Star Wars is no longer a cultural beacon of hope, faith, and integrity.

Rating: Null/10 (23 January 2017)

In 1977 Star Wars: a New Hope entered our cultural conscious as a brilliant mythic coming of age tale. Alienated youth of our technological age were treated to a unique blending of chivalry/samurai code, western, and WW2 heroics couching a message very relevant to the cold war: destruction of planets can be defeated if we turn to our own human feelings.
The following two Star Wars films developed the wonderful characters, setting up the true hero who stands up to evil, and rather than betray his values faces death and continues with unwavering hope that the most corrupted can be turned back to the light. A young 10-year old watching the original trilogy could be pretty inspired and morally educated.
What do we have in Rogue One? We have covert field assassinations, an ostensibly good guy using mind torture, a friendly robot who casually murders stormtroopers for comic relief, a good guy who shoots a villain in the back, wounded enemies being finished off, urban ambushes by rebels with collateral damage. Absolutely inept character exposition. Action and war movie clichés. Fan service insertions. An utterly bizarre character backstory attempting to explain that the weakness in the Death Star was not a thematic element based in the fundamental truth about the weakness of technology and fallibility of human design, but actually a designed-in flaw by a saboteur under the most implausible of circumstances.
Not only is this a bad movie, it is culturally conservative. It tells us to lower ourselves to complete the task. If the message of 'A New Hope' was to have faith in humanity to bring down the military machine, the message of Rogue One is that in order to win you have to get your hands dirty and be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for your cause. If this is the sustenance for the youth of the next generation we should be ashamed and alarmed.
It is disappointing that Disney, the writers, producers, and a director could so completely miss what makes Star Wars Star Wars.