Fun At Times But Flawed and Unnecessary

Rating: 6/10 (15 December 2016)

I was really excited for Rogue One, I was fully aware that this movie was not necessarily needed but I wasn't to concerned about that as long as it was entertaining and had good characters and only to a certain extent did they succeed. This is not a bad film but it's just not all that great and will not stand as one of the better Star Wars films. But there was plenty of good in this film for one it looks incredible, Gareth Edward did a fantastic job at blending special effects with real life and was seamless, he is also a master at showing scale and making his films seem gritty and real. This is a war film and it made the world seem more grounded in reality. The performances were pretty good, Felecity Jones was really good and had a nice arc to her, Diego Luna was also really good and was an entertaining character, I haven't seen much of Donnie Yen but he really impressed me in this film and his character was a nice way of showing how the fall of the Jedi effected more than just the Jedi themselves. But easily this films greatest performance was Mads Mikkelson, he's one of my favourite actors and he was just perfect in this film as a father and as a man faced with an impossible situation. The last act of this film is easily its best it's directed amazingly you are invested in the plan and is easily the best thing about this film. But for every positive in this film there is a negative and this film has plenty. For one the character for the most part remained undeveloped, other than Jyn Erso not enough backstory and motivations are provided. I love Forrest Whitaker but he was so bad in this movie, his voice and mannerisms were completely over the top and was not a necessary character. Like I said I loved the last act of this movie but the first two were dull, slow and uninteresting for the most part. Obviously one of the things people are most looking forward to in this film is Darth Vader and he is a fantastic presence when he was in the film and I truly think that he could have been used more as the scenes he was in he added nothing to the plot other than fan service. Star Wars has a bit of a tradition of adding comic relief through droids and this film follows that tend but fails at it, K2SO was funny at first but after a while became really annoying and his humour was really forced.
I loved The Force Awakens and I was hoping that this film would tide me over until Episode 8 next year but it really hasn't, its an entertaining enough movie but far from one I'm going to be dying to watch again soon, if your a Star Wars fan you can at least appreciate it but it fails to live up to other entries in the franchise and doesn't give me a lot of hope for future anthology films.
66%/B-