Did every character in Rogue One actually need to have an arc?

[Piscian]

I'm a massive fan of Rogue One, like painfully so. I kinda like it more than Return of The Jedi though I try not to say that too loudly. The most common complaint I hear about Rogue One is that none of the characters have any kind of Plot line or "arc" in the film and I just can't seem to grasp why they need one. The movie isn't really about them so much as the crew as a whole and the adventure. They're given just enough information that you understand their perspective and why they're there. It's sad when they die, but it's made clear in the movie that it was always a one way journey. It's a suicide mission. The movie doesn't ask you to invest a great deal of emotion into the individual journey. Most of the Deaths are pretty quick. The magnitude and direness of the situation is what you're supposed to be invested in.

I've been scratching my brain because I just don't get why people believe every character needs to have an arc to make movie good. Most the characters in Battle Royal don't have arcs, neither did the Oceans 11, which was what Rogue One took influence from thematically. Its a "Star Wars heist movie". The Marines didn't have character arcs in Aliens. I don't recall any arcs in the Magnificent Seven. I could go on and on.

I don't know. Putting Rogue Ones other flaws aside, does everyone think every character in a movie has to have an arc for you to enjoy it? Is there something about Rogue One that everyone thinks is different and demands character arcs?

 

[BrawlMan]

I don't recall everyone having an arc. I have not seen Rouge One since it's theatrical release. I honestly don't care, because Rise of Skywalker and how Disney's been handling the property has killed all of my interests.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It's a suicide mission.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I have a feeling it was more of most characters in Rogue One are pretty boring or under utilized, and so people just defaulted to the "there's no character development" complaint.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

It's a commando movie, and a busy one at that. "Soldier desperately trying to do <x> thing" is about all you're going to get or need. Like, I walked in on the roommate just as the third act clusterfuck started rolling and I gotta say: you don't lose that much from the movie by not watching the first two acts.

I think a lot of people have started conflating character arcs with narrative arcs. I'm a big fan of the "get a bit of information to figure out a character's deal and throw them into a situation" style of story. Like, I was invested in Blue Leader's 10 minutes of story. Or Not Ackbar and his "fuck it, we're going to war" attitude. Meanwhile, I feel like Jyn's arc would be improved by being slightly less fleshed out. A lot of the angst just didn't work and these movies have a million characters by their nature

 

[Kyrian007]

No, they don't. Characters having an "arc" growing and changing over the course of a story... can make for a great story. But it isn't necessary to make a story great. Its more common nowadays on TV, with most television migrating to serialized long arcs as opposed to the more episodic style that was way more common a couple of decades ago. It used to be a show had to be episodic, lest you lose viewers who missed episodes here and there. So character "growth" was either something that didn't happen, or happened much more slowly. With the longer story arcs you see now, character growth and change is more common. So much so that some people think a story "needs" it.

A decent example, two book series by the same author. David Eddings wrote The Belgariad. A pretty good, if fairly standard fantasy "chosen one" storyline. Also he wrote another "chosen one" fantasy series in The Elenium. But they did feel fairly different, because of a big difference in protagonist. Garion, the chosen hero in The Belgariad (like a lot of chosen ones) started as a kid, grew with the story, and eventually became the big hero. The Elenium by contrast had a "chosen hero" who began the story as the biggest badass hero in all the land, and changed relatively little as he went through the story. And if anything, I found the Elenium the better story of the 2.

 

[happyninja42]

I'm a massive fan of Rogue One, like painfully so. I kinda like it more than Return of The Jedi though I try not to say that too loudly. The most common complaint I hear about Rogue One is that none of the characters have any kind of Plot line or "arc" in the film and I just can't seem to grasp why they need one.

They don't NEED one, plenty of characters in an ensemble cast can be static and still be good, but it helps if they have one for audience investment. R2 and 3PO don't have an arc in New Hope, but their role in the film, as comic relief and the peanut gallery, don't need one.

