Wall of text incoming!



I really liked it. More than Force Awakens I think, and I enjoyed Force Awakens last year, but haven't watched it since the premiere so take this comparison with a grain of salt. I was aprehensive since the director's last movie was the Godzilla reboot, and I had serious issues with the structure of that movie, but I came out pleasantly surprised.

This was something that I always wanted to see in Star Wars: a story not about Jedi. It's an interesting world but we always see it through the eyes of a Jedi. Even outside the movies. This is why I'm interested in these spin-off movies.



It does feel a bit different from the usual Star Wars film. You don't have an opening crawl, there's no Star Wars theme either. Beyond that it's more dour. It's not a romp like the other movies, there's no suave roguish Han Solo or suspiciously similar substitute here. There's just one real source of comic relief, and he's not always around. Death and violence is shot in a dirtier and grittier way, and I thought it succeeded in making it feel more impactful, granted the other movies weren't aiming for this in the first place. The movie has a different tone than the other Star Wars films. I've seen people voice this as a complaint, that it didn't really feel like Star Wars to them, and I totally get that, but being different was exactly what I wanted.


A compliment I can give is to its sense of scale. In Godzilla, during the three minutes the monsters were in it, Gareth Edwards did make them feel appropriately huge. He does the same thing here, with the star destroyers, the space battles, and even more so with the Death Star itself.



The characters were a mixed bag. It's an ensemble war movie, a lot of the characters serve their purpose in the plot just fine but are not particularly captivating. Jyn Erso, the protagonist, falls in this category unfortunately. She begins a little rebellious but soon settles into generic good girl who wants to do the right thing. Cassian, the male lead, fares a little better. We see him do some morally dubious things for the sake of the rebellion, and I think that added to his character. K-2SO the comic relief robot got a couple of chuckles out of me, a couple more than C-3PO ever got, but wasn't particularly funny. Like C-3PO though I never disliked him or resented his presence.

Director Krennic the villain was quite enjoyable. He was the upper middle management sort. We get to see him be a bastard to those below him and a sniveling ass to his superiors. I found him to be a villain easy to hate, in a good way. I just wish he had more screentime than he got










Massive Spoilers!

Holy shit, Grand Moff Tarkin was amazing! It really was him. Not really, but you get it. You see Leia at the end of the film with de-aging CGI and it was alright, could be because the Rebel ship was brightly lit and the Imperial one dim, but that Peter Cushing CGI was much better. Genuinely impressive.

Darth Vader had a very brief appearance, but another very impressive one. Both in the dialogue scene with Krennic, and that fight scene at the end. We see how frightning he can be to regular, non-Jedis.

The other nods to the rest of the series weren't nearly as interesting. Perhaps because of how throwaway they were in comparison. I groaned a bit when R2-D2 and C-3PO showed up, same goes for Leia. In fact, I didn't like the "end 5min before A New Hope starts" approach. I know this is a prequel, and by all means let us not forget that Rogue One is a Star Wars Prequel, no matter how much Disney would like us to ignore it, but I wish it wasn't such a direct lead in to EpIV. It makes it seem more superfluous, like a 2h long warm up before the main show. I think if it was a little more spaced out, given a little more time to breathe, it would value more the fact that it is pretty much a stand alone story.


Another fear I had was that the movie might be disjointed, on account of all the reshoots they did. Thankfully it felt fine in that regard. There was an event earlier this year where one of the actors just flat out spoiled in a panel that he betrays them in the movie and kills another main character. Everyone was like "Dude! What the fuck?!". The reshoots happened after that and I just knew they would undo that spoiler just because he said it. They did. I kept looking for clues to the betrayal, and I think there was a couple of questions he made that could be a lead in to that, but had I not known this story I wouldn't have batted an eye.

It was amazing, near perfect in fact. My faith in the new Canon has been restored.

Any explanation on how it's possible to knock out a fully armored Stormtrooper with a wooden stick?

Momentum, balance?

I suppose we see it quite differently. That is actually my main gripe with the movie. Why in the nether hell did they try (and fail spectacularly) to put a realistic CGI Peter Cushing into the movie?! "Look, here's a bunch of actors looking like actors do, and just for teh lulz, we decided to stick a character from a video game cutscene into the middle of them". I agree that his last scene was awesome. I thought the first one was awful though. It was trying much too hard to be oh so dramatic. Indeed. In fact, if I understood the dialog correctly, the scene with R2-D2 and C-3PO seemed to introduce a glaring continuity error, because at the point in time where they are seen in the hangar on Yavin 4, while the fleet is getting underway, shouldn't they both be aboard Captain Antilles' blockade runner?

Overall I liked the movie though. It was certainly much better than The Force Awakens. However, I am somewhat disappointed that the movie completely failed to answer the question raised by the line from A New Hope which is the entire raison d'etre for Rogue One: What the hell is a Bothan?

If a bunch of disgruntled teddy bears can outfight a force of trained Imperial troops, I'm prepared to let any objections about the protection provided by Imperial equipment slide! :-) As I recall, the Bothan spies supposedly captured data for the *second* Death Star, not the first, but then I'm relying purely on memory here.

Well, your memory is obviously better than mine. You are absolutely right, it was the second Death Star.

SPOILERS





Sounds like a pretty depressing movie, I've read that everyone gets killed and that Jyn character and her sidekick die crying, waiting for the laser blast that will vaporize them. Even worse when it seems like their sacrifice was basically forgotten since they never were mentioned in the chronologically later films by name...just expendable cannon fodder.
Of course that's sort of realistic, but since the real world is depressing enough I'll pass (don't like Star wars movies much anyway...though there have been some good pc games).

I loved it and it certainly made for the fact that The Force Awakens was a pile of shit. I liked the more grown up tone and the depressing ending, a little bit more realistic and didn't try to insult our intelligence as much as the last film did. The space battles were quite excellent too. Don't pass, it's depressing but not as depressing as watch the leftist news. it finishes on a fun up beat (but scary) tone. Well worth seeing. :)

I loved it too, it was quite surprising to me.. I thought TFA was complete blandness and super safe and uninspired, so I thought this was the way Disney was going to run the show.

I was pleasantly surprised, this is Star Wars. I surprised myself by being actually touched by the characters, the story and their plight.

This was Empire Strikes Back awesome.

Havent seen it yet. never really got the *it* feeling when watching the trailer.Lacks that sparkle. I know its supposed to be a war movie. but.....is the full movie much better than the trailer? (is there a high body count? lol).

The trailer didn't do anything for me either but I am sooo glad that I went.
I loved the fact that it made the Empire look bad ass and evil all over again. The bad guys in The Farce Awakens was just overly dramatic with no real emotion to it. But when certain returning characters do their part, you remember why they were so awesome to begin with.

I also loved the fact that it showed the Rebel Alliance in the true light. They aren't the heroic good guys that they are portrayed as. They're desperate criminals trying to make a change. It was so nice to see and a huge change from that fairy princess (Rey) and her queer friends (Poe and Finn) Disney effect from the last film.

*heart breaks* wait... I don't have one... and I don't give a shit.

The trailers are somewhat misleading, because unlike most trailers today, they're more or less spoiler free. Most of the scenes in the trailers are not in the movie itself. The trailers just give you an idea of what the movie is in a superficial way.

The look, the characters, sounds and a very general feel.