A gritty but fantastic film

Rating: 9/10 (23 September 2018)

The first of the Star Wars Anthology movies has a lot to offer here.
Not only are we back in time to just before the events of A New Hope, but we get to see how events unfolded leading up to the opening scene in the original.
The cast were all fantastic. Felicity Jones, Ben Mendolson and Donnie Yen were the standouts for me. The remaining cast were just as good.
It was great to see Stormtroopers again and even better to see the return of my favourite character, Darth Vader.
The movie is a lot darker in tone compared to some of the other Star Wars films. You kind of expected to know what happens at the end. In that sense it was predicatable. But the journey getting there was one hell of a ride.
Director Krennic was the perfect villain and played by a fellow Aussie as well which made me happy. And he was the perfect person to have an argument with Tarkin (resurrected through pretty good CGI).
The only character which I didn't like was Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera. His motives were not clearly explained in the movie. Like me, if you watched the Clone Wars or the Rebels cartoon you know why he does the things he does. For those who don't watch these or read the books you don't get a sense of what he is doing in the movie, besides being a terrorist. It should have been better explained to the audience.
I think this film is far superior to the likes of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. It's just a shame so many scenes in the trailers were not in the movie and that a lot of reshoots has to be done.
But in the end it worked our brilliantly. And speaking of endings, the scene at the end with Vader was every fan boys dream come true