Star Bores

Rating: 1/10 (28 September 2018)

This is a pointless, poorly written and acted cash-in, that wrecks several points of series continuity for no discernable purpose while adding nothing of value to the canon.
Godzilla (2016) director Gareth Edwards has another visually well crafted but otherwise empty action spinoff to add to his short CV; concerned with telling the story of the rebel spy faction that stole the plans of the first Death Star, mentioned in passing in A New Hope (1977), Rogue One is a sloppily contrived fan film peopled by two-dimensional (in some cases literally, with both Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher represented by doll-eyed CGI clones) characters and a tired storyline, the conclusion of which can surprise no-one who has viewed any of the original episodes.
Felicity Jones makes little impression in the lead, her permanent expression of sulky insouciance failing to endear, while Diego Luna is possibly the wettest leading man since Patrick Duffy. The supporting cast, including Donnie Yen as an amateur Jedi and Alan Tudyuk as a sarcastic droid fair a little better, but are given distressingly little room to develop.
Pace, narrative focus and dialogue are all of highly variable quality, and the shrill, hand-me-down score can never reach the evocative heights of John Williams' venerable theme music. FX (CGI Leia and Moff Tarkin aside) and visual compositions are predictably impressive, but without an emotional centre to the story it becomes hard to care, and with the outcome already known it's ultimately a wearisome affair, made worse by some egregious plotting that bungles the attempt to link with the original trilogy.
At least we are spared any embarrassing histrionics from Darth Vader, ala Revenge of the Sith (2005), but it's small consolation in a totally misconceived and gratuitous exercise in cinematic fan-fiction, that adds nothing and only further degrades the canon while trying to enlarge it.