has taken everything from him–his people, his home, his faith, and now his partner. 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 way–given his character and what we see of him–for him to reclaim any of that except in the face of death, when he is able to lay claim to his faith again. And that’s only possible because, at the last moment, Baze has nothing except the faith that Chirrut held for him all this time. 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. That’s what his whole arc is about, getting the message to where it’s supposed to go. I think I’ve talked about this before, but Bodhi…he’s pretty much burned all his bridges, his home in Jedha is gone and he’s a traitor and a rogue, all he has left is the message and the hope that someone is listening. For his narrative to end the moment he gets confirmation that “Yes, Rogue One, we hear you” 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. They exist because of the war. They would not tolerate being out of the war, because they’ve never known anything but. There is no future for them, the way they’re portrayed in the movie, except to win the war at the price of their own lives. They’re 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 wouldn’t know how to be anything else anymore. And we get that impression very much over the course of the movie, with the way that absolutely everything is second to Cassian’s mission and the way that even at her most removed Jyn is still a soldier at heart. They are Achilles, not Odysseus–there is not a safe haven and a home waiting for them. They are destined to challenge the unbreakable city and die bringing it down.
And K-2…K-2 is Cassian’s imaginary friend, in a lot of ways. He created K-2, he taught K-2, he fed love and humor and duty, always duty, into K-2′s circuits until there was no empty space left. Of course K-2 dies for Cassian. Of course he does.
So Rogue One works because 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. They’re 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. They’re not the heroes of a grand and sweeping epic. They are the martyrs whose stories could only end in peace when they died doing their duty.
Read this. Just read it. Gorgeous thought on Rogue One.
This post is really beautiful, there is a lot of truth here. I also think that this idea that they had to die undervalues the emotional impact of the death of these characters. It also undervalues their ability to add even more to the universe, had they survived.
I agree that these people were built for war. Like I said there is a lot of truth in this post. The fact that each character is built for war is part of why they are so good at it. Why this team was able to succeed in a hopeless situation. But if their death had to happen then there is no pain in that death. The death is expected and the only way forward for the characters. I think we can all agree that watching each member of the team die was gut-wrenching. The emotional impact that the audience feels, even though true fans all knew going in that the characters really couldn’t be left or there would be loose ends which spoiled the series, really speaks to the character development that is deeper than a story that built characters ready to die because they cannot continue in the world.
Each member of the team expected to die in war. They are people who will never adjust back into society again because what they have given to the war. They are also people who would have made a place for themselves. Would that place have been popular? No. It would have been rough and difficult. An ugly place that was unrespectable but then that is who these people have always been. Never doubt that they could have found a way forward had the option of survival presented itself to them.
What happens at the end of Rogue one is so powerful because for the first time we can emotionally understand the statement Obi-Wan Kenobi makes when the Death Star destroys Alderaan. "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
For the first time, we have a large group of rebels who have finally been humanized for us. They are not just rebels on some distant planet, they are part of this cause. This small group of outcasts among the rebels allow us to understand the fabric of the rebel life. We know who they are, understand their hopes and dreams. Not to mention begin to understand everything that the Empire has taken from them through the long process of this war.
Some of them are seeking a redemption that they will never claim. Others have very little left this is all true. They are flawed and life has become very difficult for them to navigate. They are also determined to face the terror that the empire represents not cowering in fear but screaming in defiance. They would have fought on through the war until the Empire was destroyed brick by brick if they could have. And then once the empire was destroyed, they would have tried to rebuild what is impossible to rebuild.
And clear as day we see the Empire take all that strength and determination away from the rebel force with a single weapon. They are martyrs to the cause and their death certainly galvanized a rebel force whose path was uncertain. Not because their death gave them peace but because they were among the bravest and most determined forces the rebels had. Their death was a blow to the rebel force and the rest of the rebels could not let such a loss of life go unignored.
