Mostly Unwatchable

Rating: 2/10 (20 December 2016)

Watching Star Wars Rogue One reminded me how stubborn the entertainment industry is. They come up with a bad idea, which is often a move backwards, thinking it is creative and ignore public backlash against it. First we got that hand-held, shaky camera idea which hasn't gone away. The newest "invention" is making movies so dark, we may as well have a radio play instead. Visually, Rogue One is way too dark making one strain the eyes to see what is happening which has become the trend in Hollywood. It's like Hollywood has lost all confidence in its movies and insults the viewer by letting him not see the actors and what is going on. Beyond this, the brightness and contrast are out of whack, colour is drained out, and it looks all blurry. Rogue One looks just horrible. It's very ugly and unattractive.
The second annoyance I had was the dialogue which was delivered in a very wooden style and way too long in most scenes. Okay, we get it, let's move on. The director had the actors ramble on and on when this was supposed to be an action/war movie.
The previous Star Wars films worked because the dark evil spirit and the contrasting good/light spirit were delivered not by tinkering with the cinematography but allowing us to see the actors' faces and thus the emotions, motivations, and attitudes that protruded. We could see how they treated each other, how they felt about each other, something we can't see in Rogue One because of the fogged up murk.
The film's only saving graces were Donnie Yen and the final battle scene. I give it 2 stars for those two out of 10.