It wasn’t until seeing this new Rogue One IMAX TV spot that a realization snapped into place: we barely know anything about Director Orson Krennic, the white-caped bad guy of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story played by Ben Mendelsohn. Perhaps wisely, a lot of the baddie focus has been on the return of Darth Vader. In most TV spots and trailers Orson Krennic looms in silence, standing about pensively or standing, rain-soaked, in front of his accompaniment of Death Troopers. By comparison, we’ve heard a lot from the Rebel ensemble, the collective footage giving a decent sense of their individual personalities.
Maybe because Kylo Ren was such a great addition to the Dark Side of the Star Wars ledger, I’d been flying under the assumption that Orson Krennic would be a similarly worthy addition. But what if he’s not? What if Orson Krennic is more like a Marvel bad guy? What if Orson Krennic is like Ronan?
So it’s good the ambitious director of the Death Star project finally gets in a characterful line in this new TV spot:
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Krennic says, as Jedha gets a blast from the in-development Death Star superlaser. Though it’s a textbook bad guy line, the kind that could make eyes roll, Mendelsohn sells it nicely. It’s not much evidence, but it does provide a striking contrast with other Imperial villains. Star Wars had such a nice tension between the clipped, bureaucratic efficiency of Grand Moff Tarkin and the wounded, flaring fury of Darth Vader. And that’s come to typify most Star Wars antagonists: they’re either shriveled cogs, spreading violence joylessly, or Force-passionate and damaged, steered from the chip on their shoulder.
Orson Krennic, in this one line, sounds like a zestful, competitive man. There’s a touch of the debauched and the depraved about him. This is a man who takes great pleasure in the Empire’s cruelty, something that can’t be said for anyone else we’ve met in the Imperial power structure.
Then again, it’s just one line.
And since this is the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story IMAX TV spot, this is a good opportunity for a reminder: check to make sure your theater is actual IMAX (here’s a map) and not just a slightly bigger screen to which IMAX licenses out its name and integrity.
If you see Rogue One on a genuine IMAX screen, Orson Krennic will be quite large; hopefully he’ll also prove a character worthy of that stature.
