Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Notable Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, Forest Whitaker, Jimmy Smits, James Earle Jones

Even before The Force Awakens was released, I was already feeling more hyped for Rogue One. The talent on and off screen for the film partnered with the concept of having a team of renegades steal the plans for the Death Star to kick off the events of A New Hope just appealed to me in so many more ways. Now that the first Star Wars Story is out to reign destruction on the box office worldwide, the question has to be asked…does it fulfill on those promises? Quite frankly, it does. After a slew of worrisome turns concerning massive reshoots, changed tones, and new talent being brought in to make it more Star Wars-y, Rogue One would seemingly pull off exactly what it intended to do: expand the universe without stepping too far out of bounds to alienate the fans. In fact, it rides the line so well that it may end up being one of the best Star Wars films to date falling shy of The Empire Strikes Back, but rising above the others by limiting the fantasy elements and adding in enough grit and darkness to make it feel like its own film. It’s still definitely an entry into this iconic franchise with some of its fan pandering and it could have gone darker for my tastes, but still the film massively entertains and retains that kind of emotional punch needed for this story to add to the layering of the original trilogy.

Doctor Strange (2016)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Notable Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Scott Adkins, Benjamin Bratt

There were a lot of mixed feelings I had when Doctor Strange finished. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is already a series of films that has given me some mixed feelings as a cinephile lately because there is most certainly a formula that they use and it’s made to appeal to the great common denominator of cinema goers. Yes, finally, the MCU is starting to experiment within the reach of the formula and it has garnered some fun films. Guardians of the Galaxy utilized the quirk and charm of director/writer James Gunn to sell its space opera. Ant-Man attempted the Marvel heist flick to mild success. So really, when Disney and the Marvel movie machine decided to attack the realm of mysticism with Doctor Strange, perhaps I got my hopes up a bit too high that they would try to jump the proven track. Instead of a truly unique cinematic Marvel experience, Doctor Strange is the usual MCU fair that garners the same successes and failures of many of the previous films and it generally adheres to the formula pretty strictly – which is kind of sad considering the potential. The film does have a lot of great trippy, psychedelic visuals to go with it and it has that great Marvel sense of fun to go with it, but it’s hard to not be at least slightly disappointed that the film didn’t go further with its concepts. Then again, the film has a 90+% on Rotten Tomatoes and an A Cinemascore, so the people have already generally spoken for the film.