Rogue One

A slightly longer time ago than the original trilogy but a less long time ago than the mostly substandard prequel trilogy and in that self same galaxy, Death Star plans needed stealing. You remember, in the first ever film we are casually told that many people had died to get hold of those plans. Now, at last, we get the stand-alone story of some of those who did the dying.

Which is a whopping great spoiler really but fuck it, if you hadn't worked out that getting hold of them plans was pretty much a suicide mission you're either a complete moron or you just don't like Star Wars. Which makes you a moron.

Familiar tropes - kids who suffer the death of one or both parents; renegades (a new trope really, stirred into the mix from The Force Awakens); droids with personalities that allow for comic relief when the death toll starts to rise; awesome space noises; big fuck off explosions; good triumphs over evil.

But wait, this last is a little muddier than in any of the previous seven films in the franchise. I'm not saying it's not good that the Death Star plans get stolen which will in turn mean Luke and the gang will have a victorious first outing in the next chronological storyline (I'm not the moron, you are) but the tactics used by the spies and assassins en route to locating and obtaining the plans are not always the most honourable.

Han Solo shooting Guido in the cock before the bad guy pulls his own blaster out has had people so much at loggerheads that George Lucas decided to sanitise it and ruin the scene by making sure we see Guido go for his gun once the remastered originals came out. He'd find it hard to sanitise the rebellious rebels (literally a renegade group within the rebel alliance who initially act against orders) and their frankly Isis style approach to getting the materials and information they require at times.

Yes I did mention Isis and yes I did find many parallels with current world politics played out in Rogue One. A succession of insurgent actions on various planets with names that could substitute for Syria, Libya, Iraq or other Middle Eastern countries if you like your conspiracy theories (you're a Star Wars geek, of course you do) make it impossible to say whether the evil overlords are genuinely any worse than the quasi-terrorists opposing them. Just like the oil-rich, war torn countries suffering under imperialist western capitalism in our own corner of the galaxy, right?

Anyhoo, we root for Felicity Jones. Of course we do. She's spunky (not that anybody except me uses that word any more without vile porn inferences) and she's like a distant cousin of the more fleshed out Rey from The Force Awakens. We root for Diego Luna (and your momma too) even though he's playing the most complex and grey-shades character of them all.

Along with a ragtag gang of renegades and raw hides they battle in scenarios that evoke movies as diverse as Saving Private Ryan, Serenity (can't stop the signal, Mal), The Sands of Iwo Jima, and the Muppets Christmas Carol. Ha ha, not the last one really.

There are also plenty of nods to the Lucasverse itself, the most uncanny of which comes in the form of a resurrected Peter Cushing (who, apart from Bela Legosi, is probably the most suitable candidate for such digital trickery). Tiny cameos from R2D2 and C3PO make you realise that while Alan Tudyk's K-2SO provides sarcastic comebacks and one liners (and that Tudyk himself is another connection with Serenity) he's not really likely to become as well loved as the original Stan and Olly droids.

Oh and Mads Mikkelson now has to be in every blockbuster, it seems. And why not. He's as good in this as he is in Doctor Strange but I do always wait for his eye to weep blood. That's from a different franchise, dontcha know?

All in all, Rogue One is visually spectacular, the dialogue isn't quite as good as JJ Abrams work for The Force Awakens but beats the shit out of the dreary print the prequel actors had to somehow bestow with meaning, and Darth Vader is in it just enough to make the eleven year old in me a wee bit frightened but not so much that we forget this isn't a major timeline story, just a glimpse into some of the billions of other lives affected by and contributing to the good versus evil conflict pissing with the vibes in that long ago and far away galaxy.

I will watch it again, even though Tilda Swinton is not in it. Which means I like it. And I'm a Star Wars geek. As are you. Or you're a moron.

Doctor Strange

He isn't Sherlock. He isn't Khan from Star Trek Beyond. He isn't that rubbish siege negotiator from Four Lions. He's strange. With a capital S. But he's kinda small S strange too.

Yes, Bendyback Cumblebath has entered the Marvel fray as the franchise's biggest oddball. The original comics were a sixties take on a normal human being acquiring superpowers not through exposure to radiation or technological genius but by delving deep into the world of mysticism. Like wow, dude, that's so hippy.

But he's not a hippy. No, he's an arrogant son of a bitch who also happens to be one of the greatest surgeons on the planet. He doesn't HAVE to be American even though he is in the source material, but he is played American so we know he isn't Sherlock. Or Khan. Or that negotiator. Or because Stan Lee would have had a heart attack if they'd messed with his counter-culture baby too much for its big screen debut.

One car crash and two fucked up hands later Dr Stephen Strange is so desperate to cure himself and return to arrogantly saving people's lives in an operating theatre that he alienates his former girlfriend (a disappointingly male-gaze empty shell of a character played, presumably with little enthusiasm, by Rachel McAdams) and heads to the Orient in search of salvation.

What he finds is Tilda Swinton as an ancient guru type. Oh she's allowed to have a British accent. She's allowed to be a woman which she most certainly was not in the graphic novels. She's also awesome, both as a character and as the actor playing that character (sorry, did I break the fourth wall? Geek off, you'll be complaining about spoilers next).

Tilda teaches Bendyback how to do the warping space in on itself stuff from Inception only more magic mushroom stylee but Mads Mikkelson can also do this and he's a bad guy. He's stolen bad naughty knowledge from Tilda's special books and is going to summon up ultimate evil to eat up this universe. Luckily there are, we learn, an infinite number of universes but we're humans so we only give a shit about the one we're in and Comfybath has to save everything and everyone. With some help from the Ancient One's non-bad disciples.

Do they succeed, you wonder, if you haven't seen the film. Let's just say a sequel is in the pipeline, shall we?

Cumblepatch is suitably strange to be Strange and suitably different from Mr Downey Jr not to make the character seem too much like a riff on Iron Man (with hocus pocus instead of a big metal suit). Mikkelson is a heavyweight enough villain to ensure the self-centred Strange rises to the occasion when required. The visuals are astonishing without overshadowing the action or the plot.

Plot - it's not the best and it's not the worst in the celluloid Marvel universe. It's a prolonged setting of the stage for the weird doctor to presumably get completely fruitloop on us next time out. It works well enough. I'd watch it again. I watch most things more than once if they have Tilda Swinton in them, though. And so should you.