Rogue One The Moral Choices/Dilemmas of Rogue One

The way I see Rogue One, and all Star Wars movies, really, is that they're a blend of genres. ANH basically goes from western to space adventure to war film; ESB goes from war film to fantasy to space adventure; both are also comedies. But each movie will then emphasise a certain genre. Rogue One just tilts more towards a war movie, but that genre was always in the DNA of Star Wars--it's basically an extrapolation of the third act of ANH and ROTJ and the first act of ESB.

 

Agreed. Though the difference with RO, I think, is that its "war film" elements are more akin to war films set during the Vietnam era, than those of early, gung-ho WWII films, which gives it a murkier feeling. Add to that an espionage element, which was only briefly touched on in AOTC, and it's a very different kind of "war film" we're exploring. The Saw scenes, for example, remind me most of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

The warfare in RO is less operatic, sanitized and glorified than in the OT (and much of the PT). There are elements of that opera at the Battle of Scarif, but it's not the norm.

 

That's what the Community Forums are for - so I've taken the topic there.

 

The Rebels aren't anyway comparable with the Empire in the film. The Empire nukes cities, planets just to instill fear in their enemies. The Rebels don't do anything close to that.

Cassian makes a couple choices that may not acceptable for US spies today. To my understanding (which may be wrong), US spies nowadays can't commit murder to protect their cover. That's one reason why CIA agents couldn't infiltrate Al-Qaeda. That could place them in a situation in which they would have to kill to prove their loyalty. Cassian kills an informant because it might lead to his capture. I'm not sure modern day US spy would be allowed to do something like that. Cassian's shooting of a Partisan who would've killed Jyn seems more acceptable.

Now the Partisans seem more like a borderline terrorist group, but their methods are rejected by the Rebels. You don't see them targeting civilians or using super-weapons, but I wouldn't put that past Saw given his depiction in the film. He's halfway lost his mind. Plus, he uses torture to extract information. I can't think of a single Western country that would condone torture today (), and if a country did stoop to that level, those who ordered it would certainly be put on trial as war criminals. Personally I'm just thankful that I live in a nation that would never do such things and would never elect a leader who would propose counter-terrorism strategies like using torture or killing the families of terrorists as a deterrent or retribution ().

The other morally questionable act in the film is assassinating a scientist working on a weapon of mass destruction. I'm pretty sure the US and Israel have had the opportunity to murder top nuclear scientists working in Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea. With North Korea, fear of retaliation would have prevented that, but I'm not sure the same is true for Iran. The US/Israel went forward with releasing a computer virus that crippled the Iranian nuclear program without fear of retaliation. That's probably more crippling to their program than killing some top scientists, so there was probably a moral component for why assassination wasn't used, or at least a recognition that that would violate norms of warfare.

If the Allies had known that Hitler had a legit shot at making a nuke and they had the opportunity to kill their top nuclear scientists, I'd bet that they'd go ahead with that, especially if those scientists were actual officers in the German military, not civilians, but I'm not sure about that. Even someone as morally twisted as Hitler had some lines he wouldn't cross. For instance, he rejected the idea of ordering his pilots to commit kamikaze missions. (Who the hell knows what was going on in his paranoid mind by the end of the war.) Sure, the Allies killed tons of civilians, but I think in nearly every case there was at least something of military value (a factory, a railway, etc) that they could ostensibly claim was the real target (Nagasaki had shipyards and 90% of the factory workers there were employed in making war material, Hiroshima had port and a big military HQ).

But maybe someone here knows more about this than I do. Has the US or some other western power ever targeted a scientist for assassination in the modern era?

To me, their decision to assassinate Galen was the most questionable act, but it seems likely that the Allies would've done the same thing in WW2, and assassinating a scientist is nothing compared with blowing up cities/planets just for PR value.

 

LOL, you made a thread out of this? You need to get out of the house more. The rest of my post that you cut out said (of course) I don't have time to type a 100,000- word debate, nor would I care to.

