Tough Chicks: Jyn Erso – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Despite the somewhat meh response (critical meh, it grossed over $2 billion) from many fans about The Force Awakens in 2015, Rogue One debuted in 2016 and threatened to explode the minds of every 33-45 year old man who grew up playing with the old Star Wars figures. I can’t tell you how many of those shitty bend’em Storm Troopers I had just so I could pretend that Chewie could kill a couple dozen before being killed by blasters. Rogue One was the kind of movie that I always wanted from the Star Wars franchise but the one I never thought that I’d see. While people were blowing their loads to the massive Jedi battles and eloquent looking Tai Chi bullshit that all of the padawans were apparently learning, I was thinking up massive ground battles where dudes were sweating and bleeding all over the place. For 32 years of my life…this movie could never have happened.
But then it did! And not only did it happen, and tons of Storm Troopers were being blasted to smithereens, but it was also led by a super cute and super tough chick by the name of Jyn Erso. She wasn’t a Jedi or even a trainee. She was an orphan, created by the Empire and raised by the guerrilla fighter Saw Gerrera. He taught her to hate the Imperial douchebags as much as anyone and when she was finally given the opportunity to deliver a massive kick the galactic genitals of the Imperials, it was done with absolute precision and ferocity. She won the battle talked about in the opening crawl of Star Wars: Episode 4. The very first thing we ever heard about a war in the galaxy and it was won by this kickass chick and her band of scrubs.
Not only did Felicity Jones appear on most of the marketing material in the lead up to the film, but we barely got any information whatsoever on any of the other members of her crew. All I needed to know was that her dad was being played by Mads Mikkelsen and that did it for me. What came after that was just icing on the cake. I never thought that the darling little Englishwoman Felicity Jones would make for such an awesome hero.
Rogue One still isn’t my favorite Star Wars film of all time but it impressed me enough to jump into the Top 4. I am really looking forward to more of these in-between films that show us some of the seedier sides of the galaxy and not just the robe-wearing pansies who hang out in the Jedi Temple. The prequel movies gave me more than enough of that and not even the talk of a Obi-Wan movie could make me want that. Here is hoping that we get more of the same when the next few films hit.
