I enjoyed it! I felt less enthused about the film than I did during the high points of my first watching of Awakens, but it held up its end of the bargain to the very end, and my post-viewing judgement has been much gentler on Rogue One than on Awakens.
Overall I think it fits a little below Episode II, and the original trilogy on my Star Wars list.
Some thoughts...
The first is that its simply not a good movie. Its charm is entirely in its relationship to a canon established through the original trilogy. Anyone watching this movie on its own would have, literally, no clue what or why. It cannot serve as a prequel, and that's a bit of a shame.Â
The non-stop action allowed for no denouement. Some of this is due to the film literally moving immediately into A New Hope. Fair enough, but nonetheless I spent the entire film run wishing I could just take a moment to catch my breath. Not my usual type of film.
The character's actually held together pretty well. None of them had any real depth, except perhaps the monk and the mercenary (or whatever he was), but one could only sense their depth while gazing in wonder at their easy scene-stealing manner. This contrasts starkly from Awakens, were literally no new character made any sense whatsoever.
It was a tidy little plot that plugged holes left by A New Hopes opening. I do earnestly like how the Death Star's weakness is now covered. It makes sense as intentional sabotage. That didn't save Galen's character from being horribly lame. But, oh well.
I never understood Cassien. Wasn't he supposed to be the audience stand-in in this one? I felt so at least, Jyn was clearly too wounded and different by her front-and-center upbringing. She was the chosen one. Cassien was... us. But what the heck man? I found him pretty much obnoxious and underwhelming throughout. He was definitely no Han Solo.Â
The Rebel fleet appearing en masse was -amazing-!. I actually exclaimed in the theater at the sight of it. There's just nothing like an entire fleet dropping suddenly out of Hyperspace right on top of the enemy... especially when its the good guys!
The entire final space battle was terrific. The ground battle felt, I don't know, incredibly silly? For such an important installation it sure was poorly defended (where were the fixed defenses? why was there only like a company of storm troopers? Why did they abandon exactly what it was they were supposed to be defending in order to fight on... entirely pointless beaches? I mean entirely pointless. These guys all have SPACE SHIPS, they don't need beaches. And why are there Storm Troopers with Beach Camo? Its like someone thought a remake of Saving Private Ryan starring Storm Troopers would be a really cool idea.
 I also don't get the whole "go right to the dish to use it" thing. They haven't discovered network cable or something?
Speaking of Private Ryan, why aren't there more tanks in Star Wars? Seems like one of those would have stopped the rebel soldier dudes pretty fast.
I like seeing the lesser force-sensitive characters. I wish Force Awakens had taken this route rather than the Super Hero route it took. The Force is with me. I am with the Force. A little hint of faith in the Force as a spiritual religion. More plausible and believable than most any other approach to the Force we've seen, yay!
I read the comments about the wasted use of Vader (among many weird and out-of-place scenes in this film), and I couldn't agree more. Like Kylo Renn taking his helmet off early: WHYYYYYYYYYYY? Sometimes waiting is better.Â
I feel like they should either have shown the entire construction of the Death Star, or skipped it entirely. Showing only the ray-crater thing being shoved into place was pretty pointless. And is that thing really supposed to be one giant piece? This isn't a lego set, and I'm just not buying it. That'd be a hunk of metal the size of a small continent that just happened to fit perfectly into place without need for adjustment or welding. Not even with Space Magic am I buying that!
Taaarkiiiiiiin.. yeeees!
Leiaaaa! Yessss!
Mon Mooothma, and all these other cameos, YES!
I loved the Droid, but he wasn't believable as a droid. Maybe that's just me though...
Yo Imperial Guys who join the Rebels (I'm looking at you Mr. Droid, and Bodhi). AT LEAST REMOVE YOUR IMPERIAL INSIGNIA. And why did he wear his safety goggles for the entire movie? Were they afraid we wouldn't recognize him if he took them off?
