Minor spoilers below…
1 – It was good, with some great moments and mildly cringy moments—par for the course for the franchise.
2 – As expected, the production values were top shelf. Some faces, to match the age of the actors seen almost 40 years ago in Episode IV: An New Hope, had to be CGI, and they were pretty much flawless renderings. Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia were the most obvious, and I believe Garven Dreis (“Red Leader, standing by…”) was spotted.
3 – Forest Whitaker and Wen Jiang as Saw Gerrera and Baze Malbus, respectively, were excellent, and Alan Tudyk’s voice work for the resigned, deadpan K-2S0 was top notch. On the antagonist side, Ben Mendelsohn as Director Orson Krennic, the Chief Very Bad White Villain, kept pace with the obvious fan-favorite focus on Darth Vader. Not an easy task. Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso, the Stock Female Badass Protagonist With Eyeliner, gave an average performance, but in some scenes she had her moments.
4 – As it relates to the Star Wars universe in general, the film was intentionally darkwashed and feminized—two of the film’s writers said so, going so far as retconning the Empire into a white supremacist organization. Fighting against racial imperialism is actually a good thing, but note that nearly no white supremacists/imperialists exist—being pro-white (or pro-any-race) is nowhere near the same thing as being pro-white-racial-imperialism. If you can’t parse that difference, or feel the need to special plead for certain demographics, you’ve been successfully propagandized.
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Just saw “Rogue One” last night. I thought the very beginning was pretty cool, that the middle really dragged, and that the ending somewhat redeemed the lack of action. I was disappointed at the lack of lightsabers. I guess I didn’t find the focus on the design of the Death Star to be that interesting, and sadly, would have to deem this my second least favorite Star Wars movie (right behind “Revenge of the Sith”).
I don’t know where I’d place it among my favorites, but it’s maybe in the middle? I feel like I shouldn’t include it in the Episode series, since it’s really a separate storyline. The Episodes are really about the Skywalkers and their roles vs. the Empire(s) (Rey is probably a Skywalker). I kind of expected there to be no lightsaber action since by the time Rogue One took place, there were only two known Force wielders (Palpatine and Vader).
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