Star Wars's Rogue One and Lonely Hunter: Strange Coincidences

Rogue One and Lonely Hunter: Strange Coincidences

Rogue One: A Short Review

I took my four teenage daughters to see the sci fi movie “Rogue One” a few days ago. There were some really strange coincidences between the movie and my forthcoming novel, Lonely Hunter. But first, some thoughts on Rogue One.

None of my kids are particularly dialed into Star Wars, but a few have seen a prior movie or two. I’ve seen four of them (swore I’d never go to another one after Clone Wars). Three of my kids enjoy various Sci Fi-ish flicks from time to time such as Hunger Games, Inception, the Marvel franchise, Transformers, etc. We all thought the trailer looked interesting, so we gave it a shot.

The consensus coming out was that it was underwhelming at best. But what was really weird were the number of coincidences with my own novel.

Overall, we thought Rogue One just disappointingly predictable. In particular, the dialog often seemed stilted and expository. And their tactical sense as soldiers was nil (to be gentle), which is not just a nitpick; the extra stupid behavior was needed to perpetuate the plot.

I suppose the writers did what they could given that it had to feather into the follow on movie plots (which they did do effectively), but it was hard to get emotionally invested. I did think Jyn was more dynamic than most Star Wars characters, at least at first. Once she took up the cause and charged toward the final climactic fight, it felt too much like a rerun of another Marvel or Bruce Willis movie.

But what really caught my attention were the similarities to Lonely Hunter. After a long hiatus from creative writing, I started my novel in Dec of 2013 and completed it the first draft by February of 2014. I have revised it extensively over the last three years, to include sending it through the online writing workshop, CritiqueCircle twice. Here are the strange coincidences...