But, really, other than it being a pure-action movie and thus not really up my alley, I enjoyed this film and look forward to seeing it again
Overall I think it fits a little below Episode II, and the original trilogy on my Star Wars list.
Some thoughts...
The first is that its simply not a good movie. Its charm is entirely in its relationship to a canon established through the original trilogy. Anyone watching this movie on its own would have, literally, no clue what or why. It cannot serve as a prequel, and that's a bit of a shame.Â
The non-stop action allowed for no denouement. Some of this is due to the film literally moving immediately into A New Hope. Fair enough, but nonetheless I spent the entire film run wishing I could just take a moment to catch my breath. Not my usual type of film.
The character's actually held together pretty well. None of them had any real depth, except perhaps the monk and the mercenary (or whatever he was), but one could only sense their depth while gazing in wonder at their easy scene-stealing manner. This contrasts starkly from Awakens, were literally no new character made any sense whatsoever.
It was a tidy little plot that plugged holes left by A New Hopes opening. I do earnestly like how the Death Star's weakness is now covered. It makes sense as intentional sabotage. That didn't save Galen's character from being horribly lame. But, oh well.
I never understood Cassien. Wasn't he supposed to be the audience stand-in in this one? I felt so at least, Jyn was clearly too wounded and different by her front-and-center upbringing. She was the chosen one. Cassien was... us. But what the heck man? I found him pretty much obnoxious and underwhelming throughout. He was definitely no Han Solo.Â
The Rebel fleet appearing en masse was -amazing-!. I actually exclaimed in the theater at the sight of it. There's just nothing like an entire fleet dropping suddenly out of Hyperspace right on top of the enemy... especially when its the good guys!
The entire final space battle was terrific. The ground battle felt, I don't know, incredibly silly? For such an important installation it sure was poorly defended (where were the fixed defenses? why was there only like a company of storm troopers? Why did they abandon exactly what it was they were supposed to be defending in order to fight on... entirely pointless beaches? I mean entirely pointless. These guys all have SPACE SHIPS, they don't need beaches. And why are there Storm Troopers with Beach Camo? Its like someone thought a remake of Saving Private Ryan starring Storm Troopers would be a really cool idea.
 I also don't get the whole "go right to the dish to use it" thing. They haven't discovered network cable or something?
Speaking of Private Ryan, why aren't there more tanks in Star Wars? Seems like one of those would have stopped the rebel soldier dudes pretty fast.
I like seeing the lesser force-sensitive characters. I wish Force Awakens had taken this route rather than the Super Hero route it took. The Force is with me. I am with the Force. A little hint of faith in the Force as a spiritual religion. More plausible and believable than most any other approach to the Force we've seen, yay!
I read the comments about the wasted use of Vader (among many weird and out-of-place scenes in this film), and I couldn't agree more. Like Kylo Renn taking his helmet off early: WHYYYYYYYYYYY? Sometimes waiting is better.Â
I feel like they should either have shown the entire construction of the Death Star, or skipped it entirely. Showing only the ray-crater thing being shoved into place was pretty pointless. And is that thing really supposed to be one giant piece? This isn't a lego set, and I'm just not buying it. That'd be a hunk of metal the size of a small continent that just happened to fit perfectly into place without need for adjustment or welding. Not even with Space Magic am I buying that!
Taaarkiiiiiiin.. yeeees!
Leiaaaa! Yessss!
Mon Mooothma, and all these other cameos, YES!
I loved the Droid, but he wasn't believable as a droid. Maybe that's just me though...
Yo Imperial Guys who join the Rebels (I'm looking at you Mr. Droid, and Bodhi). AT LEAST REMOVE YOUR IMPERIAL INSIGNIA. And why did he wear his safety goggles for the entire movie? Were they afraid we wouldn't recognize him if he took them off?
But, really, other than it being a pure-action movie and thus not really up my alley, I enjoyed this film and look forward to seeing it again
![[Image: 21282370099_a814a08664_o.png]](https://farm1.staticflickr.com/590/21282370099_a814a08664_o.png)
