Maybe better than TFA?

Rating: 10/10 (16 December 2016)

I saw A New Hope in the theatre when I was a kid (ahem, before it was called A New Hope). I've been a Star Wars fan since then, cheerfully suffering through the prequels and being ridiculously excited when The Force Awakens came out.
I was iffy on the idea of the SW universe stories like Rogue One. I don't expect them to be well-executed, but holy hell did they knock it out of the park with this one.
This is not a kid-friendly movie. This is Star Wars for grownups: dark, gritty, intense, with more moral ambiguity than we've come to expect from the light vs dark that George Lucas set up. Other reviewers have pointed out that this movie puts the war in "Star Wars", and while I thought it was a corny thing to say, having seen the film I think that's an accurate description. They weren't afraid to kill off characters; in fact, they make Joss Whedon and George R.R. Martin look like amateurs.
Now, that said, I felt like there was more levity than in any previous Star Wars movie, provided especially by Alan Tudyk's (ALAN TUDYK, Y'ALL!) K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial 'droid. I also loved the shout-outs to old Star Wars fans: the scene with bumping into Ponda Baba and Cornelius Evazan ("I have the death sentence on twelve systems"); a nice little cameo by R2 and 3PO; Jimmy Smits reprising his role as Bail Organa; Tarken's back-from-the-dead-incredible-CGI prominence. And at the end they connected it directly to the opening of A New Hope, providing full continuity with the rest of the universe.
I think I liked this better than The Force Awakens, and I like TFA an awful lot. If this is the standard set for the ancillary titles set in the Star Wars universe, my expectations has been raised.