I respect the Rogue One screenwriters, Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, and I’m presuming that Disney’s decision to put Gilroy in charge of five additional weeks of shooting and give him final editing authority over original director Gareth Edwards was well motivated. The multicultural makeup of the characters feels p.c. minded, but what else is new? Felicity Jones and Diego Luna have a certain panache, but the rest of the cast feels second-stringish. Okay, Forrest Whitaker excepted. Let’s leave Ben Mendelsohn alone for now. The Chinese characters/actors — Jiang Wen‘s Baze Malbu and Donnie Yen‘s Chirrut Imwe — were naturally written and cast to energize the Chinese market. Cold calculation.
