Rogue One: Not Your Average Space Opera

     In the various Facebook groups devoted to Space Opera that I belong to, there have been many remarks of late about Rogue One that tend toward the negative.  It is currently fashionable to "call out" any members one disagrees with, but this usually degenerates into the kind of monosyllabic flame war that i detest.  So I choose to examine the question in the form of a little essay that will begin by giving some credit to my potential adversaries: their reaction is not completely unexpected or unnatural.  In fact, they are right in perceiving that Rogue One is not a conventional space opera.  For me, it is instead a combination of medieval Christian epic and heroic tragedy, two historically established genres the American public is almost completely unaware of.

     First, let's examine some of the main expectations of space opera.  There are adventure, one-against-the-universe boldness, reliance on technical mastery or super powers, and of course a successful outcome.  Add to this the tendency to project a hideous evil that is the embodiment of a psychologically concealed nemesis.  Think Spaceman Spiff turning his untouchable teachers into monsters he can disintegrate.  Space opera privileges a high degree of vicarious stimulation and enjoyment.  The reader/viewer expects to confront and overcome the projected monster, gaining a sense of fulfillment, just as in mysteries, he or she accompanies the detective with the virtual certainty of unmasking the criminal and unraveling his plans.  Nothing wrong with what Ronald Reagan, a reader of limited abilities, used to call a "ripping good story."

     The Star Wars universe, though, has never completely subscribed to this formula.  Keep in mind that George Lucas began with a very dystopian future in THX 1138.  A New Hope was a space opera grafted onto a Bildungsroman that featured Luke Skywalker in a scenario that resembled Joseph Campbell's idea of the mythic quest, a type of space-based Perceval more than a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon.  It adopted just enough of the Hollywood ritual of obstacles and plot points to fit on the big screen, but its parameters were much wider, leading into the stark dilemma of The Empire Strikes Back, which ends with Luke's ritual mutilation.  

     Rogue One begins in a very un-space-opera fashion, with Jyn being rather unwillingly recruited by Cassian into a mission to recover her father, who has already betrayed the Empire and is in turn the object of a secret assassination plot by the Rebels that Jyn is completely ignorant of.  We are much closer to John Le Carre than Flash Gordon.  As they assemble their unlikely team of paladins (a reverse of the sidekicks in The Song of Roland, complete with a Jedi equivalent of Bishop Turpin), Jyn and Cassian begin to meld together while at the same time delving into their covert selves.  For it is only by coming to grips not only with their past, but also with their individual potential that the couple can assume the sacrificial importance that was the center of seventeenth-century heroic tragedy.  Like The Cid and Chimene, Horatius and Sabine, the reluctant lovers have to realize a blood sacrifice even as they come together.  It is this generic rooting that gives the film the psychological profundity that most viewers have praised.  More than the fact that everyone sympathetic dies, it is the manner and context in which they die that really matters.  Even had Darth Vader been able to seize that memory device at the last moment, dooming the Rebellion, Jyn and Cassian make the rebellion, previously a well-intentioned but morally tainted enterprise, worthy to succeed.  

     As for the reactions of the negative audience, I will note one repeated reaction, "I was not impressed."  This seemingly inarticulate and personal response is actually quite revealing.  Emphasis on impressed.  The space opera viewer typically seeks an impression, an essentially passive response associated with the vicarious thrill of participating with the "hero."  This has always been a feature of Hollywood products and has dictated the almost universal presence of the Hollywood ending.  To have the vicar (in the original sense of the word) die would break the contact with the impression.  In the rare cases of endings where vicars died, there was generally a passing of the vicarious association: McMurphy to Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Spartacus to Varinia and Antoninus, Big X to Cooler King in The Great Escape. Instead of impression, Rogue One requires a process of transformation that shifts the emphasis from the putative heroic fact to the interior heroic assumption of worthiness, as in Pierre Corneille's heroic tragedies or, to come closer to our Anglo-Saxon tradition, in the fifth act of Hamlet ("If it be not now, yet it will be").

    I hope I have shown that, however justified by habit some space opera fans may be in remaining unimpressed by Rogue One, the majority of its worldwide admirers are even more justified by growth in allowing it to transform them.