Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – Film Review

After last year’s re-launch of the Disney/Lucasfilm era of Star Wars happened, I felt bitter towards the Star Wars franchise. I didn’t care about Rogue One. The concepts of revisiting the original trilogy timeline era and how much Episode 7 was a rehash of Episode 4 just didn’t do it for me. The initial concept is a great platform to play in regardless when it comes to storytelling in expanding what people can see out of the universe Lucasfilm has to offer for the Star Wars franchise.

The trailers were decent with some intriguing visuals and story aesthetic. I went in with lowered expectations and I was pleasantly surprised with the film. I do have a few issues with it — mainly spoiler related but I am glad that Disney and Lucasfilm went there and had more of a costly element to the film rather than it feeling like a fluff piece. When you finish watching Rogue One, you realize how much it syncs with A New Hope to be a great two part binge watch. They did a good job for it to be a companion piece.

The characters and the diversity in the cast is such a huge strong point with this film. I’m glad that Lucasfilm put together such a cast not only with great talent but people from different parts of the world to be better represented in modern cinema. Everyone did a great job. Diego Luna and Donnie Yen are strong shout outs. I liked Felicity Jones’ character, Jyn Erso. Her backstory seemed to be minimized from its original inception but it worked out for the better of the film.

Save the Rebellion! Save the dream!

I enjoyed the easter eggs and nods to other Star Wars canon, but felt this was an overall much better Star Wars film than the Force Awakens. I’m hoping with this film paying off that Disney takes the word that they can do more with other parts of the timeline not just the original trilogy. The plot was pretty solid. I loved the last third of the film with that battle sequence. It was pretty action packed. The score of Michael Giacchino was good. He only had four weeks to make it so I wouldn’t be too critical on it. I loved the scene’s that Darth Vader was in. He was well used for an ancillary character.

I hope that more Star Wars Story films go with different tones and time periods to get a grander scope of the universe that it inhabits. I want to feel like I know the universe as well as I do Star Trek.

8/10