Let down

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2018)

Without comparing this to anything else in the Star Wars universe, Rogue One lacked a lot of story and character development. It could have been two movies, if written with more care by a creative storyteller. There was absolutely NO character development at all. Everyone played a two-dimensional role and dialog was boring. The story was rushed to give us just enough to see what happened without putting us into the people and places that made it happen. As a result, the acting felt like a bad script reading.
There was a lot of visual nostalgia, for sure. The effort put into the CGI was astounding. The idea for the story was great. Challenging, because everyone knows this story. Everyone who's familiar with Star Wars knows exactly how this ends. But this story deserves a character study. It needs to make the audience want to be involved. Instead, we got an epic 2 hour commercial for more Star Wars merch. It was beautiful, it was big, it ended with a shrug.