The movie isn't really about them so much as the crew as a whole and the adventure. They're given just enough information that you understand their perspective and why they're there. It's sad when they die, but it's made clear in the movie that it was always a one way journey. It's a suicide mission. The movie doesn't ask you to invest a great deal of emotion into the individual journey. Most of the Deaths are pretty quick. The magnitude and direness of the situation is what you're supposed to be invested in.

Well if the movie can't be bothered to make me invest emotion in them, then I'm certainly not going to feel bad when they die. That's the problem for me at least. I didn't care about any of the crew. You say that's on purpose, but I disagree, as they certainly TRIED to give some of them enough details to have the audience empathize with them and their struggle. I just don't think they executed it very well.

As to caring about the magnitude of the situation on the macro scale being the driving focus...well then why did they keep cutting back for long stretches of the film, and drilling down to the micro level of these specific people, running into obstacle after obstacle? The run time of THEM on screen, trying to accomplish the upload, is vastly more than the larger scale battle. So I think you're wrong on that front, simply by what the film itself felt was worthy of more screen time. If they really didn't want you to care about Jin and the others, then the movie would've just kept the focus up on the fleet battle, and have us seeing the captains being like "come oooon, just hold on a bit longer! We have to give them time!" And then just, show us a beep on a screen to indicate the information had been received. Don't show us their individual death scenes if we aren't supposed to care about them dying. I mean I get what you are trying to say, but I think the very structure of the film, and what they put focus and emphasis on, doesn't support your claim. The movie CLEARLY wants us to give a shit about each of the individual people dying, and consider it tragic, otherwise they wouldn't bother with things like a loooong, beach side eye gaze as the shockwave consumes them, K2S0's slow, agonizing death of a dozen blaster shots, as he struggles to live long enough to defend them, then his "goodbye" as he finally goes out. All of it designed to make us feel sad about them dying, but then doesn't do the legwork on the other end to actually make me care about any of them enough to feel sad about it.

I've been scratching my brain because I just don't get why people believe every character needs to have an arc to make movie good. Most the characters in Battle Royal don't have arcs, neither did the Oceans 11, which was what Rogue One took influence from thematically. Its a "Star Wars heist movie". The Marines didn't have character arcs in Aliens. I don't recall any arcs in the Magnificent Seven. I could go on and on.

I agree, you don't NEED arcs, but they are a very well established narrative tool to improve the enjoyment of a story, for the audience. We as a species enjoy seeing stories of people going through struggles and coming out changed/stronger on the other side. To empathize with the characters as they deal with challenges that might be similar to our own on some level, and see them overcome it, and not be broken, but better. It appeals to our emotional side heavily. And again, you don't HAVE to include an arc, but if you don't, you need to have the characters be memorable enough, and charismatic enough, and fun enough, in other aspects, to make up for that lack of audience engagement. And, for me at least, the Rogue One cast fails utterly on those fronts.

I don't know. Putting Rogue Ones other flaws aside, does everyone think every character in a movie has to have an arc for you to enjoy it? Is there something about Rogue One that everyone thinks is different and demands character arcs?

Different about Rogue One? Compared to what? Generally though, no I don't think there is anything about R1 that is different enough to "demand" an arc. It's about as stock standard of an action/war story as you get. Which makes it doubly confusing why they wouldn't do what most war stories do, which is give you a human element to focus on. Saving Private Ryan shows us the horrors of the large scale war, by showing us how horrible it is impacting the people we have spent the last 2 hours surviving with. Large scale events in a war movie are just so much background dressing. The human eye just sort of filters it out, and tends to focus on the individuals. R1, as you stated, doesn't really put much time and effort into making the individuals anyone that I'm supposed to care about? While also trying to tell me, through framing and pacing that "You should care about these people dying, look how we've framed it!" Well, sorry but, no, that's not good enough for me.

 

[Casual Shinji]

They don't need an arc, they just need to be entertaining. And the characters in Rogue One weren't.

That whole movie was just this dry, dull, and dour expostion of things we already knew happened, and which added nothing new or interesting.

