Open letter to Disney, Gareth Edwards and the next Star Wars Directors

Rating: 6/10 (14 December 2016)

Dear Disney Company, and Dear Mr Edwards,
I just saw your last Star Wars movie "Rogue One" in France.
Rogue One is in my opinion a good step forward from Star Wars VII, but is still far from a great movie.
I understand that writing a Star Wars brand is complicated. How to create a story for the children and the parents ? For the newcomers and the religious fans ? And all this while keeping the studio and the investors happy ? Sometime I imagine the writers being checked in their creative process by countless industrial imperatives and I wonder what space is left for magic to appear. From an artistic point of view, my opinion is that Star Wars VII was a failure, and not even a film, but a marketing machine. It was a box-office success, but "bigger" doesn't mean better.
Rogue One had huge advantages over Star Wars VII. Less expectations, more freedom, a time-line close to the first movies, and even a good plot idea and a controversial point of view on rebellion. So what could go wrong ?
To sum it up : the story-telling. And in a way, the direction (by whoever had the final cut and I am not sure it is Mr Edwards here).
From the writing of drama lines and situations that have been seen and heard a million times before in generic movies, to the fan-service winks and cameos repeated ad nausea, this movie fails to be great and original and is sent back to the land of the Christmas's products. It will not be remembered, like most of the recent super heroes and action movies.
The acting, the animations, costumes, sets and SFX are good, but the film is not exceptional. Good ingredients don't guarantee a good dish.
So of course it's just a movie. The person with the final cut knows it and maybe his point of view is "It's OK, there's tons of explosions and spaceships, the kids and the fans will love it, the story isn't that bad, and come on, it's just a movie".
Well this is what Rogue One is : not art, not a vision, not something new, just an action sci-fi movie with Star Wars flavors.
If you like the Star Wars universe you can still see it, it's not bad, it just lacks magic.
----------------------------SPOILERS BELOW----------------------------
Like Star Wars VII, Rogue One was better when it didn't over-pretend to be a Star Wars movie.
But this movie didn't have the time to develop a very strong story line and to create a real empathy with characters. It is possible to do it, but you have to make some choices and find a good balance between quiet scenes and action scenes. And not put too much scenes as you have only 2 hours.
Unfortunately, the total time for the characters to develop very short compared to the action scenes.
With so little time left the options are : bad introduction of characters with no clear background, cliché situation to go fast, strong and sad situations to pretend they have feelings.
But with no time for characters and the constant cuts from one scene to another, the viewer stops caring, even in case of danger of death :
The mother dying after 2 min on screen in a cliché situation ? The father dying after 5 min on screen, with the generic "last-words scene" ? And for the others : if they do not care about their life when gigantic rocks fall on their head how could we care ?
Is it a lack of imagination and talent from Hollywood writers, or is it because the cliché make it easier for kids, like if death was nothing and everybody was a kamikaze ?
Many other recent productions follow the same pattern, and it is becoming impossible to believe in the movie and to care for the characters.
Add to this the fan-service plague... From "I have a bad feeling..." to the copy-paste "reference" scenes (Tatooine-clone again, Tie pilot shooting scene, Yavin X-wing departure scene etc etc).
We already know we are in a Star Wars movie : it is written on the ticket. Please stop... we are not playing a fan contest in a Star Wars convention. Each time you do this over-reference you take the viewer away from the story.
So please, Mr or Mrs in charge at Disney, or Mr next Star Wars Director, try something fresh next time. Try a different pattern of storytelling and a different rhythm, because nothing good will come from this one. Money maybe, but nothing more.
And now for complete subjectivity :
PROS :

The actors were good, even if we had no time really to care about their characters.

The Droïd is good.

Tarkin was well done but over animated.

The admiral was better than the New Order guy in Star Wars VII.

Not a Skywalker or Jedi story : refreshing.

Good design, vehicles etc.

CONS :

Dialogues, Storytelling etc

The music.

Red glasses (from clone wars?) don't look good on Vader. It's ugly and disturbing.

Vader's scene with the admiral : too much light on the mask, not threatening, no charisma, too fast in the movements. Keep him in the dark...

Hyperspace on atmosphere.

Magic instant communication between distant worlds (rescue call).

Small galaxy: every planet at a couple hours from each other.

No imagination for new worlds (Sand / Yavin / Mustafar-like / Beach... )

The Star Destroyers collision seemed really easy.