Rogue One is the latest instalment to the Star Wars movie franchise; it follows the tale of a band of rebels in a space ship fighting the empire, so business as usual. After 2 years of build up to show the dark and gritty side of the conflict, we finally find out if it lives up to expectations or does it crash and burn like an AT-AT.
This will probably be one of the more controversial reviews we’ve done in a while, I feel I need to explain just how big a fan of Star Wars I am. I am a huge Star Wars nerd; I love all the movies, the video games, the comics and the novels, hell I even enjoyed the prequel trilogy. So I hope that lets you know how bad this movie had to suck in order for me to dislike it.
Plot
The plot of Rogue One really interested me, to see were the rebellion came from, to see it from the point of view from the soldiers in the mud. I honestly was expecting a war film feel; it’s just too bad that’s not what we got. It follows the story of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the daughter of the head engineer in charge of creating the death star, she finds herself in jail for being a meanie to the empire. Then is almost immediately broken out by the rebellion and forced to work for them because as it turns out she’s also the only person that a former (now slightly insane) rebel extremist will listen to and they heard rumours that he has a message from Jyn’s father about a planet killing weapon. I won’t talk about the plot much more as I don’t want to spoil what little there is.
(I AM smiling!)
Characters
The characters overall were poorly written, with little character development or growth, the acting felt wooden and it often fell flat. One scene that comes to mind was were Jyn must convince the rebel council to attack an imperial instillation and retrieve the death star plans, but she is so unconvincing, the rebels decide it would be better to surrender to the empire.
I want to make mention of the character of Cassian Andor, a rebel pilot played by Diego Luna, the 
reason I want to discuss him is because of how we are introduced to the character. The first we see of him, he is meeting an informant for information, shoots someone and they are then caught by storm troopers, the informant panics and says that he can’t climb out of the back alley with his bad arm. Andor then shoots him dead rather than trying to figure out another way out, this was a great scene, it showed that not all the rebels were clean cut good guys, it showed that even the rebels would have to skirt the moral line in order to win against the empire. It’s just a shame this is the most character development that he gets.
Mads Mikkelsen not only provided the strongest acting but one of the few redeeming things in the entire film, his scenes where among the few that showed any depth or emotion. Mikkelsen played Galen Erso the man who was forced to build the Death Star. A man who became disillusioned with the empire and ran to hide his family, is in turn forced to return and work against his will, not knowing if his daughter is alive or dead.
What I liked
I really enjoyed that they patched some plot holes from the original trilogy, Donnie Yen’s fight scenes were pretty amazing and I have to say a certain scene with Darth Vader was great, but overall not enough to redeem the film.
Issues
Where to start, pacing was balls, acting was shite, it felt like a cheap Chinese knock off of Star Wars, it should have been called Space Battle and they made Darth Vader fat, how do you make a costume look fat? You bastards!
Conclusion
Rogue One, had a great premise and it just failed to meet expectations and again I’ll say, I love Star Wars so much I even enjoyed the prequels. A massive waste of potential, they had some great actors at their disposal that just went completely to waste, as film it felt it was made by committee rather than as a personal experience. Deeply disappointed by what we received rather than the Saving Private Ryan of Star Wars we were promised by pre-production. Do we recommend it Darth?
