Review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) by Rithvik S — 28 Feb 2018

I was motivated to write this review and give Rogue One 5 stars by the abject failure of a dumpster fire that is The Last Jedi. It made me appreciate Rogue One even more after seeing that other train wreck.

Rogue One is everything a long time Star Wars fan like me could have wanted: Smart plot, somewhat dark, with interesting characters and spectacular planets and effects.

Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy obviously wanted to shove feminism down our throats with The Last Jedi, but they should have looked at Rogue One to see what a well thought out and developed female lead looks like. Jyn Erso is awesome. Not awesome in the perfect Mary Sue way Rey is, but awesome in that she is a well acted, well developed, and personable character that has a reason to be where she is other than just having a vagina. As a parent of a young child, I definitely sympathized with both her and Galen Erso. It wasn't super deep or even original, but it WORKED, and it made me CARE about her and UNDERSTAND why she was saddled with this heavy burden to get the Death Star plans. It made sense.

The humor was spot on. Not shoved in your face like the infantile prank call that opened up The Last Jedi, but something low key yet hilarious like K2SO dryly saying he can survive in space while his friends will die. Its smart and funny.

Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy obviously wanted General Hux from the Last Jedi to be the bumbling, incompetent white male they hate so much. But again they didnt need to go very far to find a GOOD white male villian. Rogue One's Krennic is pretty much what you think of when you think of an evil Imperial officer. Completely devoid of any good personality traits and is an ambitious, conniving Imperial to the core. Hes up there with Darth Vader as my favorite Star Wars villain.

Seeing how the Death Star was built and the back stabbing politics between Krennic and Tarkin (who looked AMAZING in CGI in my opinion. My wife didn't even know it was CGI!!) was a treat to Star Wars nerds like me.

I really loved pretty much everything about this movie, especially after watching the Last Jedi. To me, the Last Jedi killed most of my long time interest in Star Wars. Rogue One is giving me hope that the stand alone Star Wars Story/anthology movies will fly under the radar of the incompetent, pretentious toxic touch of Kathleen Kennedy and allow more creative freedom to the directors assigned.