I'm not a fan of Star Wars at all though, so even if it was actually good I still might not have cared.

 

[Gordon_4]

I have a feeling it was more of most characters in Rogue One are pretty boring or under utilized, and so people just defaulted to the "there's no character development" complaint.

I found myself liking the core characters of Jyn, Cassian, K2, Chrriut, Baze and Bohdi well enough. They aren't massively fleshed out beyond Jyn and Cassian (and mileage varies on how effective that is) but their actors imbue them with a fair amount of natural charisma and likeability that their deaths are affecting. Not death of OG Optimus Prime or Littlefoot's Mother - both of which still grip my heart in a vise and yell "FEEL *****" at me - but you know I didn't like that they died.

I don't recall any arcs in the Magnificent Seven.

Did we watch a different version of that movie?

 

[Trunkage]

Rogue One is the only decent Star Wars movie in 30 years. While their characters arcs were small, they were as big as Han or Luke's arcs in Empire or Return. Star wars does not do character arcs.

And I felt the R1 cast dying more than Han's death. They at least were trying to do something

 

[happyninja42]

Rogue One is the only decent Star Wars movie in 30 years. While their characters arcs were small, they were as big as Han or Luke's arcs in Empire or Return. Star wars does not do character arcs.

And I felt the R1 cast dying more than Han's death. They at least were trying to do something

For me it was probably the worst in the last 30 years, second only to Rise. I genuinely was annoyed with R1 pretty much from start to finish. Too much fan service callbacks that required scenes that really had no purpose other than the fanservice. (Oddly this just occurred to me but the term fanservice for SW fans, is DISTINCTLY different in flavor, compared to how that term is usually used. Most people it's boobs, for SW fans...it's a hydrospanner, or blue milk) Too little effort put into a compelling story that I cared about, especially since it was entirely based around shutting up obsessive fanboys that had been bitching for 40 years about how unrealistic it was for a feat of engineering that big, to have a flaw so catastrophic as to destroy the whole thing....despite a multitude of IRL examples of that very thing in human engineering, on a MUCH smaller scale. Just, nothing about it worked for me.

 

[SilentPony]

I loved Rogue One, thought it was easily the best modern star wars movie by a LONG way. But I don't remember almost any of them having an arc. Jyn Erso did, and died a Rebel hero. Cassian did and died a Rebel hero. and...and that's it. Its not that the others died unfulfilled, but they were kinda already fulfilled characters who agreed to go on the mission because they were ready to die. Like Chirrut was all one with the force, and kinda a failed Jedi, but he never managed to use his powers in the end. He just sorta died.

and to be fair it was a suicide mission, and we've known since 1975 that they all died, so that wasn't surprising in the least, but its kinda like asking if the dudes from Oceans 11 all needed an arc. The whole point is there were all pre-established humans who were already comfortable with what they were doing and what it would cost them.

 

[happyninja42]

I loved Rogue One, thought it was easily the best modern star wars movie by a LONG way. But I don't remember almost any of them having an arc. Jyn Erso did, and died a Rebel hero. Cassian did and died a Rebel hero. and...and that's it. Its not that the others died unfulfilled, but they were kinda already fulfilled characters who agreed to go on the mission because they were ready to die. Like Chirrut was all one with the force, and kinda a failed Jedi, but he never managed to use his powers in the end. He just sorta died.

and to be fair it was a suicide mission, and we've known since 1975 that they all died, so that wasn't surprising in the least, but its kinda like asking if the dudes from Oceans 11 all needed an arc. The whole point is there were all pre-established humans who were already comfortable with what they were doing and what it would cost them.

The fact that they were stock standard archetypes, following a standard trope script, doesn't mean they are well written in themselves. I mean Bhodi is pretty much only just "the pilot" He has zero other defining traits, and hardly any other actual lines of dialogue. He mutters "I'm the pilot" more than anything else in his script. Ok so...yeah, he's the pilot...and? Why do I care?

