Review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) by Jeffrey J — 20 May 2018

As an avid fan of Star Wars, I was quite excited for Rogue One when it came out, and at the time it was an alright Star Wars movie that I believed was worse than The Force Awakens but not a bad Star Wars movie. Now this movie is actually quite a damn good Star Wars movie, finding a comfy place in my favorite movies just after Revenge of the Sith, my 4th favorite movie of the series.

The movie delivers some pretty cool stuff for only being based off a a single sentence in the opening crawl of A New Hope. Krennic, the villain of the story is well acted and imposing, acting just like an imperial would. But for the other characters other than Jynn, K2S0, and Caspian, all fall flat, even they (other than K2S0 who is hilarious) are kinda bland and find it hard to carry the beginning of the movie, which other than them is carried by the weight of the Death Star, a moment with Vader, and some other scenes thrown in there with Krennic. The real shinning star of this movie comes in the 2nd half where it gets MUCH better with the Battle of Scarif. This battle single handedly could be one of the coolest space battles in Star Wars, and to boot, uses actual models for the ships for the battle, which makes the Star Destroyers look just beautiful. Its a bit of a shame really, if this movie was made to be a war movie, then it may find itself even higher than it sits now. Imo, the reshoots dont really take much away from the movie, as the characters aren't fleshed out enough to really care about when they inevitably all drop like flies. But it wouldve been nice to get some extra development for all, that including the 3 other characters that are so thrown to the side I cant even remember there names.

This movie also gives one of the BEST scenes with Vader in any of the Star Wars movies, as he just slays rebels like they are nothing, a scene that made the entire theater when I was watching collectively drop there jaws and just gape at the 'oh shit' moment going on in the movie.

So in review:

Action: 10/10.

Characters: 5/10.

Settings: 7/10.

Story 7/10.

Is it worth watching despite its problems? Yes, it may not be perfect, but its certainly something that I would love to see more of minus the weak characters and even greater action.