I recently saw Rogue One with some friends on my birthday and I gotta say, I have some mixed feelings with the film.
So first off, its already better than eps 7 in consistency and thats a major plus in my book. Though I say this, with episodes 3 and 4 pretty much already giving tons of foundation for rogue one, this film was a project almost impossible to screw up anyway. I also wanna say that I liked the robot and initially liked Chirrut Îmwe alot(I'll explain later).
!!!!! *SPOILERS* !!!!!
My beef with this film is that until the first use of the death star in the film, the movie was for the most part, forgettable and bland. I had such a hard time caring about what was going on up til that point which was a good 30 minutes into the film.
Another thing that bother me was the facial CGI. Now while leia's facial CGI was near unnoticble and looked almost natural, Moff Tarkin's looked pretty jarring and took some time to get used to. It was almost like seeing a random video game character thrown into a live action film.
I also felt like they didn't properly build certain characters up through out the movie and thus, they were possibly interesting characters that I had a hard time caring about bcuz they seemed like half developed tag alongs. I won't lie though, the idea of their guaranteed death might have also played a part in this on a subconscious lvl.
Another thing that ate into me was Chirrut Îmwe as a character. If any of you know your EU (Extended Universe) lore, Chirrut Îmwe is basically a knock-off Miraluka, but with non of the cool stuff that makes the race so special. He's a very bare minimum version of them, seeing how he can "feel the force" to an extent that it gives him a form of intuition. This form of intuition aids his blindness and is sort of like the gut feeling Jedi's get from time to time. Now that I've explained all this, lemme explain why seeing him in the movie made me initially excited, but than a little disappointed.
Now for those of you who don't know, Disney went and annexed all the vast star wars lore that was the EU. This made alot of us fans really sad bcuz that means you'll never see the countless races and characters that had appeared in these stories (including the Miraluka). Now you can understand why, when seeing something that resembles a EU race, I end up jumping for joy as I first lay eyes upon it, expecting to see some of the awesomeness I'm assuming is coming. In my mind at that moment, I'm thinking Disney finally had a change of heart and are actually allowing some EU things to come back. I was ecstatic. But then I see Chirrut Îmwe through out the movie til his last moments as he appears to be no more than he was presented as in his introduction part of the film.
The worst part is I keep having this feeling that Disney knew full well what they were doing because of the way they had kept presenting him during the film. For example, in his last big moment in the film, you see him bravely walking past all the laser blasts that were being sprayed on him. During this whole scene, (If I remember correctly) the force theme or something similar to it was playing as the camera keeps focusing on his staff. When you take a closer look at the staff it sorta looks like the hilt is actually a light saber. The entire time the scene was happening, I thought it was building up to him detaching the handle from the staff and activating it like a cane sword or something and going Jedi on everyone. This of course didn't happen and when the scene was over and you realized no Jedi moment was happening with him, the high of expecting something dies and I feel underwhelmed at what actually happens. Another thing to take note is I'm not the only one who thought the scene was going in this direction, my other friends thought so as well!
Despite the fact we all heard there wasn't gonna be Jedi in this film, we were still under the impression that there would be anyway (at least Chirrut Îmwe). In fact, we were beginning to think the reason why that rumor was being spread was so the possible Miraluka cameo woulda been a big surprise to the audience. I guess the whole thing with him rubbed me the wrong way because I felt baited through out the film with no reward at the end other than the obligatory Darth Vader scene that, while cool, did not match the expectations I had going into this film in the first 30 minutes.
Wow, this turned into a EU vs Disney rant, sorry about that lol
This is the second time I geeked out on this forum. I guess I can't help it when it comes to star wars.
Anyway, to generally judge this film, I guess it was alright and some what better than eps 7 to some degree but while this film had more consistency, eps 7 had a lot more flare to it.
I actually came into the film thinking that a star wars film with little to no jedi or force users in general would do fine, but I guess I was wrong. It came out uneventful save a scene here and there. its funny, while eps 1-3 had waaay too much force stuff in their films, this film seems to be in the complete opposite spectrum. I can't help but feel this film was missing SOMETHING. I don't know whether it was character development, The Force, or other wise. All I know is that it came out a little short for me the more I think about it.
But I will end the note by saying this. Would I consider this film worthy enough to place along side my eps 4-6? yeah, sure, while it may not be as good as those films, its good enough to be there. If anything, it was done some what better than eps 5 considering it actually had a conclusion to it rather than something abrupt and unfinished. (Tho I still find eps 5 slightly more entertaining than rogue one)