Mixed fare...

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2016)

Some good stuff in this movie. A little closer to the original trilogy in approach to the genre, but too much stuff obviously thrown in to connect this to A New Hope. Inserting cameo appearances of characters seen in A New Hope, without making them part of the story, is distracting. Of course, for die-hard Star Wars fan this can be entertaining. I was amused by some of it, but it did draw me out of the story occasionally.
As for the story itself...interesting and does set the stage for A New Hope. I only wish it had been closer in tone to the original than what it was.
The acting was uneven by almost every actor. Don't know if this was due to directorial choices or the result of miscasting. I can understand that an actor needs to deliver a line in a convincing manner, but it should be easily heard and understood. There were times during the beginning scenes where I wished there were subtitles so I could have easily understood what the actor was saying. This could have been the result of casting actors with accents, casting actors with poor diction skills or ones who swallow their words.
I had to work hard to suspend reality in order to accept the CGI created characters. The lack of cartoon characters in this story was a relief in that I didn't have to do more work at reality suspension.
Obviously you have to have battle scenes in a movie about rebels vs. The Empire. The battles in space, near space and on the ground are well designed and crafted, although some action comes across as thrown in to serve those viewers who expect the kind of non-stop action found in interactive computer games. If the action does not support the story and is repetitive, then it easily becomes boring.
This is a genre I will still pay to see on the big screen, unlike some others that I gave up on because they strayed too far from the originals (the 007 movies for one example). I hope Disney does better with the next one and gives us a solid movie with a good story, believable characters and just the right amount of action to advance the story.