Some of the best action scenes we've ever seen in a Star Wars film, but ultimately a thoroughly flawed effort.

Rating: 5/10 (17 December 2016)

This could have been good. Amazing, even. Director Gareth Edwards delivers some of the best action scenes in any Star Wars movie. He shows us a side of the saga we haven't seen before: the ugly face of war. He shows us that the Rebels aren't all good, cannot be all good. That, in order to accomplish the things they need to win the war against the Empire, they must cross the line. It is a very refreshing take on a world that has become all too neatly divided into good and evil. Dark, dirty, gritty. All the buzzwords. We also get to see more of this vast galaxy as Edwards takes us to plenty of new planets and locales, from the ancient Jedi world of Jedha to the beautiful if deadly beaches of Scarif. Make no mistake, this is a very beautiful and sometimes breathtaking movie.
However, it falls flat in several respects, none of which are really Edwards' fault. Let's start with the most obvious one: the score. Michael Giacchino had the unenviable job of scoring the film in only four weeks after composer Alexandre Desplat had to leave the production due to scheduling issues. And it shows. The score is perfectly adequate, but nothing more. No one will leave the theater humming a specific tune from this flick. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if some started whistling "Enterprising Young Men", the theme Giacchino composed for 2009's Star Trek - he seems to have reused some of his old motifs.
The next problem is the film's lack of engaging characters. While it mixes things up by making the main droid not a cuddly candidate for a bestselling toy, but instead a cold-blooded (cold-wired?) strategic analysis bot with a fondness for zingy one-liners (K-2SO, voiced by Alan Tudyk), the rest of its ragtag band of heroes is an assortment of cardboard cut-outs and clichés. And in no character is that more obvious than in its nominal hero, Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones). Here's the thing: a girl who shoots things is not automatically a strong character. A character is someone who has agency, makes her own choices, and deals with the consequences of those choices. That is the foundation of any good story. But Erso is a hollow vessel, a ball that gets passed from one plot point to the next. At no point does she make a choice - that falls to the male characters, who naturally are there to tell her what to do. She just executes plans. All this, however, is at odds with how she is introduced: a tough survivor of Imperial terror who had to learn to survive on her own. It's a shame that the writers dropped the ball so badly when it came to characterizations, since on paper Erso and her squad of rogue rebels should have been a team to rival the Serenity. But from Diego Luna's Captain Andor to Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera, none amount to much more than simple plot devices.
The final - and worst - issue is probably one caused by studio intervention: trying to tie the movie back into the original trilogy. The movie, for all its faults, would have had the strength to stand on its own, but for some reason it was deemed necessary to include not only nods to the old films, but vigorous headbanging. It starts with Darth Vader, but it doesn't end there. Going into detail would spoil major surprises, but suffice it to say that each and every scene with Vader could be cut from the movie and it wouldn't make a narrative difference. There are many more instances of blatant and very costly fan service that don't really add anything beyond the slight "aha, I know that guy!" moment, and more often than not even detract from any enjoyment because they are just so badly done. And then there is Darth Vader's newly found love for puns. No, really.
All in all, this is a movie that feels more like a fan-film with a generous budget than a proper entry in the Star Wars saga. Rogue One does a lot of things right but ultimately chokes on its own aspirations.