Mediocre at best

Rating: 5/10 (23 December 2016)

If i were to describe Rogue One with one word i would say mediocre. There are some great shots, scenery and practical effects in this movie, but with shallow characters and a plot that is ultimately without tension this movie falls flat. I don't like to use the word boring to describe a movie,but after falling asleep in the end of the first act/beginning of the second act i can say the word boring apply nicely. They had one chance to redeem the fact that they were gonna make a Star Wars movie that was completely pointless in the grand scheme of things, and a movie that had to build tension on the basis of the characters since most people already knows how the story ends. How you could fail so spectacularly is beyond me.
First off you need a background story to your characters, and by that i don't mean that you have to force feed me flashbacks and exposition, but at least you need to establish a main character that isn't a hollow plank. The problem is that they actually try to build a story around Jyn our protagonist, but they don't emphasize in the right places, and they draw the opening short. Visually it's stunning to look at, but with no emotion i get easily bored.
There's plenty of action in this movie, but action is only good if you care about the plot and characters, and i don't. Garerh Edwards had the same problem with his movie Godzilla (2014) which was visually stunning, but lacked personality and characters (except Bryan Cranston). I don't know if it's the story as a whole or the scriptwriters fault that the dialog is dry and pointless, but i will go for the latter one because i know that one of the scriptwriters greatest achievement is directing and writing New Moon which also makes no sense and is pointless. There are glimmers of personality in some of the dialog, but it eventually leads to nothing and most of the relationships feel forced. I can imagine that the re-shoots is behind most of the embarrassing tonal shifts, and may be the cause of the missing personalities of the characters.
I can bring forth a similar movie that came out this year: Star Trek Beyond. This movie is very similar to what Rogue One tried to be except the gritty tone, although Beyond was a little dark at moments. This Star Trek movie had great characters even though they had two movies to establish them, but in this movie they kinda redo all of that, and it still works as it's own movie. Rogue One doesn't really work on it's own. The best moments are the fan service (for the fans of course), and the other moments that work are the ones that set up A New Hope, and is somehow connected to something we care about. Even if you are a Trekkie or a Star Wars fan you can't say that Beyond is objectively a better movie although Rogue One is better in some parts.
At last, let's talk about the fan service. Without spoiling anything i will try to be vague on the details. In this movie there are characters we know of that are placed in various locations that makes no sense for them to be. I suppose you could argue on some of the locations of the various characters, but after a while my braim just says: nope! Also the use of Deus Ex Machina has now ruined every movie that comes after this one. The Fore Awakens is also guilty of this, but not in the same degree as Rogue One.
They didn't even have the balls to just call this movie Rogue One. They just had to add A Star Wars Story which is the stupidest title a Star Wars movie has ever had, and I'm including the prequels. You just know they did it to market this movie to people who don't really care about Star Wars. I will refrain from calling them stupid, but they just had to add that last part to get the message across. Let me just swing by the music department and say that the music didn't even make a slight mark in my brain. Either you have to go as far from Williams' work as you possibly can, or you have to get Williams to do the job, something in between is hopeless.
Finally this didn't feel like it needed to be a Star Wars movie, and it didn't feel like one for the most part. I'm not saying we can't have spin offs set in the Star Wars universe, but they need to make memorable characters that we care about, and they need to start believing that the average movie goer has the attention span to watch some good old character development that doesn't involve corny, long monologues, and pointless action scenes. The Force Awakens did at least make memorable characters that stuck with me more than five minutes after the movie was done. I'm gonna be nice and give it a 6/10, but in reality it deserves 5 or even 4 out of 10.
And to all the people that are going to say that this movie took a risk, the only risk this movie took was being underwritten. The worst thing is that it worked.