BTW- I saw the thread title and ROFL, the theme of the discussion was whether Stalin actually saved the world BY industrialization, and whether the allies would have lost the war had Russia still been a farm community with a bush league army (and not made the great sacrifices that they did), not the sidebar that you made a thread out of. Was that the lesser detail that you thought you could win in a debate in? Back on topic.

 

As fascinating as the Stalin discussion is, what I saw in R1 felt more like a proxy war scenario - where you often see disreputable types being supported by external powers rather than committing to an open war.

Saw's rebels had a muhajadin feel about them. With no land forces comitted the Rebellion were perhaps turning to local warlords like Saw for help and offering some limited air support (hence the downed x-wing).

Pretty much the way the West has used allied tribes in Iraq and Syria.

In proxy wars often it's the spies that are the most active on behalf of competing powers - disrupting industry, assassinating officials and gathering intel. And we also saw this very clearly in R1 as well.

 

I didn't get that sense, but I felt that Rogue One gave the Rebel Alliance more characterization in that they did some nasty things in order to fight back. Not flawless paragons of virtue by any measure. I found it excellent fleshing out of the lore.

 

And, yet, the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs on non-military targets in August 1945. The very weapons for which the Death Star metaphorically represent.

The representation of occupied Jedha by the Empire for a specific resource and the insurgent warfare of the occupied depicted is a not so thin portrayal of current realities in parts of the world looking significantly like Jedha.

 

i loved this part of the movie tbh. to much of the other movies and the old eu was empire evil/alliance good. where in real war there are good and bad on both sides it was refreshing and i loved that rogue one showed us that. we also got a similar view in the novel lost stars

 

Enough of this back and forth, guys. Back on topic, indeed.

 

I don't even know what Cassian was supposed to do differently in the scenario with the informant, that information must get to the Alliance no matter what.

All these pages of pontificating and holier than thou and not one alternative action that yields a more positive outcome. Even if he could get a way the informant is going to be captured tortured, broken, and most likely killed anyway with the side effect of giving up the game to the Empire and probably exposing at least two cells both Cassian's and Saw's if not more.

Andor made a distasteful but the best and most moral decision available to him. Sometimes one can only choose the least bad option and there are no good ones that are possible.

You don't get to call actions even as questionable when one cannot even present an alternative that does bear even more bitter fruit.

 

i had a similar feeling. the rebellion was way more powerful (or had revealed themselves as such) than i would have expected before ANH (or perhaps way more daring; the two are related). i didn't like the battle of scarif at first, but it's grown on me since. mainly it's because of the death star. i think it makes sense that the emperor might not foresee the response to it. most people ("people" includes non-humans) would not want some terrible thing like the death star out there. if the light side of the force was ever to make a dramatic reappearance, it would be for something like the death star. even those who swore themselves to the empire might fundamentally disagree with creating such a weapon.

 

When the Death Star blew up an entire city as a "test," the movie gave me this odd impression that the Empire was worse than the Rebellion.

 

...which only got worse when Tarkin ordered the destruction of the Scarif facility, accepting the deaths of a lot of Imperial personnel as collateral damage (and it still got worse in ANH, as his interest of reacquiring the Death Star plans / preventing the Alliance from getting these looked rather lackluster - his top priority had become to locate the hidden Rebel base).

TAGGI And what of the Rebellion? If the
Rebels have obtained a complete
technical readout of this station,
it is possible, however unlikely,
that they might find a weakness and
exploit it.

VADER The plans you refer to will soon be
back in our hands.

MOTTI Any attack made by the Rebels against
this station would be a useless
gesture, no matter what technical
data they've obtained. This station
is now the ultimate power in the
universe. I suggest we use it!

(Tarkin doesn't object, he rather seems to agree as his next remark says nothing about the Death Star plans)

TARKIN This bickering is pointless. Lord
Vader will provide us with the
location of the Rebel fortress by
the time this station is operational.
We will then crush the Rebellion
with one swift stroke.

