We all know what's coming, but this film still delivers

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2017)

So, any Star Wars fan can pretty much connect the dots in deducing what takes place in this film. It's literally right before the original Star Wars begins so it doesn't take a genius to figure it out.
We're introduced to an ensemble of entirely new characters, half of which, you'll forget their names as soon as you finish the film. To give you an example, here's my roll-call of the main protagonists without consulting Google: Jyn, Cassien, K-2SO, Blind Jedi Follower, Buddy and Asian Machete.
So Jyn Erso has more or less lived through her developing years as an outlaw. You could argue that there are many parallels between her and Rey from The Force Awakens, even down to a complete copy of the scene where she takes down a team of assailants single-handedly while the male sidekick looks on impressed.
While this is officially Star Wars canon, it takes a couple of new approaches, such as not having a title crawl at the beginning, travelling to several new planets and captions describing the planets. Even the traditional John Williams score is nowhere to be heard.
Despite all this, it's serviceable as a film. One distinction is that it is considerably more darker than the traditional Star Wars film. Their use of CGI is both impressive and questionable. Trying to portray characters previously played by deceased actors is tricky, so I was unsure what to make of CGI Peter Cushing as Governor Tarkin. I wouldn't have minded it as much if he was a recurring character but there are numerous scenes where he appears and every successive time he appears, the illusion gets more and more broken. The same can be said about CGI Leia at the end. I know that Carrie Fisher was still alive at the time this film was released but it's just something haunting about the glossiness of CGI Carrie Fisher circa 1977.
The action in this film is amazing, especially the space battle; clearly a homage to Return of the Jedi. A number of unexpected cameos appear as well, which is a complete surprise. If there's one aspect that could be described as a weak link, it's the character chemistry. I know that these actors are good (hell, Felicity Jones was Oscar-nominated), but the overall delivery isn't quite to that same standard. For example, Jyn Erso sees a hologram of her father, whom she hasn't seen for about 10-15 years and starts crying her eyes out. She meets her father in a later scene as he dies. No tears, just "Noooo!" That didn't quite work for me.
Also, no point getting emotionally invested because these characters all meet the same fate. K-2SO is probably one of favourite Star Wars characters now, though.
This film also gave us the best Darth Vader scene ever, making me wish that we had more scenes to that degree.
Overall, this film makes a great addition to the universe of Star Wars. However, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who has never seen a Star Wars film before, otherwise they would be completely lost.