I enjoyed the movie, but I do have some criticisms of it. (In case it matters, I saw it in 3D, which was not what I would have preferred.) In particular:

* The previews (of which there were too many) before the film were obnoxious. The audio was over-amplified, turning it into an assault on the ears, and the Transformers preview actually gave me a bit of motion sickness.

* Many of the backgrounds were blurry. I might accept this in a low budget film, but I am pretty sure that Rogue One is *not* low budget.

* In the middle of the movie, there is a long stretch with almost no action. I understand the need to space out the action in order to avoid overwhelming the audience, but it is also important to space out the low-action parts; the action should have been spread a bit more evenly.

* A few things are introduced but not explained at all. For example, there's a brief scene with R2D2 and C3P0, but nothing really happens. It is never explained why they are there, and how they got out and how R2D2 got the message from Princess Leia.

* Similarly, there's a scene at the end with Princess Leia, but it is again unexplained. Why is she there?

* The movie seems to be lacking a real villain. (Darth Vader doesn't count because it really isn't his story and he doesn't get much screentime at all.)

* There aren't enough female characters. There is only one that has a name as far as I can tell (Jyn, who admittedly *is* important), but there are no other women in action scenes.

* The movie is lacking the turn-based combat and randomly generated dungeons typical of the Roguelike genre (in particular, Rogue had them, so why can't Rogue One?).

I think I prefer The Force Awakens to Rogue One, to be honest, especially since TFA introduced my favorite Star Wars character (Rey). On the other hand, Rogue One has better music.

(Editor's note: All the bulleted points in this post are serious except for the last one.)

I have a loaded Hummer.

Trust me, given the proximity of the lake and the circumstances of my residential location, my weather is much worse than yours.

You haven't had 64 inches in the past week. you don't get lake effect snow/wind, and the nearest theater isn't a 50 mile drive on twisting heavily forested two lane roads.

When the snowplows start getting stuck you know it's time to stay home. :P

LOL - okay I actually laughed.

I think the blurry backgrounds are a side effect of the 3D. I saw it this way and noticed it too.

You forgot to mention the most glaring annoyance of the movie - that director bad guy really needs to get his f%$&ing cape and white shirt pressed. Come on dude, your CO would flip his lid if he saw you wearing that wrinkled mess - whaddidya sleep in it last night, slumped over your holopad at your plasteel Death-desk?

Well, just seen it. Was ok, 6/10. Better than force awakens (ignoring nostalgia). Not going to go into the film, however I distinctly remember doing this mission playing as Kyle katarn? When did we end up with rene artois, squeeky voice bitch (sorry, strong female lead) and Fong Sai yuk?

When Disney bought Star Wars and retconned away the entire Extended Universe? You might have already noticed a distinct lack of Kyle Katarn fighting seven dark Jedi in Force Awakens, and I would not expect him to show up and square off against Darth Dinosaurus in Episode VIII.

I've seen Rogue One twice. The first time was on opening night. I had a great time with the crowd of hardcore fans who cheered the start of the movie, the end, and every time Darth Vader showed up. I'm enough of a fan myself, but if I'm a seven or eight, the audience had a lot of tens.

The second time was a few days ago. The audience were more subdued, but the additional wrinkle was that Carrie Fisher had passed away. When Princess Leia entered the scene at the end it wasn't a surprise since I had seen the movie, but I was, I don't know, moved or touched...something.

Overall I'm very happy that they made a good Star Wars episode, one that had an appeal to grownups with its themes of sacrifice and hope and moral ambiguity. Those elements would have been over my head when I was a kid, but made it deeper than the others were.

You... HERETIC! HOW DARE THOU BESMIRCH THY UNIVERSES OF EXTENSION!

I went to see it one night last week.

<<SPOILERS>>


It was sold out, so I went home.

I'm sorry but Kyle Katarn stole the Death Star plans. This movie is nothing but lies and propaganda.

Yep, didn't really pick up on much, other than the nostalgia trip, and blatant racism (white guy, crusader sword type lightsaber...) from that film. To be fair to Disney, these have been better than the phantom-number 3. The battle sequences are well done in this one.

One question for you guys, what happened to the shield tech from the clone wars era? Only the largest cruisers/star destroyers and planet protectors seem to have it, this has always bugged me about star wars - think borg personel shields from trek.

You think that's a problem? How about that the cape is taller than him and it's always rubbing on the floor? The thing must be completely filthy. Why even wear white if that's what you're gonna do with it?

Thank God they cut that scene from the trailers where he walks through a beach with that thing, because that would be crossing a line.

I suppose. But at the same time, Star Wars fanboys are outright insane at times. After the initial making fun of stuff, I thought their review was alright. End result, they weren't a fan. And that's OK.

I will say, I don't know why they go through so much trouble to make certain characters look like their counterparts in 1977. Just say their name when they walk in a room and move on. Going through the trouble of making their appearance similar with CGI or whatever just seems silly. You know it's not the same actor so there is no reason for them to look like the same actor.

Haven't gotten around to seeing the Force Awakens Plinkett review. Meant to watch it shortly after it came out, but haven't had an opportunity to just watch it in one sitting. But I am sure it will be interesting since Mike at least thought it was OK.


But here's more of their Rogue One...enjoyment: https://youtu.be/sExTt4j69zI

I don't dispute that, but now they themselves aren't much better.

As for Force Awakens, not all the characters are winners but the main cast is better fleshed out than in Rogue One, on the other hand the plot is just a lazy remake of A New Hope while Rogue One is at least different from what came before.

Neither is perfect, which is best comes down to characters vs concept and how much are you willing to sacrifice one for the other.

Seriously? We definately know more about Jyn than Ray or Finn. Hell, we even know more about Cassian and the two temple guardians. And I definately cared more about all of them then I ever did about Ray and Finn... though that's not hard considering I didn't care about them at all.

Anyway, I've just seen the movie a second time (we were supposed to see Assassin's Creed, but then we realised we don't really want to see it) and my opinion stays pretty much the same. As is to be expected I've got a few more nitpicks after second viewing, but I also appreciate some stuff a lot more. Mostly the visuals. This time I really noticed just how nice some of the shots are, especially when the Death Star is attacking Jedha, the ground battle on Scarif and pretty much every scene with Vader (oh, and I really don't like that "don't choke on your ambition" one-liner, it's more Shwarzenegger than Vader).

And I still think the CGI Tarkin looks very good. Not 100% perfect, but considering how the movie is designed to seamlessly connect to Episode IV I think it works better than recasting the character would. It's also well shot, he is never in perfect light, so while he is never obscured it's still enough to hide some of the fakeness. That's why Leia looks so much worse at the end in her short scene, we see her in perfect light.

And I don't know why, but I really like Admiral Raddus. He's sort of like an anti-Jar Jar to me :D I hope he managed to escape the Empire and we'll see him again somewhere. If not another "Star Wars story" movie then maybe a comic or a novel at least.

I stand by my original post on this, we may get more backstory on Jyn, but I think her and most of the cast is bland and lacking personality in comparison. Not terrible, they do what the plot requires them to, but aren't very captivating beyond that.