Rogue One; The Uninspired generic "family Friendly" blockbuster

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2016)

:cough: Let me begin by stating the obvious... Disney is the wrong studio to be involved with the Star Wars franchise. They are a bunch of pencil pushers who are only interested in churning out one "safe" movie after the other. What they fail to realize is the 'Star Wars' franchise is bigger then anything else they've had and it's FAN driven, so millions will go no matter how dark or dialog driven the movie is.
With that out of the way, 'Rogue One' is a poorly conceived, single plot action film that if it weren't for some good acting, decent sets/costumes and the 'Star Wars' name attached, would have bombed at the box office. Why? Because frankly, it's uninteresting. All of the great and interesting dialog scenes that would have helped generate sub stories to keep the audience interested, simply didn't exist. It's as if this movie was a sequel and the previous movie had all the information we needed, yet this isn't a sequel. 'Rogue One' is a unique movie that fits between Episode III and Episode IV, featuring only TWO of the characters from the entire 'Star Wars' Franchise. Yes, there are brief cameo's with other characters, but that doesn't count. Worst off, TWO of those characters are 100% CG and they just look like crap.
It's as if the filmmakers never watched a single 'Star Wars' movie and/or never understood what made them decent, even the not-so-hot prequels had their moments. Even 'The Force Awakens' was "entertaining" with far more complexity and overlapping plot lines. Still, 'Rogue One' feels more like a dumbed down 'The Force Awakens' then anything else in the franchise. Heck the filmmakers couldn't even be bothered to put the standard 'Star Wars' introductory story brief before the start of the movie. They threw that out the door, even though it COULD have told the audience what they SHOWED over the course of the first 20 minutes, which were a train wreck of back story and filler story to bring the audience up to speed. Three paragraphs could have answered all of those questions, but then they wouldn't have been able to show off the special effects wizardry.
Unlike 'The Force Awakens' which is saved by it's "classic" cast and more similarities to the world of 'Star Wars', 'Rogue One' makes some very well thought out attempts, but doesn't cash in on them. Yes, the cast is good and strong, but they're all worthless underdeveloped characters, thrown in because they're "cool". Yes, the sets are spot-on, but they spoil them by using heavy CG which makes set extensions, ships and space battles, look like every other stupid Hollywood movie. Even technical things like the score, were boring and uninteresting. I was shocked because John Williams had already written so much music for the franchise, all they needed to do was tweak it slightly and they would have had a pretty decent score. The surround mix was very flat, with only a few dynamic hits, but no crispness at all. It's like spent all their time trying to make it even, without even contemplating dynamic range. This is probably thanks to Disney not wanting general audiences complaining about how "loud" it seemed. Even the mix had to be super "safe", which is a load of ballix. I could go on all night about the flat and uninteresting cinematography and over-use of CG as well, but those two things are to be expected in a world of tent pole blockbusters like these.
Fifteen minutes into 'Rogue One' I was already done with the movie. I was done because the plot was so tripe, it was so been there, done that, I knew exactly how it was going to end. There was no reason for me to waste two hours, but I continued to watch. Then we were introduced to the stupid robot character who was there only for comedy relief. Then everything that came out of his mouth was written for 8 year olds. That was about the moment I was going to walk out. I grabbed my things and was over it, but they threw some eye candy at the screen and I stuck around. I felt bad for the set's and actors honestly because they were playing around in this cool world, that we the audience weren't allowed to explore.
In the end, 'Rogue One' is one rotten tomato, thanks to Disney exec's to scared to release the ACTUAL movie, prior to re-shoots. I could see rough outlines of the original movie as I watched and was dismayed to have not seen the original cut. It's hard as a filmmaker to have your movie taken away, but it's even harder as the masses to watch something that COULD have been great. This movie COULD have been awesome, they sure had so many great elements, but it failed miserably and if audiences see the same movie I did, we won't see the same box office numbers as 'The Force Awakens'. Maybe then Disney will recognize their failure, but I have a feeling they'll make plenty of money and push it under the rug.
6/10 2 and 1/2 stars.