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anghraineI’ve ranted before about how much I dislike the idea that the Rogue One team’s deaths are mandated by continuity, given that 1) we only ever see the Rebellion in glimpses, with new-yet-longstanding leaders appearing with every movie, and 2) they’re spies.
But I think I’m even more :| at the idea that it was mandated by their in-story characters. That is, that the Scarif mission is about as good as it was ever going to get for them, and they’re too troubled/unconventional/traumatized/rootless/whatever to find any real peace or happiness in living. Dying in triumph and hope was really the kindest end for them. Et cetera.
I mean, part of it is that aggressive unsentimentality is not really my deal. Beyond that, though, I really can see the reasoning, and I leaned somewhat that way in the beginning, but the more I think about it—especially now that I can watch closely—the more dissatisfying I find it.
I think it’s fair to say that each reaches some sort of culminating moment during the mission, something that lifts them above everything that had come before. Chirrut’s faith in the Force is justified. Baze’s is restored. Bodhi runs out on sheer nerve. Kaytoo fights selflessly with his coveted blaster. Jyn and Cassian get unstained heroism and companionship. They all find a clarity and peace as they approach death that they never did in life.
The problem is that it’s exactly that—as they approach death, not as they meet it. For most of them, the clarity they find is in no way contingent on actually dying.
Thinking about it, that’s an interesting, and I think very significant, choice. Each character has that clear-eyed moment of choice, a moment that leads to heroic action with a high risk of death. But it’s a risk, not an inevitability.
I mean … okay, the ultimate Heroic Sacrifice for SW is always going to be Anakin Skywalker giving his life to save Luke. And the thing there is that Anakin could not possibly survive what he did. He knew it was going to kill him. His death was the direct and inevitable consequence of the action he chose; he consciously sacrificed his life for his son’s.
This is not what the Rogue One team does. They know they’re running up against steep odds, sure. But there’s no intention of a 1:1 exchange, a heroic sacrifice of their lives for the good of the galaxy. The movie goes out of its way to highlight their hope of survival, with Jyn and Cassian reminding Bodhi that he’s their ticket out. And for most of them, death isn’t the immediate price of their actions.
Bodhi doesn’t die in the course of achieving the task he takes on himself. He risks death to do it, succeeds, and then gets blown up by a grenade because he’s on a battlefield with people throwing grenades around. He doesn’t know he’s going to get blown up when he takes his chance; it’s a very real possibility, but his actions do not inherently entail death by grenade. It just happens.
Likewise, the probability is strong that Chirrut is going to get shot at some point between their cover and the switch. Instead, the Force gets Chirrut to the switch, validating his faith. His faith would not be less validated if the Force also protected him on the way back. It just … doesn’t. Flipping the switch isn’t fatal in itself, though. He risks getting killed and survives and then, welp, gets killed.
It’s even more extreme with Jyn and Cassian, and I think more pointed. As mentioned above, it’s Jyn and Cassian who explicitly hope to make it out. When it seems that Cassian has been killed in the actual execution of their job—when he’s urged Jyn to keep going in awareness of his likely imminent death—it’s a fake-out.
Cassian is injured, but less than would be expected, particularly given that his spine hit a metal beam on the way down and he must have climbed his way out afterwards. When Jyn, also injured, also faces down what looks like inevitable death in the course of transmitting the plans, Cassian reappears and they take out the only immediate threat to them. The narrative goes out of its way to emphasize that they aren’t killed for the plans or in the process of getting them out.
Even more than with Bodhi and Chirrut, Jyn and Cassian’s mission is by no means fatal in itself. They defeat Krennic and transmit the plans without further problems. They escape through the Citadel. They walk across the battlefield. They had no idea that Tarkin would obliterate his own base; it’s not like they’re up on Imperial office politics. It just happens.
And it’s very, very clear: they don’t want to die. They’re scared throughout the entire mission, of their own deaths and each other’s. They’re scared on the beach, when they know they’re both going to die, even though it’s probably the kindest death they could have. They want to live. They want to escape together and they don’t. What peace they find is despite the horror of death, not because of it.
