Half In The Bag’s Rogue One Review “Broke New Ground”

Red Letter Media’s Half In The Bag review of Rogue One is so good, it practically “broke new ground!” Rogue One was the follow-up to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and whereas that film was one of the most anticipated blockbusters in recent memory, Rogue One didn’t have quite the same weight of expectations. The movie acts as a prequel to A New Hope and details a band of misfit rebels who comes together to steal the plans for the Death Star. The movie is notable for being one of the darkest of the franchise, featuring characters with murky morality and a ridiculously large bodycount.

Since Rogue One ends mere minutes before the opening scenes of A New Hope, it’s positively littered with easter eggs and cameos, with one of the most controversial involving Peter Cushing’s likeness being used to make Grand Moff Tarkin part of the story. While Rogue One went through reshoots and re-edits, it ultimately proved to be a solid critical and financial hit for the studio and is one of the better received of Disney’s Star Wars movies.

One outlet who definitely didn’t share this sentiment was Red Letter Media. RLM first rose to fame with a viral review of The Phantom Menace, where founder Mike Stoklasa – in character as the deranged Mr. Plinkett – breaks apart why the prequel didn’t work. RLM later created other webseries, including Half In The Bag and Best Of The Worst, and they are considered one of the best movie review channels on the internet.

On that score, Half In The Bag’s takedown of Rogue One is one of their best videos, if only for its hilarious – and very sweary opening – as Stoklasa and co-hosts Jay Bauman and Rich Evans breathlessly cover all the familiar, fanboy baiting elements found in the movie. Everything from Darth Vader to AT-AT walkers, lightsabers and the Lucasfilm logo get praise, with Mike’s shrieking the lack of an opening crawl “broke new ground!” resulting in everyone breaking character and corpsing. The review then digs into exactly what they didn’t like about it, which included throwing in countless references in service of what they felt was an empty story populated by dull characters.

It’s hard to argue characters like Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are inherently less compelling than those from the original Star Wars trilogy. Half In The Bag’s Rogue One review even felt the darkness of the story – which was mostly well-received by fans and critics – was out of place in what’s essentially a family adventure, and a more entertaining route would have seen it play out like an intergalactic, Ocean’s Eleven-style heist movie.

Needless to say, Red Letter Media weren’t fond of the uncanny valley look of Moff Tarkin or Princess Leia either. Half In The Bag’s Rogue One review is an example of what they do best, which is combine scathing humor with actual critical analysis. For many, Rogue One isn’t anywhere near as bad as they make out, but at least they can back up their critiques thoughtfully.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
(3486 Articles Published)

See also  Venom 2: Plot-Holes & Headscratchers

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

More From Padraig Cotter