A New Hope for the Star Wars franchise!

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 2016)

This is the Star Wars film that has provided new found hope to die hard fans of the original trilogy (not the lame special edition or 1-3) and the expanded universe that Disney hastily abandoned. It comes at Star Wars from a newer, grittier and tactful perspective, that doesn't pander to young children at the expense of the overall story and film.
The film has many strengths, the CGI was masterfully done, including the additions of Tarkin, Leia, and others. It is clear that considerable funds and effort was expended to ensure that the final product would be as close to the real deal of the original trilogy as is possible. Additionally, the cinematic shots in space and on planets are nothing short of beautiful.
All of the major characters are played excellently, and despite the fact that we will never see any of them again, they each made an important contribution. Jyn was a powerful female lead that the writers respected enough to not place into a sappy love story with Capt. Andor. Krennic was a powerful yet flawed blue collar imperial the likes of which we have not seen before.
The final hour in the movie, and the battle at Scarif was very well executed, and provided almost a video game like tactical and strategic feel that is familiar to fans of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. This is to say nothing of the scene where Vader shows up and slaughters everyone in typical Dark Lord fashion which was completely awesome!
Of course there were down sides, though few and far between:
1. The imperials were made to be almost comically weak and inept, which makes you wonder how they rule the galaxy at all (Star Destroyers crashing into each other and troopers gunned down by the dozens like lemmings).
2. Darth Vader's pun (choking on ambition) was out of character and really took away from the otherwise somewhat serious and supposedly frightening encounter between the Dark Lord and Director Krennic.
3. The lack of the usual opening narrative/scroll was conspicuous and disappointing. Just because it is not an official episode doesn't mean that the intro could not have been included, after all most of the Star Wars shows, games, and even some novels managed to do it.
All in all an excellent Star Wars movie that offers a promising glimpse of hope to all those disappointed by JJ Abrams' pathetic attempt to replace the EU. The film offers fans a passing wet dream of what it could have been like if Lucasfilm and Disney had not soiled the bed and instead simply created film versions of EU classics like the Thrawn Trilogy, which was a much more persuasive and compelling post-ROTJ vision. Disney would do well to remember that it is the older more mature Star Wars fans that have the money in their wallets to buy the tickets to these movies, and treat them accordingly by giving us what we want... and this time they did just that!