Like I agree they don't NEED to have compelling backgrounds, or emotional depth to fulfill their role in the script. That's evidenced by them doing exactly that in R1. But I'm flummoxed at the idea that this somehow makes them good characters? I dunno, I just find it strange that there is a defense for a forgettable main cast, in a movie that's all about them for the majority of the film, and their attempts at personal interactions and struggles.

They just felt like they were the placeholder characters in the first draft of the script, and everyone just forgot to actually put more work into who they were in the writing.

Chirrut's death was incredibly cruel in my opinion, given what The Force actually did. It allowed him to avoid shots for a slow stroll across 30 feet, to physically flip a switch, and then IMMEDIATELY get gunned down by a bajillion blaster shots, like some kind of cruel prank. Instead of letting him do the single most iconic move of the Force in the entire franchise, which is to move something with his mind, and he could go off and have a better death somewhere else. Baze had ZERO character to him at all other than "I'm Chirrut's friend", and just dies shooting a gun in a pointless display. Bhodi dies almost by accident, just behind some boxes to an explosion, and I swear I expected him to say "I'm the Pilot!" as he died, like some bizarre variant of HODOR! None of them had deaths that made me want to care, because no effort had been put into making me actually care about the characters. So their dramatic, tragic deaths, fell flat. Sure you can say "yeah well it was a suicide mission, so they're deaths were predetermined" Ok? Can you tell the movie that fact? Because it sure seemed to want me to give a crap about their deaths, given how much emphasis it put on their death scenes. It framed them as something that should make me sad, but failed, both in writing/framing of the shot, and apparently by the very nature of it being a suicide mission apparently.

 

[Agema]

A decent example, two book series by the same author. David Eddings wrote The Belgariad. A pretty good, if fairly standard fantasy "chosen one" storyline. Also he wrote another "chosen one" fantasy series in The Elenium. But they did feel fairly different, because of a big difference in protagonist. Garion, the chosen hero in The Belgariad (like a lot of chosen ones) started as a kid, grew with the story, and eventually became the big hero. The Elenium by contrast had a "chosen hero" who began the story as the biggest badass hero in all the land, and changed relatively little as he went through the story. And if anything, I found the Elenium the better story of the 2.

I found it very hard to consider the Elenium superior, for the simple reason I felt I was reading the Belgariad for the third time (the second time being the Mallorean).

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Rogue One was one of the worst star wars films for me, I cannot understand what people see in it, it's like everyone else is existing in a separate dimension. There was no character in any of the brilliant actors I can recall, no-one to care about when they eventually snuff if. Can't even make to the alleged best bit where Vader goes on a kill spree cause I just get so bored and frustrated with it I just turn to something more interesting instead. A waste of a unique premise (for star wars) and great talent IMO. It needed actual characters, not more or less arcs!

 

[Hawki]

I'm a massive fan of Rogue One, like painfully so. I kinda like it more than Return of The Jedi though I try not to say that too loudly. The most common complaint I hear about Rogue One is that none of the characters have any kind of Plot line or "arc" in the film and I just can't seem to grasp why they need one. The movie isn't really about them so much as the crew as a whole and the adventure. They're given just enough information that you understand their perspective and why they're there. It's sad when they die, but it's made clear in the movie that it was always a one way journey. It's a suicide mission. The movie doesn't ask you to invest a great deal of emotion into the individual journey. Most of the Deaths are pretty quick. The magnitude and direness of the situation is what you're supposed to be invested in.

I've been scratching my brain because I just don't get why people believe every character needs to have an arc to make movie good. Most the characters in Battle Royal don't have arcs, neither did the Oceans 11, which was what Rogue One took influence from thematically. Its a "Star Wars heist movie". The Marines didn't have character arcs in Aliens. I don't recall any arcs in the Magnificent Seven. I could go on and on.

I don't know. Putting Rogue Ones other flaws aside, does everyone think every character in a movie has to have an arc for you to enjoy it? Is there something about Rogue One that everyone thinks is different and demands character arcs?

