Rogue One may be the worst Star Wars movie to date

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Haven't seen it yet, but RO sounds much like TFA, a safe rehash/remake of the original films packaged for modern audiences.

That's a load of old bollocks. It does share a story with another famous movie, but that movie in this case is the Dirty Dozen.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Haven't seen it yet, but RO sounds much like TFA, a safe rehash/remake of the original films packaged for modern audiences.

That's a load of old bollocks. It does share a story with another famous movie, but that movie in this case is the Dirty Dozen.

And that's why I'm excited to go see it.

I've wanted a good commando movie for a while now. It being Star Wars showing rebels doing rebel things is just icing on the cake.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

It does clash with the early films, though. Han Solo and the Imperial leaders seemed to mock the idea of the force. Now it seems like the dominant religion in the galaxy.

Maybe it is the dominant religion, but the vast majority of its adherents are people like Chirrut, who just look kind of silly sitting there praying for a door to open.

In defense of the soundtrack. The new guy they hired had only 4 weeks to compose and perform the script so quite honestly it is a miracle the soundtrack wasn't horrible.

That's...a pretty good defence, actually. Now I feel sorry for the guy.

 

[Frankster]

Just saw it.

Officially liked it much, much, muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch better then TFA, so i am satisfied.
Though then again i'm in the minority who prefers all the prequel films to TFA so my tastes don't usually align with the majority (for what its worth, my order of preference: Empire Strikes back>ROTJ>New Hope>Revenge of the Sith>Clone wars>Phantom Menace>TFA, i will have to ponder where rogue one slots in).

I will concur with others when they say 1st half is a bit slow, gets much better in 2nd, i enjoyed the action for the most part and was just happy to see imperials actually feeling like a legitimate threat.

I got tons of little nitpicks but they are minor stuff (i hated how main dude faked out his death to save main chick just as the main bad guy was gloating, tbh i thought as far as evil characters go he had balls, he only took 2 bodyguards with him and didn't seem worried even when they both got killed and it was 2v1, which is what made the fake out death all the annoying, seriously just let the bad guy shoot the chick then realize the death star fired and he is screwed, everyone dies at the end anyways) and the space battle/land battle scenes really satisfied me.

Oh and i was super chuffed to see gold/red leader from a new hope appear in this film too, actual continuity and fleshing out of later minor characters, me likes this very much! There were other cameos of course, but i was really happy at those 2 in particular.

It does clash with the early films, though. Han Solo and the Imperial leaders seemed to mock the idea of the force. Now it seems like the dominant religion in the galaxy.

Maybe it is the dominant religion, but the vast majority of its adherents are people like Chirrut, who just look kind of silly sitting there praying for a door to open.

I'm gonna +1 the idea that the vibe you get from the original films is that the force isn't a wide spread religion at all and most people mock it. Of course this clashes with the prequel films where the jedi were this big galactic organization, makes everyone forgetting about jedis and the force in the space of a generation seem really weird. So maybe this is a slight retcon that's for the best.

Still, tbh Chirrut was my least favorite character, i honestly couldn't help but be reminded of a modern day islamic terrorist, pumped on his faith. Like when after he died, his friend goes all "the force is with me and i am one with the force" too and proceeds to go on a killing spree. I find it hard to cheer on or view the force as something benevolent in these instances.
It's pretty much exactly like a muslim terrorist saying "allah is with me/alluh ackbar" as he is gunning people down, i don't like this idea of religious sanctioned killing and i never lose sight of the fact that stormtroopers are still people, they might serve an "evil" empire but that makes them punch clock villains at worst.

Heck half the time the stormtroopers don't shoot first (whenever they do something douschey it's always at the command of a superior officer) and ask for identification to suspicious individuals who are obviously rebels but they play by the rules anyways, only to get instantly killed by blood thirsty rebels without even the option of surrender even though they were surrounded (again, remember that in ROTJ the imperials were happy to capture surrendered rebels rather then just execute them all, whereas the rebels did no such thing and actually fed them to the ewoks, gogo good guys!). I felt bad for the stormtrooper in moments like these, what was he supposed to do, just randomly shoot at someone just in case? Apparently, that's the lesson to be learnt there.

^Though i go off on a tangent here, this is more to do with general star wars tropes then rogue one itself.

 

[Silvanus]

It does clash with the early films, though. Han Solo and the Imperial leaders seemed to mock the idea of the force. Now it seems like the dominant religion in the galaxy.

Well, think of it this way: Christianity is the dominant religion here in the UK, but most people would roll their eyes or laugh if they heard a military commander swearing that his prayers were going to be the game-changers.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

A lot of projecting here. Why so insecure? I never insulted people for liking TFA. I never insulted anyone's intelligence. To be frank, I'm not sure where that argument is coming from.

