ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY – What’s Your Structural Focus?

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY What's Your Structural Focus? This week we’ll be looking at Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  Which is about as far as we can go from last installment’s Oscar Winner Manchester By The Sea.     Rogue One is a silly joyride of a script, built with half-drawn characters, nonsensical plot twists, and a hundred other flaws. And yet, while clearly feeling a bit trifling in scope compared to the other Star Wars films, it nevertheless delivers in a big way what its audience is seeking.   What’s also particularly interesting about Rogue One for screenwriters is the way it dives into a moment that is literally just a blip on the radar in Star Wars: Episode 4, and discovers there an entire backstory, worthy of a film itself.   The ability to dive deep into any moment and find drama is one of the most exciting things about screenwriting (and one of the most important skills you can develop as a screenwriter).  It means that truly anything-- even just a little question like “how did they find those Death Star plans anyway?” can become a movie, if you’re willing to look closely enough.   But it’s also a reminder of how easy it is to get waylaid by backstory and exposition as we write and rewrite our scripts. Because as successful as Rogue One might be as a stand alone film, just imagine the effect it would have had if George Lucas had tried to squeeze all that exciting backstory into Star Wars: Episode 4, rather than just allowing the rebels to already have the plans.   He would have been 100 pages into the script, and Darth Vader wouldn’t even have boarded that first starship.  We wouldn’t have met Luke Skywalker. We wouldn’t know the real story we were following.   So, we’re going to talk about what makes Rogue One work, and more importantly, we’re going to explore a concept called Structural Focus and how you can use it, both in writing and rewriting a script, to keep you focused on what really matters, whether that’s diving deep to find the drama in a specific moment, or keeping yourself above at a bird’s eye view, to keep your focus on the big picture of the story you’re telling.   So what makes Rogue One work?   If you’ve listened to my podcast on Star Wars: The Force Awakens then you know that these movies are being built more like a TV Series than like traditional Feature Films-- replicating the same Structural Engine over and over again to create a genre experience for the audience that feels the same as the one they got from previous episodes, but just different enough to make them feel like they got value for their money.   The elements that compose this Engine are always the same.   For the Star Wars franchise, it’s always some version of a Death Star, a McGuffin (usually plans) that everyone is trying to get their hands on, gorgeous space chase and fight sequences with super bad-ass technology, a juxtaposition of jaded “Hans Solo” and innocent “Luke Skywalker” characters working on the same team, a neurotic Droid, a complicated father/child relationship, and most importantly, a spiritual journey in relation to the Force.   As Episodes 1, 2 & 3 proved, Star Wars movies abandon these elements at their peril. Successful episodes can shake up these elements and approach them in different ways, but if they ignore them, the films stop feeling like Star Wars and start feeling like something else.   And of course if you’ve studied TV Drama  or TV Comedy writing with us you know this is the exact same thing that happens in TV Series Writing.   Rogue One is just another reconstitution of these same elements-- some, in a vague way, and some in a very specific way.   At the core of the film are the characters we care about most. We don’t care about them because we haven’t seen them before. We care about them because we haven’t seen them this way before.       The most compelling of the bunch is Chirrut Imwe, a blind warrior, who is the character in this film who will go on the biggest spiritual journey in relation to The Force. His journey is an interesting reshuffling of The Force element of the Engine, for two reasons.   The first is because we expect from previous films that the main character, Jyn Erso, is going to be the “Luke Skywalker” character who goes through this spiritual journey. As a child, she’s even given a special pendant by her mother to remind her of the Force. And it’s easy to start anticipating her spiritual awakening, especially given the many character traits she shares with Rey of The Force Awakens (She’s another bad-ass, scrappy “orphan” girl straight out of Central Casting).   So, even though we’ve seen the idea of “the Force awakening” in the least likely person in the The Force Awakens, we still feel like we’re seeing something new, since we’re served the same meal on a different plate.   The other reason Chirrut Imwe is so compelling is that his journey in relation to The Force is slightly different than the ones of the characters who preceded him. Though he seems to have some ability to tap into The Force (like “seeing” Jyn’s pendant under her clothes, even with his blind eyes, and communicating telepathically with her), he doesn’t seem to understand the Force in the way that we do, having seen the previous movies. For him, it’s more of a Mantra-- something he has faith in, than something he totally understands.   And spoilers ahead…   Even though his use of The Force does save the mission, it doesn’t save him, or any of his friends. We are not looking at the “Luke Skywalker” type awakening of a new Jedi like we saw in Episodes 4, 5, 6 and The Force Awakens.     Rather, we’re watching a character go on a journey in relation to his faith. And tapping into something that he will never fully be able to harness.   Chirrut Imwe’s journey gives Rogue One the spiritual thread the Star Wars engine demands, while still departing enough from the formula to take us to a place that feels at once surprising and inevitable.   More importantly, the clarity of Chirrut Imwe’s want, to become a Jedi Warrior, gives structure to his journey, and makes him a character we can care about and root for.   And the new take on his understanding of the Force, and the ironic end of his journey in relation to our expectations from the other movies, allows him to feel specific and new, even though on the surface he’s just another recycled “blind sage” stereotype we’ve seen in a thousand action movies-- all the way down to his magical fighting moves that seem to defy his blindness (or at least suggest that the blind in our galaxy are dramatically underperforming).   Similarly, the neurotic droid role (C-3PO in the original Star Wars movies) in Rogue One is inhabited by a reprogrammed Imperial Droid named K-2SO.   But unlike C-3PO’s neurotic anxiety, K-2SO’s dominant trait is his delightfully funny, passive-aggressive shade throwing. While all C-3PO wants is to stay safe, all K-2SO wants is to fight in the rebellion. Specifically, he desperately wants his own blaster. His shade, in this way, isn’t just a personality trait. It’s structural-- growing specifically out of his most desperate want, and his unique how of trying to get it.   For this reason, it’s easy to fall in love with K-2SO, to root for him, care about him, laugh with him. Even though he’s also just another permutation of the same ol’ formula, it’s his specific want, and his specific how that make him feel… well… human.   Contrast these characters with the ones that work much less successfully, starting most notably with Jyn Erso.   No matter how ridiculous the plot of their story and the familiarity of their character traits, you probably found yourself caring about K-2SO and Chirrut Imwe. But if your experience was anything like mine, you probably found it hard to really feel anything for Jyn.   This despite a gorgeous opening scene, in which Jyn, as a small child, is violently separated from her loving father--   This despite the complicated relationship with both her birth father and her adoptive “father” figure, and the structural similarity of her “hero’s journey” from “scrappy orphan who only cares about her own survival” to “rebel leader and savior of the galaxy”--   Unlike her structural twin Rey in The Force Awakens, and unlike K-2SO and Chirrut Imwe, the adult Jyn just doesn’t feel like a real character, despite a good performance from the actor. She feels only half drawn.   There are many reasons for this. The biggest challenge is that unlike these other characters, until the very end, Jyn’s want is not active. She’s not moving toward something--she’s moving away from it.   She doesn’t want to be in jail, she doesn’t want to be captured, she doesn’t want to join the rebels (she’s forced to do it), she doesn’t want to see her “adoptive” father, she doesn’t even really want to see her real father.   She’s forced to do all these things, reacting to others, rather than pursuing her own wants-- until after her father’s death, when she decides for unclear reasons that she desperately wants to join the rebels and carry out her father’s plan.   Because her want is not clear, the how that grows from it-- her dominant trait as a character, lacks the specificity of the other characters we’ve discussed. We know that she’s a Luke-Skywalker/Rey-Type. But we can’t feel the specific drive that makes her this way.