“First of all, I think it’s something I try not to do, to comment on political situations, and also I’m an Australian who has the very good fortune of working in this country. “I think it would be perhaps very remiss of me to comment on that, given two things,” he answered slowly. He stopped short of answering whether or not Director Krennic, with his ruthless career ambitions and cruel modus operandi, might find a place in a Donald Trump cabinet that’s filling up with figures seemingly at questionable odds with the interests they’ve been chosen to oversee. That’s always been the case, and of course we don’t stand outside that tradition.” It’s no mistake that during the latter part of the Cold War the first film comes out, and it deals with weapons that can destroy entire worlds. “There’s basic entertainment, spiritual quest journey stuff, there is this historical, real world iterations. “The beauty of Star Wars and part of its enduring power is that there are several dimensions you could access it on, should you choose,” he said. So there are always those ways of looking through at this stuff-if you want to.”Ĭontrary to Disney CEO Bob Iger’s insistence that Rogue One “is not a film that is, in any way, a political film,” Mendelsohn hinted that correlations can be found by those willing to look. “There’s nothing that we do in any drama or film, I believe, that doesn’t have its origins in the real world. These kind of practices are very well-established, which is why we are able to write about them,” said Mendelsohn. Absent the spiritual conflict dividing warriors of the dark side from their Jedi counterparts, officers like Krennic, whose high-collared cape deliberately recalls a 20 th century fascist aesthetic, reflect a familiar impulse toward war and genocide. His planet-killing weapon of mass destruction, the Death Star, is what his even more sinister superiors intend to use to justify securing “peace” in the galaxy. More than any other figure in Rogue One or last year’s The Force Awakens, Krennic represents the punishing military arm of the Empire. “But Krennic’s attitude is, ‘What does this guy actually do?’” “Vader is an incredibly powerful individual,” Mendelsohn granted.

The gulf between the two Imperial enforcers is so vast, it’s literally designed into their costumes: Vader commanding in his signature shiny black, Krennic preening in his antiseptic white cloak. “While I think that Krennic is dismissive of the mythology around Vader, I don’t think he dismisses his toe-to-toe abilities by any stretch of the imagination,” Mendelsohn told The Daily Beast ahead of Rogue One’s premiere. If you sense a disturbance in the force, or at least in the air between Rogue One’s sinister Death Star boss Orson Krennic and Star Wars’ iconic Darth Vader, it’s because the two heavies of the Galactic Empire have their own interoffice beef in this week’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.Īustralian actor Ben Mendelsohn ( Bloodline, Animal Kingdom) shed light on the animosity between Rogue One’s sinister and ambitious Krennic and Darth Vader, who returns to the franchise in Gareth Edwards’ standalone spin-off set during a crucial moment in Alliance history leading up to the events of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.

Darth vader actor in rogue one