Perhaps A Little Too Much Spectacle

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2016)

It's difficult to look back at STAR WARS and view it critically . It's a film we've all grown up with so what anyone says here doesn't matter in the slightest . People will flock to the cinema to watch it on their millions and if nothing else it might just erase the cynical memories of the trilogy we got at the turn of the century
Truth be told I'm indifferent to the franchise . I felt bitter disappointment in seeing the original but with THE FORCE AWAKENS the mainstream view was that the franchise just got good again . The word from the neutrals in that trying to get to basics TFA was a carbon copy of A NEW HOPE so I decided to give it a miss
I don't know if this has impaired my enjoyment of ROGUE ONE but it did seem fairly self contained . The Imperial Empire develops a new planet destroyer ray gun and the only thing stopping its use is that the engineer who built it is now in hiding . If nothing else it does allow a cameo from Mads Mikkleson , one of cinema's most underrated actors over the last decade and just before the title comes up we see Forest Whitaker
This gave me hope we'd be seeing a character driven film with some intense performances but then we get the curse of event movie making and the studio second guesses what the public wants and gives it to them in bucketloads and is usually the case it's high spectacle . Lots of explosions , space fights and other high powered noisy set-pieces . Too much so for my liking but to be fair I did feel I was still watching a big budget movie rather than a video game which happens too far often when I'm watching Hollywood blockbusters but I still hoped for a bit more story amongst the carnage and high body count
One thing I would have liked to have seen developed more is the throwaway line about a rebel who broke away from the alliance and is fighting his own war against The Imperial Empire . A maverick rebel using his own army to fight against the enemy ? A sort of good guy version of a fighter in the Al Nusra Front splitting from former allies and building a Jedi Knight version of ISIS theocracy ? Just think of all the potential that type of story could come up with but it's a franchise event movie involving STAR WARS . Complex political intrigue and internal moral dilemmas will just have to wait for a different film series