6) Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker)
In many ways, the presence of Saw Gerrera dominates the first half of the film – even when he’s not onscreen. We see him, briefly, in the opening moments, when Lyra Erso (Valene Kane) places a video distress call to him. We then see him more clearly when he arrives to rescue the pre-teen Jyn Erso from the underground bunker to which she has fled. It’s clear that he’s a close confidante of the Erso family, since this sequence of events is the culmination of a well-laid plan, designed to be implemented under very specific circumstances, for the purpose of saving the child.
Once Jyn reaches adulthood and is recruited by the Rebel Alliance to help them steal the Death Star plans, Saw Gerrera looms back into view. We learn that he is now – fifteen years on – considered to be a Rebel extremist, and has effectively branched out on his own. We learn that he raised Jyn himself, until he abandoned her at the age of 16. At this point in his story, however, he serves the purpose of a conduit.
Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) has been forced to design and oversee the construction of the Death Star, but has built in a hidden fail-safe that can be used to destroy it. He sends a holographic message to his old comrade Saw Gerrera, via a defecting Imperial pilot named Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). Time, age and conflict have not been kind to Saw Gerrera, however, and Bodhi finds him made all the more intimidating by extreme paranoia and suspicion, as he operates a small band of resistance fighters from a hidden location. It’s here that he provides the means for Jyn to hear her father’s message and relay the information to the Rebel Alliance.
Gerrera cuts an imposing figure – encased in various sections of armoury with robotic legs, and a mechanism to help him breathe when necessary. This, combined with his slightly unhinged approach and bunkered hide-away, makes him something of a mash-up of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, and Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. He’s clearly played an important role in the life of Jyn Erso, however, so his facilitation of her mission to rectify the work of her father seems quite fitting.
