When I was fourteen years old

Rating: 4/10 (31 December 2016)

I saw the first Star Wars movie when I was around 14 years old at a friend's birthday party, his father owned the first VCR far and wide. The tape was probably rented from a video store. Thirty years later, it seems that they have nailed the concept. There's a lot of soap opera, a surprising amount of Holocaust movie tropes (families being torn apart and genocide by crazy dictator), and there is a strange fixation on daddy (he will make it right, but he's the incarnation of evil, but they made him to do it).
Rogue One is the umpteenth part of the franchise, and in no way a "stand alone" as Disney would have us believe (maybe in order to prepare us for the fact that they'll be churning out more "episodes" annually.
Hold on, I've just googled it, actually the studio has ANNOUNCED that the next episodes will appear annually.
In brief, I liked the spectacular effects in the last third of the movie. Storywise, it's a wild rehash of tropes from all genres. The combat scenes are pretty much "Platoon" with lasers (the rebels even wear GI-style helmets all of a sudden), the intrusion to the VCR storage tower are lifted directly from "2001".
I actually wouldn't have seen Rogue One at the cinema, but the town I was in has one of the biggest screens in the country, and Rogue One was what was on. I've just had my fill with Star Wars. You kids enjoy.