By any standard of quality you choose to use, TFA was a bad film.

To be fair, these are not consistent statements. By suggesting a film people enjoyed is terrible by every available metric, you're suggesting they have questionable taste. I recall telling someone that enjoying the prequels meant he enjoyed terrible films, and I got an INFRACTION for it.

I'm gonna address some of your other TFA here because I feel like you're being a bit sloppy in your criticism, chumbo. We've probably had this exact argument before at least once, but wtf. I just saw Rogue One, and I'm feeling like talking some Star Wars.

But yes, I consider TFA be a bad film. It's lazy, and attempts to rehash the same story beats we've seen a thousand times before, not just in Star Wars, but in most heroes journey narratives.

Well that's Star Wars for you. It's the monomyth, as explored through a Flash Gordonesque space serial. This is about as high concept as mass market entertainment gets. That doesn't necessarily make it bad...I'm tired of the monomyth too, but it gets revisited because it's simple primal storytelling. There are certain stories humans will always tell and retell and retell and that is chief among them. One might suggest it was cowardly of Disney to not spin their prized 4 billion dollar IP off in bold new directions, but given the film is one of the highest grossing of all time and now forms a solid foundation for them to expand their vision on I'd say they bet fairly smartly.

Luke lost his fathers light saber at the end Empire. It fell to the bottom of Cloud City. Why did some random old lady have it, and why didn't she return it if she knew who it belonged to? She seemed pretty chummy with Han.

Two things are notable here. One, it's not necessary for us to know why the lightsaber was there at this point in the narrative. Two, the narrative is incomplete. Unlike Rogue One, The Force Awakens is not a stand alone film. Indeed, unlike A New Hope there was never any question that it would be one of three films that would tie together to tell a larger story. Whatshername hand waves the question of how the lightsaber came to be there as "another story for another time", so it's quite possible that is still to come, or the film is simply lampshading a coincidence in a universe literally built around the metaphysical conceits of fate and coincidence. Even if the lightsaber ended up there "because of the Force", that is STILL consistent with the Star Wars mythos. She's a pirate. A lightsaber recovered from the bowels of Cloud City could easily end up on the black market. It's not a "plot hole" in any meaningful sense.

What are the chances that Han Solo would run into the main characters in the middle of space? That's ridiculous. Was it because the ship had a tracker on it?

Yes.

If it had a tracker on it, then why wasn't Han able to find it earlier? Had no one even turned it on in the several decades since it had been stolen?

The ship was in dry dock and presumably hadn't been flown in at least the 15 odd years Rey was stranded on Jakku.

Then what was the point of even stealing it?

Who knows. The whole "X stole it from Y who stole it from Z" thing felt like a pretty crap piece of writing, honestly, and a cumbersome way of shoe-horning an iconic ship into the narrative. That could have been established far more elegantly, but the script-writers were working overtime to re-establish "shady/roguish" Han Solo and possibly they thought it would be "fun".

Not a plot hole. But bad writing, yes.

Why were the rebels able to so easily destroy the third Death Star? In the original they had schematics. In this film they had a janitor who shouldn't have had this information.

You are correct, he should not have, but it's practically tradition now for the Rebels to blow up large installations with only the airiest information to go off. How the "Death Star" is destroyed is kind of irrelevant, it's a question of how it's used in the film and whether it's an important device to drive the narrative. I didn't mind Starkiller Base, and I understand wanting to lose it quickly so it didn't loom over the entire trilogy, but I do feel like there were missteps in terms of their handling of it. Both in terms of it's over-swift construction (it would've been better as found/inherited technology) and Finn's contribution to its destruction (they wanted to give Finn an essential hero/protagonist beat, but you are correct, it's silly for him to have that information. The entire "I'm a janitor" thing is what ruined it, though, all for the purposes of a trash compactor joke (although it also set up the far superior "That's not how the Force works" joke when Han finds out). You could easily argue the film fell afoul of its need to relentlessly re-establish/echo the original trilogy there. Unlike some people, I put the primary blame for that on Lucas, and not Abrams or Disney. The prequels were so loathed and had been so viciously derided for their failure to capture the magic of the OT that nothing less than an aggressively safe return to form would do. Hence, the film drowns in fan service moments, some of which work and some of which feel decidedly forced.

Kylo Ren looks like he has no idea what he's doing. I get that with Rei, because she's never used a sword, but Ren should know better.

I watched a video not that long ago in which some Star Wars super-nerd actually breaks down the fight, going into specifically describing the Light Saber form Ren is using (no I do not remember the name, but it sounds like it was the kind of basic/aggressive novice form a new user might have first learned), how it was used, what its weaknesses were, etc etc. The amount of detail the guy put into the breakdown was pretty convincing. That's a level of superfandom I cannot and do not ascribe to so I cannot verify any of his assertions, but he sounded like he knew his shit.

