Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, fan service with terrible pacing

Rating: 6/10 (26 December 2016)

My favorite Star Wars movie was always The Empire Strikes Back, not only because it is the best Star Wars film but because it is a well crafted movie as a whole. Through the eyes of a fan everything can be good except maybe for George Lucas' green screens, but it's an obligation to watch and review it as a movie, not as a hype product. That's why The Empire Strikes Back is so great, it doesn't matter from what perspective you are viewing, either Star Wars fan or movie buff, it is still a masterpiece.
Rogue One tells a very messy story with uncharismatic characters about something that didn't need to be explained. The movie has poor character development leading to them being boring and irrelevant to spectators, including the protagonist Jyn that lacks charisma even for a role in a meaningless spin off. Every character feels shallow and the acting doesn't help to change that, just makes it worse.
The pacing of the movie is were it shines, it's so utterly bad that establishes a whole new level of terrible pacing in movies. Half of it's duration being slow paced scenes with failed character development, making it very tedious, and the other half being so chaotic with so much rushed action scenes that it also succeeds on being tedious. It's also worth noticing that this movie uses some of the most unconvincing plot devices I've ever seen, like a necklace, leading me to question if the script was lazily written or that they just couldn't think of anything better.
With the two main characters being abysmally acted and uncharismatic the movie feels dragged with very few good scenes, almost none of them being in the first half. A lot of the time I didn't even care about what was being shown at the screen, this includes all of the cheesy death scenes. How can someone be emotional about a death scene of a character that meant nothing to the spectator the whole movie? Cramming almost all of these death scenes at the last 30 minutes felt rushed, mainly because none of these characters could be left alive since none of them actually existed in the Star Wars universe before this movie.
Besides all of these flaws, and the force brainwashing used in at least 4 scenes, the movie presents a good photography, and great use of special effects.
The whole experience could be better but it does what it was meant to be done: to give fans another Star Wars movie. Not for the sake of being an excellent movie, like The Empire Strikes Back, but for the sake of being another Star Wars movie.