No threat as/in a/the movie...

Rating: 4/10 (28 December 2016)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story...a hard film to talk about, at first it seems to make mostly right decisions and it looks like a Star Wars movie...but the more you think about the wasted potential, the more it falls apart. (And to be clear from the get-go, i'm not a hardcore Star Wars-Fan, i grew up liking the original movies pretty much, but i'm more the Indiana Jones/Lord of the Rings guy)
The big problem is the strange anticipation most people nowadays have with the Star Wars license. Star Wars is a great fantasy tale, which was never meant to be a saga, but got to be, because of it's great success. The reason the first movie came to be was that George Lucas had a idea for a movie which combines all the films he grew up with and his favourite genres into one hybrid, which worked out extremely well. (Here's a video which explains fairly well what i'm talking about, just for better understanding: https://youtu.be/6V42FVqsaI4)
But then came the prequels, and George Lucas seemingly thought that he had to expand his universe, and with expand, he meant explain. The force was now something scientific, the backstory of a guy had to be told which was just the big bad villain in a fantasy story, with a little twist to it, and because the original movies seemed to "simple" they crammed politics into the main story...
Most people already know all of this, but i just wanted to get across why this movie, while being Star Wars on the surface (and don 't get me wrong, very entertaining) isn't a real Star Wars movie, or with better words, not the kind of Star Wars movie we "need".
This film was marketed as kind of a war movie, which is gritty, dark and more realistic. Most people seem to think that this would be a plus, but (like i explained) that's not what Star Wars is about, it 's supposed to be a fairy tale about true heroes who fight dark forces, get the girl and live happily ever after.
But let's talk about the things that work really well, and which are mostly technical to say the least.
The cinematography is very good, the movie looks dark, but you get what's going on, and the landscape shots are beautiful.
The effects are really good, and surpass the okay effects of The force awakens by far. But the motion capturing is pretty much hit and miss. The robot played by Alan Tudyk is masterfully done and you forget very fast that it's not a real machine, and Gouvenor Tarkin works for the most part, but not without an uncanny valley effect, which also includes a young Princess Leia, which is by far the most unconvincing and needless effect in the whole film, and the worst part is that it's one of the last few shots of the movie...so that sticks with you a long time...
So that was that, let's get back to the stuff that didn't worked as well...
Storywhise the strongest part is the connection between our protagonist and her father, but these scenes are brief and far apart, which is made worse by the fact that we don't learn anything about their backstory, so that it's not even THAT much of a connection. And this is one of the most obvious weaknesses of the film: The characters.
Most of them can't even be called characters, because they are none. They are just people without personality, and you learn nothing about them, which is even more sad, because all of them die so that we'll never get to know them, or even care about their death. And that's really sad, because the actors are very charming and do their best, so that i really WANT to like them, but it doesn't work.
Also the story(-telling) on itself isn't that good, apart from the Titanic-effect, that means that we all (obviously) know how it will end. Which also means that the movie doesn't work on it's own, because it 's highly unsatisfying to see a movie about people who just find the plans for a big destructive weapon, but die without getting the chance to stop the grand threat which is set up...
That's the content, but what about the promised action, does it deliver? Well, on a technical level yes, it works really well in that regard and is very exciting, most of all the last act, but on a dramatic level, not that much, mostly because of the weak character connection, but also because it lacks the kind of suspenseful sequences the original movies had. They just do their stuff, and every problem get's solved so quick that it never get's really intense. The space fight has the same problem, but it's way better than the one in The Force Awakens (which is a movie i prefer).
And yes Darth Vader is in this movie, but it's nothing more than brief fan-service, but good one to say the least...
There is much more to talk about in detail, but these are my general thoughts on this movie.
It's entertaining to watch, and on the surface fairly well made, but it lacks in content and mostly in providing characters to care about, which is needed to make this kind of story investing...