Rogue One ranks near the bottom of all Star Wars films for me (I think it's the #3 worst), but the lack of character arcs isn't a problem per se. Jinn gets an arc, Cassian gets an arc, arguably Bohdi gets an arc, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that the first two thirds are so disjointed in terms of pacing and tone that it's impossible to get invested in any of what's happening. The third part is easily the best, and I think it's why a lot of people rank the film so highly. If I judged Rogue One solely based on the quality of its final part, it would be much higher, but taking it as a whole? Yeah...It's a mess.

Also, minor points, but Rogue One isn't a heist movie IMO. If you want an example of a heist movie in Star Wars, look at Solo - frankly, a much better film, with much better characters. Also, some marines in Aliens do have arcs (Gorman, Hudson, arguably Hicks), coupled with Ripley's own central character arc that ties in with the themes of the whole film.

 

[Kyrian007]

I found it very hard to consider the Elenium superior, for the simple reason I felt I was reading the Belgariad for the third time (the second time being the Mallorean).

Absolutely, but the similarities were not in the central protagonists. They were in the stock supporting characters and villains. And standard fantasy "chosen one" storyline. And standard fantasy setting. And fairly standard (although different but both standards in this case) systems of magic. And sentient physical object McGuffins. And the prophecies that made the protagonists the "chosen one." The small difference I highlighted, and why I find the Elenium superior, The Belgariad basically begins with Garion's birth. It runs the reader through a lot of formative stuff that always reminded me of that old adage Yhatzee quotes "is this the most important part of the main character's life, and if not... why aren't you showing us that?" The Elenium does just that. The reader starts at the beginning of the "main quest." You eventually find out Sparhawk was born destined to be the chosen one, but until the second series the reader doesn't know that. Until then he was just either the biggest badass and the one strong enough to get to the McGuffin first, or that the gods chose to wield a McGuffin because he was the biggest badass.

 

[Trunkage]

Rogue One was one of the worst star wars films for me, I cannot understand what people see in it, it's like everyone else is existing in a separate dimension. There was no character in any of the brilliant actors I can recall, no-one to care about when they eventually snuff if. Can't even make to the alleged best bit where Vader goes on a kill spree cause I just get so bored and frustrated with it I just turn to something more interesting instead. A waste of a unique premise (for star wars) and great talent IMO. It needed actual characters, not more or less arcs!

See, I watch the original movies and just see cardboard cut outs. Luke and Han aren't characters. They're action figures

Vader has never been scary or intimidating. He's incredibly incompetent and a bully. The Emperor goes out of his way to make sure he loses. The retcon in Rise is believable only because it helps make Return of the Jedi Emporer make sense

What a pair of nonsense villians

 

[MrCalavera]

I have a feeling it was more of most characters in Rogue One are pretty boring or under utilized, and so people just defaulted to the "there's no character development" complaint.

Correct.
I can name whole *two* characters that were introduced in R1: Jyn Erso, and on a good day, Cassian Andor(?).

 

[Worgen]

I loved Rogue One, thought it was easily the best modern star wars movie by a LONG way. But I don't remember almost any of them having an arc. Jyn Erso did, and died a Rebel hero. Cassian did and died a Rebel hero. and...and that's it. Its not that the others died unfulfilled, but they were kinda already fulfilled characters who agreed to go on the mission because they were ready to die. Like Chirrut was all one with the force, and kinda a failed Jedi, but he never managed to use his powers in the end. He just sorta died.

and to be fair it was a suicide mission, and we've known since 1975 that they all died, so that wasn't surprising in the least, but its kinda like asking if the dudes from Oceans 11 all needed an arc. The whole point is there were all pre-established humans who were already comfortable with what they were doing and what it would cost them.

I hated Rogue One, there aren't many movies that I actively hate, but it was one of those. There were 2 good scenes, the hammer shit ramming the star destroyer and the Vader scene at the end. Although, while the Vader scene was cool, it fucks up what his character is in the original movies and even kinda what the force is there.

This thread should really be about Rogue the Bat.