 

Nearly half a million people present on the planet, going by Rogue One Visual Guide.

In practice, the 11 million people across the whole planet are generally unlikely to escape before being hit by things like blast wave, earthquakes, and falling matter from the blasted crater - so it isn't just the city that's being killed.

 

When Cassian shot that dude at the beginning (forgot his name) because he was injured, do you think that was the only option Cassian had? In other words, was it the most humane thing to do for that poor guy, because it was either shoot him right then and there, or let the Empire capture both of them for torture and interrogation?

Or was it a cold-blooded move by Cassian so he save his own ass while throwing out the "leave no man behind" mantra?

What are your thoughts on this?

 

My immediate impression was that Cassian knew the informant would be captured as he was injured and had no means of escape, so Cassian shot him to silence him as he knew that he would break under interrogation. I don't think he had the informant's wellbeing in mind.

 

He deserved it..

 

RO does a good job at showing us the dark side of the Rebel Alliance. People like Cassian and Draven are willing to sacrifice anyone who runs even the slightest risk of jeopardizing their cause. Bringing down the Empire is their top priority - perhaps their only priority - so they run a strict "no loose ends" policy.

 

He had to shoot the guy 'cause he would never manage to escape, and would end up giving the Empire vital information.

This is the moment when I saw Rogue One was really a war movie.

 

It had nothing to do with saving his own butt. The guy had no reasonable hope of escape and was likely going to break under torture. Cassian now knows of a super weapon being built. You think he is gonna risk the Empire knowing that the Alliance knows about it? He had to. Letting the guy live would have caused more death in the long run and while it was a n evil act it was also necessary. To quote Leia from SW annual 2:

 

I fully agree with the in story reasoning for Cassian to shoot the guy. He had to, otherwise that guy would have cracked under pressure and brought more danger to the Rebellion. Cassian also needed to keep the Saw Gererra connection intact, and since this guy was connected to Saw, he could have compromised that as well.

But keep in mind, those are all things we can only infer after the fact of seeing the whole movie play out.

Because what I don't agree with is how they portrayed it to us as viewers. There just wasn't any context for it. It felt forced, like it was meant to establish Cassian right off the bat as this ruthless tough guy who is capable of doing that but who is also a good guy fighting for the Rebellion. It should have been the other way around, where we see Cassian the good guy who then commits this act, which then makes us realize what a grey area he is operating in. And with the guy who got shot, maybe a scene that showed how likely it would be for him to actually be compromised, maybe as he's questioned by Stormtroopers or something, so we know that he actually should be killed.

They could have shortened the young Jyn sequence, like do away with that long drawn out confrontation between Galen and Krennic, and instead added more establishing scenes for the main characters.

 

I feel the opposite. It is better to show Cassian as brutal and make us question just how right he was in that situation as first. Make the audience have to wait to really understand the stakes and have them be able to look back at a scene that at first seems to be cruel and unnecessary and see that really it was what Cassian had to do. Also showing the guy talking to a Stormie and showing 100% that he would break even more than they already did would lessen the brutality of the situation. Instead of showing that he would have told for sure or having Cassian be shown as a really nice guy and then telling us he is grey, the way they did it instead shows just how thin the line is and how much being a Rebel takes out of you. Cassian seems very much like a bad guy at first and appears to be in the wrong almost when you first see it which gives you, in hindsight, a better sense of just how real this fight is. The best heroes the galaxy has can just as easily seem like villains in a different context. Holding the audiences hand means you lose some of that blurred line and don't drive home the point that war makes monster of us all as clearly as the film ended up doing.

 

vncredleader: Fair point. I was just kind of throwing out an example of how it could have gone. Seeing the bad side of Cassian first would be alright. But they could have shown Cassian in that light and still provided more context for it. To me it happened too abruptly the way that it did, and it just felt forced.