This is getting out of hand!

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2016)

First things first- this is far better than the sewer water that was The Farce Awakens. Far better.
But still the lack of a true visionary in the vein of Lucas is evident in almost every single frame. Making up for this by grabbing everything from the original trilogy- mostly Return of the Jedi this time. And banking on nostalgia by doing cameos of previous characters and situations.
And coconut trees on an alien planet? Seriously??? And where the hell was the Star Wars logo and theme at the beginning??? That put me right off straight from the start.
The acting and characters have about as much depth as tissue paper. And the dialogue is totally stupid, retarded, and yawn inducing, like it was written by a bunch of adolescents. Add to that some cringe-worthy situations and reactions by the totally miscast actors and you get ZERO emotional impact once they all start dying (to my relief). Annoying would be the best term to describe the characters. Plain effing annoying.
Another problem with Rogue one is a lack of strong lead actor or two to anchor the film. The Prequels had Liam Neesen and Ewan McGregor and and Ian McDiarmid, Original Trilogy had Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness. This has none. The lead character Jyn is utterly forgettable and her horrible dialogue does not help. Her budding romance with the castrated-Han Solo-rip-off-dude is ( I cannot even remember- I was wishing I was somewhere else other than in that darkened theater). As stated before the characters are just annoying and Donnie Yens character is the most annoying of the lot. And you actually feel relieved when they die off. Its that bad.
Lack of a proper bad guy does not help either- Vader comes through in the end but somehow feels like its not enough- like he belongs in another movie and has been lent into this to make it feel better.
However the space battles are far superior to anything in The Farce Awakens and even though a total rip-off of Return of the Jedi are a welcome respite to the boredom before it. At least they are coherent and easier to follow than the stupidity of the Farce Awakens; however they pale in comparison to any of the Lucas directed space battles. They keep the same look and design of the original ships and combat displays and call signs, even taking footage from the original movies for the Red Squadron members. However its just too little too late.
Saving graces are the deaths of the two leads in an embrace in the pillars of the Death Star destruction wave having managed to beam out the battle station's plans back to the rebel fleet at the last moment- which I did not expect and which lent a small emotional crescendo to an otherwise dead movie.
As I had already feared without Lucas Star Wars is truly truly dead. Disney will never be able to do anything totally new without the God-like imaginings of George. This is getting out of hand. Instead of making crap Star Wars movies after another maybe Disney should (as another Disney princess sang) just let it go.