A forgettable action film with flat characters.

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2017)

I liked Rogue One. I thought it was great. But there are many things in it that bothered me. The biggest flaw is the lack of character development: 1. The dynamic between Krennic and Galen was something I was looking forward to and I was hoping to see how their relationship falls apart. But we only get one flashback scene where they are buddy buddy to each other and then the rest of the movie they are enemies.
2. Rogue One crew itself was barely developed. Jyn Erso has the most character development out of all of them but it isn't much. Her character lacks a charm and charisma that main characters in Star Wars usually have. We don't learn much about her as a character other than the circumstances she was put through. Her relationship with her father and how she feels about him is about as far as they go.
3. Diego Luna and Felicity Jones should have had more chemistry. I was hoping to see a subtle developing love between them as the movie goes on much like Han and Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. But there was nothing. The death scene would have been so much more effective and heartbreaking had this been there.
4. The rest of the crew suffer from the same problems. A little bit more character development could have gone a long way. I wanted to know more about them, especially Donnie Yen whose character did a great job bringing the presence of the force to this film. (The force was personified through his character much like it was through Obi-wan in A New Hope. I absolutely love it.)
5. The pacing is a mess. The first half of the movie cuts from location to location way too fast. I wish the film could have stayed in one location for a bit longer. The second half of the films pacing starts to drag abit, making the pacing inconsistent. The fact that the film had extensive reshoots really shows.
6. Yes this a "war film" and everything isn't black and white but I think they went too far with the Rebellion. A lot of the things they do is out of character. For example, the way they interrogate people and how quick they were to surrender.
7. There's no title crawl. We known this before the movie came out but giving the nature of the films opening sequence and the events that happen before it, it would have been nice to have the title crawl. 8. The music score served this movie in some parts but overall it was forgettable. I understand Michael Giacchino only had 3 weeks to do the score (plus he had to come up with a balance of originality while also following the man himself-John Williams) and given his past work he has done on the Star Trek films ,if he was given more time, I don't doubt the score would have been much better. I was disappointed that there were very few queues to well known pieces of Star Wars music like Binary Sunset or the Imperial March.
But even with these flaws Rogue One still had tons of impressive moments and some of the best imagery ever done in live action Star Wars. Director Gareth Edwards outdid himself with the visuals.