Star Wars for the rest of us Muggles

Rating: 9/10 (8 October 2017)

This movie deviates from the Star Wars Episodes as it shows parts of the wars that "ordinary" heroes fight, non-Force users (I am tempted to say "Muggles"). No Jedi magic and no light sabers, people have to fight with normal blasters, "the better times" of the more elegant light sabers are long gone.
So don't expect the usual Star Wars magic, but prepare for more like an earthly war movie, sprinkled with Star Wars goodies like X-wings, Star Destroyers, and, of course, the Death Star. Brand new, being tested, supervised by Grand Moff Tarkin brought to screen by a computer generated, almost believable Peter Cushing.
The story of Luke is told yet another time; young Jyn loses her family which runs a desert farm to the Empire, teams up with some rogue pilots and a sarcastic talking android, to learn about the Death Star and fight it. Same story, much rougher environment, no noble knights but fierce warriors, less space battles but more boots on the ground. And as I said - no baroque-style saber duels but 21th century warfare in Arabic-esque cities. And not even the clear line between good and bad - the Empire is on an understandable mission to restore order in the Galaxy, while the rebels question themselves.
At the end, the young heroine succeeds without using the Force, she steals the Death star plans and sends Princess Leia on her legendary mission to bring them to Alderaan, closely followed by Darth Vader, who like Tarkin and Leia looks a little CGI-ish.
No question that this is a movie worth seeing and owning, and I am excited about this spin-off which gives Star Wars a true Earthly touch.
There is one thing however that I would like to remark (SPOILERS AHEAD). We all know of the flaw of the Death Star: Too much power in one center, which is prone to explode if it is hit. This is the same error the dark side does over and over again: The droid army invading Naboo, both Death Stars and Starkiller Base - all suffer from being too centralized, not being distributed, not being redundant - they all are Single Points of Failure. This is the nature of the dark side, of the Sith: they gather around a powerful, authoritarian center, a dictator, a Big Brother who is meant to be the wise and powerful. Yet the dark side keeps failing because centralism and egomania is not the way you succeed, or how societies live in happiness.
Or so the franchise told us.
In Rogue One we learn that the flaw of the Death Star was intentionally built-in by an engineer working for the Empire but feeling for the rebellion. He built in a weak spot and documented it in the plans.
Now, not only that this means the "hope to find a weak spot" expressed in Ep IV was rather a certainty. Also, this implies that the Empire only falls by treason. Centralism works, the movie tells us, if it were not for traitors.
But that is wrong! The Death Star does not HAVE a flaw, it IS the flaw. This aspect is totally ruined by the treason story. If that one engineer would not have been a traitor, the Death Star would have worked. This is contrary to the message the other films brought.
What a pity, another of these plot twists that have the power to ruin your childhood memories. But on the other hand, nothing is more typical for Star Wars than constantly contradicting itself.
9/10, a great movie.