Review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) by Detroitoracle W — 01 Feb 2017

If your looking to see a classic Star Wars film with lovable characters, funny little quips, accompanied by a big usage of the good guy Jedi Force, then this Star Wars movie may not be for you. Rogue One is the first standalone movie among the 7 others in the franchise, while having its own unique portrayal of events in the Star Wars universe. Director Gareth Edwards did a great job of not trying to copy the "happy go lucky" blockbuster popcorn flicks of the Star Wars past. This movie starts off 15 years in the past by focusing on a young family of 3 named "Erso" who have finally been found on a desolate rock planet. After hiding from the newly established evil Galactic Empire, the father Galen Erso (Mads Mikklesen) is an escape VIP engineer who is forced to unwillingly work again on the construction of a new secret weapon. The family unit eventually get separated from each other quickly by the Commanding/Secret Weapon Building Officer Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and his Storm Troopers who are under pressure from their superiors to get this weapon made quickly at all costs. #StarWarsRogueOne.

Fifteen years later the young daughter Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and other close Erso family friends such as Saw Gerrera (Forest Whittaker) are still working on fighting back against the Empire until they eventually meet each other again and formulate a plan to sabotage information about this near finished super weapon. While traveling through this journey on multiple planets, Jyn runs into a rag tag group of Rebel wannabe troops who join her cause because they have also been hurt by the Empire. These Rebels include a Deflected Pilot (Bohdi Rook), a "sarcastic" reprogrammed Imperial Droid (Alan Tudyk), a blind Air Bender (Doonie Yen) who still believes in an almost nonexistent religion of the Force along with his high powered friend (Jiang Wen), and a fearless lifelong Rebel (Diego Luna) who leads a platoon of men that will easily accept dying for the cause. There are also a few Easter Egg cameo characters from Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars 4: A New Hope because Rogue One is supposedly to set place in between. The Oracle suggest you watch both movies before you go see Rogue One.

Though this two hour movie may be a little slow at first while setting up a completely new original plot, by the 2nd half it was all worth it because the audience was not given the opportunity to love the characters, so it aided to the thin line the movie set between life and death and that there wont be a Millennium Falcon or Luke Skywalker coming to save the day. The Special Effects were great and a long battle scene eventually coming to a climax in the 3rd act of the movie was set up prefect. It was way better movie than 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I hope Disney makes another standalone Star Wars movie in the near future. Keep up the good work!