Good effort, but missed opportunity

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2016)

I'm a huge Star Wars fan having seen all films in the theater and was involved in the 501st Legion for a while. So it's a good time to be alive right now when it comes to the steady stream of Star Wars films. I generally did like this film's visuals and direction. The set design right out of the mid 70's still work all these years later and there's a sense of reverence to making sure this was done right. Spoilers- The film worked well enough, but they didn't get much mileage of the death of the mother for dramatic effect in the first scene or establish any relationship with Jyn and her father before then. So if comparing female leads to EP VII, Rey comes of as a much more interesting and endearing character. Forrest Whitaker's character added confusion to the story and should have been written out entirely or re-written to join the group. His death served no purpose and Jyn's relationship with him was surprisingly cold considering he's her adopted father. The male lead character, Cassian Andor doesn't seem to be too memorable and his look merges with the other bearded dark completion of the Imperial pilot. The Droid and Asian cohorts seem to bring all of the life into the cast. The blind guy's final scene would have been more dramatic if he started to get shot half way to the swicth and used the force to absorb the blaster bolts. Then in a dramatic end, he could have summoned the force to move the switch and then died in a dramatic ending like Elias in Platoon. So a good backstory, with bland acting and not as much fun as it could have been. Probably given the tone of the film they made a decision to not allow us to get too attached to these characters. I could go on re-writing and editing this all day, but the fact remains we're left with a pretty good effort. I'm glad the made this film and much prefer the grit of it over the childish cartoonish tone of EPI