Review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) by Nolan M — 05 Jul 2017

Star Wars: Rogue One falls somewhere in the middle of the franchise for me. Definitely not anywhere near the top. I found that it had exactly zero emotional impact due to the fact that you knew exactly what had to happen right from the start, so I wasn't able to really care about any of the characters. The whole crew was fun, and the story engaging enough, but the emotional impact simply lacking. This was the fault of the story being covered, however, and not of the writers, directing or actors.

While I respect the choice not to use an opening crawl, having it simply blink in from black with an orchestra hit looked like the way a college kid's student film would begin. Very amateurish and reeked of a last-minute decision. At very least a fade-in with a gradual rise in music would've played better and less jarring.

The elephant in the room the entire film: Tarkin looked freaking horrible. Every time he appeared on screen it took me right out of the film. It was like they dumped a video game character in the middle of the movie. Prosthetics have come a long way and they could've done a reasonable facsimile of him with makeup...but Lucasfilm has to do everything digital...and mo-cap Does. Not. Work. On. People. Leia worked well enough but that was because she was on screen for all of six seconds. Tarkin was a pure cgi FAIL.

For a movie that was purported to "solve a major plot hole in Star Wars" (The Death Star having a weakness, which was never a plot hole to begin with), it sure introduced a lot of new plot holes. For example, apparently you can take down a Star Destroyer with nothing more than 4 Y-Wings, which begs the question why the Alliance didn't load up on Y-Wings and take out the whole Imperial fleet.

Also, what happened to all those awesome new ships and troop types we saw in there? You know, death troopers, single wing TIEs, the U-Wing fighter/troop transport that never show up in ANH, ESB or RotJ? Oops, they never show up again because they were a new invention in a film that took place before the other three and the filmmakers couldn't resist tinkering. And, you know, Disney had to sell some new toys.

But Vader was badass, so that made up for a lot.

The good: the story was engaging enough, and it's neat that we now see how the plans got into Leia's hands. The cast did the best they could and turned over stellar performances under difficult circumstances. The directing was excellent and the cinematography everything I want from a Star Wars film. I own the Blu Ray and I do re-watch it. It's Star Wars so I love it from top to bottom. It's just that there were problems that could've been fixed with a bit more attention, the CGI was poor, and the story they chose to portray had an herculean task to get us to care about the characters.