Rey, he said, was using no particular form.

He also noted Kylo's major injury and spiritual discontent (killing Han messes with his head) as factors in his ragged performance.

By any standard of quality you choose to use, TFA was a bad film.

And we're back to this, which is an unsupportable statement, really. It's hard to even say that about the prequels, although you can get much closer, because there was some effects work that was interesting and some strong music and the occasionally accidental competent performance.

Pointing to rotten tomatoes doesn't change a thing. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's particularly good.

"Argumentum ad populum" is a popular rebuttal to "it's popular so it's good", but you have to remember that simply pointing out something's popularity is not an argument for why it's bad. Film appreciation isn't really the right forum for the application of logical rigor to argumentative form anyway, as it's all highly subjective and thus comprised almost entirely of emotional whimsy. Generally speaking, if something is both hugely popular and critically well received, and you hate it, it's possible...even highly probable...that the outlier is you. If you're going to wait around for the other shoe to drop and for everyone to suddenly wake up from their fever dream and realize TFA was actually horrible, I think you're going to be waiting forever. The knives had come out long ago for Phantom Menace by this point in time, and the new Star Wars Universe seems entirely healthy and well received.

Now, on to Rogue One.

It was a pretty weak film. Miles better than the prequel trilogy, which I consider ranked high among the worst films made in the modern era, but probably the weakest of all the competently assembled Star Wars films. There are strong notes...some of the battle choreography is strong, the effects are gorgeous (although the CGI return of Tarkin and Leia thunders into the uncanny valley), the acting is all solid. But the film has a lot of issues holding it back.

POOR OR INSUBSTANTIAL CHARACTERIZATION

Too many characters forced through too many action set pieces and not enough development given to any of them. No one has anything remotely resembling an arc. What is intended to be the emotional core of the film...Jyn's relationship with her father...collapses because there's no character development there to support it. Force Awakens suffered from having an overly busy middle chapter where a quieter/more reflective character building session would have served the film better, and TFA looks like a master-class in character development compared to Rogue One. Like or loathe them, you'd have no problems describing Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren to me in terms of their personality and how it develops over the course of the film. Good luck doing that with Rogue One. The acting is all competent, there's just little or nothing to work with. Particularly damaging is the flat protagonist, who glowers and squares her jaw resolutely and literally has no personality whatsoever to call her own. She has "Ye Olde Protagonist" disease. That should delight the mushrooms who want to shriek "Mary Sue" any time a female protagonist appears on screen and does something half competently. This one is actually bad guys. Go to town.

PACING ROBS THE FILM OF NECESSARY CHARACTER TIME

It's all over the place early on, lurching from planet to planet, and dithers around with some unnecessary side elements. The film badly badly needed a quiet middle chapter so we'd know and care about its roster of characters, instead of ending the film being hard pressed to even name half of them.

THE MUSIC IS...ODD

The attempts to marry the classic Star Wars music with Rogue One's own score fall rather flat. The new music never connects.

THE TONAL DEPARTURE WORKS, BUT DIVORCES THE FILM FROM THE SERIES THAT BIRTHED IT

The desire to make a "Bridge too Far" style classic war film inside the Star Wars ethos was laudable, and to a large degree they succeeded, but take away the monomyth and spiritual grandstanding and grand fates colliding of the tentpole films and there's actually not a whole hell of a lot of substance to this universe. It feels "not particularly Star Warsy", in both good and bad ways. A success as a stand alone film, perhaps, but it stands perhaps a bit too far apart at times. All in all I'm not sure these stand alone films are a terribly good idea. It's neat to think about expanding the universe and finding different kinds of stories to tell within it, and I'm sure fans of the old expanded universe would happily argue with me all day long about how rich and varied and amazing it can be, but there's a terrible risk of oversaturation, and the FILM universe of Star Wars has a very, very narrow scope and intense focus.

 

[twistedmic]

Why were the rebels able to so easily destroy the third Death Star? In the original they had schematics. In this film they had a janitor who shouldn't have had this information.

