Better than The Force Awakens and the best Star Wars prequel!

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2016)

This film surprised me in many ways and pulled of certain things better than The Force Awakens did including story, CGI and call backs to other films. This film is by far and away the darkest Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back and is brilliant to see that Disney took a chance with this film with its tone and lack of light-hearted moments.
Lets start with the positives and the first is director Gareth Edwards who did a fantastic job with this film. You can really see the time, effort and heart that has gone into the making of this film and it starts with him. There is a good contrast between shots, there are big wide open shots of planets and locations that look brilliant. There are close ups of Star Destroyers to give a better indication of their size against its surroundings, which really works well. Also the "hand held" feel to the beach scene at the end of the film really makes you feel as if your there yourself. From the very start this was pitched as a war film and the final act definitely lives up to that name. Edwards has done a really good job considering all the fuss over the dreaded, end of the world re-shots that know other film has.....cough...... more like every film has. It never shows like this film has been chopped and changed.
Next the story is still interesting and fascinating even though, as Star Wars fans, we know the ending to the story. The film does a really good job of making the known ending a positive instead of negative and builds on the ends foundations and gives room from more creativity to the rest of the film.
Another positive is the CGI in this film and I must say this is some of the best CGI in a Star Wars film to this date. The effects in this film are so seamless that the practical and CG effect blend excellently well, tricking you to guess which is what. The space battle is some of the best action and CG in a Star Wars film, utterly brilliant and a wonder to watch. Its sort of like today's technology meets the beginning of Revenge of the Sith and the end of Return of the Jedi, truly brilliant. Even the AT-ACT's on the beach are brilliant done and bring a real scale to them that even Empire didn't achieve with them. The inclusion of Grand Moff Tarkin as a CGI character was probably inevitable due to the fact that he would be around in the Empire at this period of time, it would seem foolish to not include him. The CGI of the late Peter Cushing was good for the most part but I feel the technology is not quite there yet but it is a really good effort. It actually surprised me how much he was in the film considering this could and will be a negative of the film for some people.
The performances for the most part are just OK, Felicity Jones and Diego Luna as the two main leads give good performances but nothing ground breaking or new. The rest of the supporting cast was OK but again nothing that I could personally latch onto, which is a shame. However the two characters that I could personally were Ben Mendelssohn and Mads Mikkelsen. They were just a little step above the rest for me and had more memorable moments and interactions with each other and other characters.
The another positive is the call backs to the original and prequel films, which this film does a far better job than The Force Awakens because they aren't forced or just copied. Some of the call backs are obvious others and for die hard fans such as myself. Whether it be from blue milk, Ponda Baba and Dr Evazan to red leader and gold leader or to hints of Obi Wan Kenobi and the inclusion of Mustafar, the hints and nods to the other films were brilliantly done and handled. I was surprised with how obscure some of them were but it also shows the effort and attention to detail from Gareth Edwards.
The final positive is Vader, wow just wow, even though he has about four minutes of screen time in the entire film his presence is felt throughout the film. Especially the end where he probably has one of his greatest moments in Star Wars history, if only there was more of it, it personally brought tears to my eyes absolutely out of this world. If anything we need a whole spin off film of that end scene, please Disney please.
Finally the negatives of the film and yes there are a few. Firstly the first and second acts for me dragged a little bit and felt a bit slow, I think this could be an issue with re-watchability. However with knowing how good the third act is it shouldn't be a problem. The another negative with it is the supporting cast of characters that were simply not cared for because there was basically no backstory for any of them apart from Felicity Jones's character. This meant I didn't care for any of the other characters and what was going to happen to them. The final negative I have is slightly knit picking really but I would have loved for Darth Vader to be in the film much more than he was, he could have replaced Tarkin in some of his scenes without a problem. Its a shame really because this could be the last time he is in a Star Wars film. Finally this film is 80 to 85 out of 100 % for me personally doesn't break the 90% mark just because of its negatives but much better than The Force Awakens and the best Star Wars prequel....................thought the bar isn't very high!