Similarly, Bodhi is somewhere between resigned and horrified when he sees the grenade. Chirrut accepts death, but doesn’t seek it. Kay risks death to protect Cassian and his mission, but he doesn’t welcome destruction; he goes down fighting. Baze is the only one who courts death, and that only in his grief over Chirrut.
Until the mission goes sideways, moreover, they’re doing better. Bodhi is largely coherent and determined. Chirrut has, to all appearances, settled on a productive outlet for his faith, with Baze trailing after him and forging surrogate family. Kay is on more or less good terms with Jyn and committed beyond his devotion to Cassian personally. Jyn has found purpose and Cassian freedom through their influence on each other, and they’re awkwardly but eagerly gravitating into romance. Dying isn’t the best thing for any of them. It’s not.
The tragedy here isn’t that the war damaged these people so badly that they could never find their places in the galaxy. It’s that these damaged people were healing and could have been happy, but resisting tyranny cut their lives short.
The Rogue One team decided that taking action was worth the risk to themselves, while very much hoping they would survive. Instead, most of them got senselessly killed after the fact. That’s the point. People die fighting, like Baze and Kay. People die in crossfire and general chaos, like Chirrut and Bodhi. People die as collateral damage, like Jyn and Cassian.
Don’t get me wrong! I break my heart over Vader’s death every damn time I watch ROTJ. I love the narrative of “my life is a ruinous hellscape, but this sacrifice gives me the chance to achieve something good and meaningful with it.” It’s just—Rogue One is not that narrative. It’s doing something quite different, and I feel like treating the characters as existentially doomed diminishes that.
original tags:
#their lives /could/ have been better than their deaths #and given the trajectories they were on almost certainly would have been #that's the tragedy! and it really does go out of its way to insist on the possibility of survival #on the characters'—esp jyn's and cassian's—desire for survival #and again particularly with jyn and cassian raises and rejects the possibility #of a tragic but meaningful exchange of their lives for their mission #and instead they're senselessly killed after the fact #and they're /scared/ and ... aj;fdjkl;df #i just think it's very important that this really wasn't the best way for them #they risked a very real chance at better lives for the good of the galaxy and wanted to live and didn't
But I think I’m even more :| at the idea that it was mandated by their in-story characters. That is, that the Scarif mission is about as good as it was ever going to get for them, and they’re too troubled/unconventional/traumatized/rootless/whatever to find any real peace or happiness in living. Dying in triumph and hope was really the kindest end for them. Et cetera.
I mean, part of it is that aggressive unsentimentality is not really my deal. Beyond that, though, I really can see the reasoning, and I leaned somewhat that way in the beginning, but the more I think about it—especially now that I can watch closely—the more dissatisfying I find it.
I think it’s fair to say that each reaches some sort of culminating moment during the mission, something that lifts them above everything that had come before. Chirrut’s faith in the Force is justified. Baze’s is restored. Bodhi runs out on sheer nerve. Kaytoo fights selflessly with his coveted blaster. Jyn and Cassian get unstained heroism and companionship. They all find a clarity and peace as they approach death that they never did in life.
The problem is that it’s exactly that—as they approach death, not as they meet it. For most of them, the clarity they find is in no way contingent on actually dying.
Thinking about it, that’s an interesting, and I think very significant, choice. Each character has that clear-eyed moment of choice, a moment that leads to heroic action with a high risk of death. But it’s a risk, not an inevitability.
I mean … okay, the ultimate Heroic Sacrifice for SW is always going to be Anakin Skywalker giving his life to save Luke. And the thing there is that Anakin could not possibly survive what he did. He knew it was going to kill him. His death was the direct and inevitable consequence of the action he chose; he consciously sacrificed his life for his son’s.
This is not what the Rogue One team does. They know they’re running up against steep odds, sure. But there’s no intention of a 1:1 exchange, a heroic sacrifice of their lives for the good of the galaxy. The movie goes out of its way to highlight their hope of survival, with Jyn and Cassian reminding Bodhi that he’s their ticket out. And for most of them, death isn’t the immediate price of their actions.
