By Eddie Young
Sports Editor
On Friday, Sept. 29, director Gareth Edwards’ new original film, “The Creator,” will be released in theaters. It is the first movie he has directed since “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" came out in late 2016, almost seven years ago.
The movie, a science fiction film about a war in 2060 between humans and artificial intelligence, has been garnering a lot of buzz and praise from the early reviews that have been released, very similar to how “Rogue One” was received when it first came out.
Seven years ago, Edwards had a blockbuster in “Rogue One.” The movie earned over $1 billion in the box office, and according to movie websites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd, it is generally regarded as the fourth best “Star Wars” movie behind the three from the original trilogy.
The financial success of “Rogue One” was expected by many, with it being a part of the Star Wars franchise, but the praise it received from fans and critics alike was a pleasant surprise to many. Being released in the midst of the sequel trilogy, “Rogue One” may be the only “Star Wars” movie from the past 10 years that constantly receives positive publicity.
A big part of why Edwards’ last film has become beloved by many moviegoers is due to its successful approach at installing its overarching theme of hope. The word itself is said 12 times during the movie and is the final word uttered before the end credits hit, leaving you pondering about hope as you think about the movie you just watched. In a world driven by odds and numbers, “Rogue One” reminds everyone just how far hope can take you.
Now, all “Star Wars” movies play with the idea of hope in some way or another. Every one of their movies, in their simplest form, is about a tiny rebellion having to fight against a big evil empire. In these kinds of scenarios, the characters are always searching for hope.
However, in “Rogue One,” Edwards leans into this idea by using a bunch of unexpected heroes to portray the movie's hopefulness. Jyn Urso was a fighter but usually worked alone, Cassian Andor was a captain in the rebellion, Bodhi was a defector, Galen Urso was a man held hostage by his work for an evil empire he disagreed with, and Chirrut and Baze were poor people who had recently lost their main source of work.
Every single one of these characters had some trait that viewers could relate to. None of them had any special powers or mastery of the force, yet they ended up working together and committing many heroic acts that ended up saving many lives. They were just a group of ordinary people fighting for the greater good led by their belief in their abilities and hope that their missions would succeed at any cost.
With the theme of hope being represented in characters that are like the average person instead of some lightsaber-wielding, powerful Jedi who seem to be a tier above all other people, it is easier to get the theme to reach an audience made up of normal people.
With the beauty of hope and how far it can take you being shown in superpowerless characters, viewers end the movie feeling inspired, with a bit of that aspirational feeling being sparked inside of themselves. This newfound hopefulness may not be leading any viewers to try to take down an evil empire, but it can help them tackle any challenge life has been throwing at them.
In a movie that contains a lot of death and sadness in its final act, Edwards was still able to get his audience to feel joyful as “Rogue One” comes to an end, eliciting motivation in everyone who watched.
With Edwards’ seven-year directorial break coming to an end with the release of “The Creator”, movie lovers can only feel excitement. After his massive success with directing “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” Gareth Edwards gets to create his own science fiction story without the constraints of an already established “Star Wars” universe.
He was able to direct a movie based on one throwaway line in the original “Star Wars,” so with nothing holding him back, his creativity should be able to build a wonderful new universe.
It will be interesting to see what he does with all of this freedom and if the theme of hope plays a large part in this movie, as it did in his last.
