A Poorly-Paced Heist Film with a Thrilling (And Slightly Redeeming) Third Act

Rating: 7/10 (31 December 2017)

Set shortly before the events of the Star Wars Original Trilogy, Rogue One tells the iconic, yet never shown, story of how the Rebels got those Death Star plans that led to the station's destruction at the hands of them, ultimately igniting one of the most iconic story arcs in film history.
Rogue One is a unique example of a film where the ending was written first, and it became the filmmakers' jobs to write a solid beginning and middle to help ground and justify a conclusion that audiences would be guaranteed to love. Unfortunately, it becomes apparent that this unique obstacle was a challenge for them.
The first and second acts are a mess! The film establishes too many characters at once that would eventually form the core Rogue One team to initiate the Death Star heist, and, due to poor pacing, makes the characters' roles and positions in the storyline so ambiguous and convoluted that it becomes difficult to keep track who is who in the film, and who is doing what in the film's storyline. What was the pilot supposed to do? Who was he sent by again? Not enough time is dedicated to clarifying these details in this complex storyline; the lack of decent pacing leaves unanswered questions about our characters, and makes otherwise important characters appear useless to the storyline (Forrest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera, for example).
It's only with the third act does everything that was confusing about the first and second acts start to make sense. Having said that, this heist film seems more like a mystery given the audience has to piece together the confusing parts of the first parts to figure out how they make the last part make sense. Maybe, by this time, who cares how they got together? We just want to see the heist!
What I love about Rogue One is the fact that it manages to enhance the original Star Wars by providing a compelling storyline; by the end of Rogue One, you feel the sense of urgency that everyone on the Rebel ship in the beginning of Star Wars felt. The Death Stars plans matter, and it was about time we FELT why they mattered. The diverse cast accentuates the sense of "group effort" it took to extract the Death Star plans.
The use of CGI to revive certain characters was distracting and unnecessary. I couldn't tell you what happened during certain scenes because I was distracted by the thoughts I had, mostly deciding whether I was watching a film or a video game unfold on the screen. The CGI is obvious and looks like a simple computer animation; no attention to detail could fix it, in my opinion. It was better to leave certain characters as cameos rather than give them full scenes and dialogue. Definitely the most cringe-worthy part of the film.
For the nerds out there, I was blown away by Darth Vader's scenes in the film. Rogue One is finally the film that properly portrays how terrifying Darth Vader is as a villain; he's not just a man, he's a monster.
Overall, Rogue One is a film that, from the start, has a fantastic ending. How the film gets to that ending is a bumpy road filled with poor pacing and underestablished characters, but everything falls together with a prewritten conclusion, making Rogue One a decent addition to the Star Wars saga for any film fan.