Bodhi doesn’t die in the course of achieving the task he takes on himself. He risks death to do it, succeeds, and then gets blown up by a grenade because he’s on a battlefield with people throwing grenades around. He doesn’t know he’s going to get blown up when he takes his chance; it’s a very real possibility, but his actions do not inherently entail death by grenade. It just happens.
Likewise, the probability is strong that Chirrut is going to get shot at some point between their cover and the switch. Instead, the Force gets Chirrut to the switch, validating his faith. His faith would not be less validated if the Force also protected him on the way back. It just … doesn’t. Flipping the switch isn’t fatal in itself, though. He risks getting killed and survives and then, welp, gets killed.
It’s even more extreme with Jyn and Cassian, and I think more pointed. As mentioned above, it’s Jyn and Cassian who explicitly hope to make it out. When it seems that Cassian has been killed in the actual execution of their job—when he’s urged Jyn to keep going in awareness of his likely imminent death—it’s a fake-out.
Cassian is injured, but less than would be expected, particularly given that his spine hit a metal beam on the way down and he must have climbed his way out afterwards. When Jyn, also injured, also faces down what looks like inevitable death in the course of transmitting the plans, Cassian reappears and they take out the only immediate threat to them. The narrative goes out of its way to emphasize that they aren’t killed for the plans or in the process of getting them out.
Even more than with Bodhi and Chirrut, Jyn and Cassian’s mission is by no means fatal in itself. They defeat Krennic and transmit the plans without further problems. They escape through the Citadel. They walk across the battlefield. They had no idea that Tarkin would obliterate his own base; it’s not like they’re up on Imperial office politics. It just happens.
And it’s very, very clear: they don’t want to die. They’re scared throughout the entire mission, of their own deaths and each other’s. They’re scared on the beach, when they know they’re both going to die, even though it’s probably the kindest death they could have. They want to live. They want to escape together and they don’t. What peace they find is despite the horror of death, not because of it.
Similarly, Bodhi is somewhere between resigned and horrified when he sees the grenade. Chirrut accepts death, but doesn’t seek it. Kay risks death to protect Cassian and his mission, but he doesn’t welcome destruction; he goes down fighting. Baze is the only one who courts death, and that only in his grief over Chirrut.
Until the mission goes sideways, moreover, they’re doing better. Bodhi is largely coherent and determined. Chirrut has, to all appearances, settled on a productive outlet for his faith, with Baze trailing after him and forging surrogate family. Kay is on more or less good terms with Jyn and committed beyond his devotion to Cassian personally. Jyn has found purpose and Cassian freedom through their influence on each other, and they’re awkwardly but eagerly gravitating into romance. Dying isn’t the best thing for any of them. It’s not.
The tragedy here isn’t that the war damaged these people so badly that they could never find their places in the galaxy. It’s that these damaged people were healing and could have been happy, but resisting tyranny cut their lives short.
The Rogue One team decided that taking action was worth the risk to themselves, while very much hoping they would survive. Instead, most of them got senselessly killed after the fact. That’s the point. People die fighting, like Baze and Kay. People die in crossfire and general chaos, like Chirrut and Bodhi. People die as collateral damage, like Jyn and Cassian.
Don’t get me wrong! I break my heart over Vader’s death every damn time I watch ROTJ. I love the narrative of “my life is a ruinous hellscape, but this sacrifice gives me the chance to achieve something good and meaningful with it.” It’s just—Rogue One is not that narrative. It’s doing something quite different, and I feel like treating the characters as existentially doomed diminishes that.
original tags:
#their lives /could/ have been better than their deaths #and given the trajectories they were on almost certainly would have been #that's the tragedy! and it really does go out of its way to insist on the possibility of survival #on the characters'—esp jyn's and cassian's—desire for survival #and again particularly with jyn and cassian raises and rejects the possibility #of a tragic but meaningful exchange of their lives for their mission #and instead they're senselessly killed after the fact #and they're /scared/ and ... aj;fdjkl;df #i just think it's very important that this really wasn't the best way for them #they risked a very real chance at better lives for the good of the galaxy and wanted to live and didn't