You are correct, he should not have, but it's practically tradition now for the Rebels to blow up large installations with only the airiest information to go off. How the "Death Star" is destroyed is kind of irrelevant, it's a question of how it's used in the film and whether it's an important device to drive the narrative. I didn't mind Starkiller Base, and I understand wanting to lose it quickly so it didn't loom over the entire trilogy, but I do feel like there were missteps in terms of their handling of it. Both in terms of it's over-swift construction (it would've been better as found/inherited technology) and Finn's contribution to its destruction (they wanted to give Finn an essential hero/protagonist beat, but you are correct, it's silly for him to have that information. The entire "I'm a janitor" thing is what ruined it, though, all for the purposes of a trash compactor joke (although it also set up the far superior "That's not how the Force works" joke when Han finds out). You could easily argue the film fell afoul of its need to relentlessly re-establish/echo the original trilogy there. Unlike some people, I put the primary blame for that on Lucas, and not Abrams or Disney. The prequels were so loathed and had been so viciously derided for their failure to capture the magic of the OT that nothing less than an aggressively safe return to form would do. Hence, the film drowns in fan service moments, some of which work and some of which feel decidedly forced.

There is a small line, possibly easily missed, where General Hux (I think) mentions that they tracked a reconnaissance vessel back to the Resistance base, so the Resistance got some information on Starkiller Base before the attack. It's entirely possible that Fin told the Resistance where/how to find Starkiller Base.

 

[Breakdown]

Rogue One had a few flaws, weak soundtrack, unconvincing CGI characters, a slightly rough opening. But I really enjoyed it. It was also better than the Force Awakens.

 

[Parasondox]

Is it really? Cause they are making loads from merch. Plus, do you know what my mother recently brought me? Slippers. Not just any slippers. Star Wars slippers with Storm Troopers on the front. She doesn't even know what a Star Wars is. I don't even like nor dislike Star Wars but she just liked the look of them. To be fair, they look fucking awesome and so comfortable.

Once again, Para making no sense cause Para is ill. Ill Para makes words sound unintelligible.

 

[Harrycanyon1982]

Nah Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are the worst SW films to date

 

[Fox12]

To be fair, these are not consistent statements. By suggesting a film people enjoyed is terrible by every available metric, you're suggesting they have questionable taste. I recall telling someone that enjoying the prequels meant he enjoyed terrible films, and I got an INFRACTION for it.

I'm gonna address some of your other TFA here because I feel like you're being a bit sloppy in your criticism, chumbo. We've probably had this exact argument before at least once, but wtf. I just saw Rogue One, and I'm feeling like talking some Star Wars.

I admit, I should probably clarify. I do think that TFA is a bad film. However, it takes time for a film as large as this to gestate in the popular consciousness. When a film as hyped as this is first released, it's going to have a popular boost. People haven't had time to really think about it. As time passes, however, the cracks begin to show. A lot of pop films are forgotten before they really have time to be looked at critically. I mean, how many people really remember I robot? This isn't going to happen to TFA, however. It's going to be remembered because of its franchise. Over time, as more star wars films come out, I expect that it will become the awkward middle child in the series. This doesn't mean that I think people are stupid for liking TFA. It means that I think popular consensus changes over time. If I came across that way then I do apologize.

Well that's Star Wars for you. It's the monomyth, as explored through a Flash Gordonesque space serial. This is about as high concept as mass market entertainment gets. That doesn't necessarily make it bad...I'm tired of the monomyth too, but it gets revisited because it's simple primal storytelling. There are certain stories humans will always tell and retell and retell and that is chief among them. One might suggest it was cowardly of Disney to not spin their prized 4 billion dollar IP off in bold new directions, but given the film is one of the highest grossing of all time and now forms a solid foundation for them to expand their vision on I'd say they bet fairly smartly.

I think it's more then that, though. I am tired of the monomyth, but I try not to be too harsh on stories that follow that formula. Especially if they don't do it on purpose, of if there's still passion in the project. There's still a lot of room within the monomyth for experimentation. When I say that TFA was lazy, I don't just mean that the film makers copied the monomyth. I mean that they copied A New Hope. Nowhere in the monomyth is it stated that the heroes need to blow up a death star with an x-wing starfighter. They copied the formula in a much more literal way, and the result felt rather souless.

Two things are notable here. One, it's not necessary for us to know why the lightsaber was there at this point in the narrative. Two, the narrative is incomplete. Unlike Rogue One, The Force Awakens is not a stand alone film. Indeed, unlike A New Hope there was never any question that it would be one of three films that would tie together to tell a larger story. Whatshername hand waves the question of how the lightsaber came to be there as "another story for another time", so it's quite possible that is still to come, or the film is simply lampshading a coincidence in a universe literally built around the metaphysical conceits of fate and coincidence. Even if the lightsaber ended up there "because of the Force", that is STILL consistent with the Star Wars mythos. She's a pirate. A lightsaber recovered from the bowels of Cloud City could easily end up on the black market. It's not a "plot hole" in any meaningful sense.

This remains to be seen. I would actually be surprised if this receives a meaningful answer, but I suppose it's possible. However, I will say this, and it's more of a criticism of J.J. Abrams then of Star Wars: we know for a fact that the plot was not written ahead of time. Abrams himself has stated that he doesn't know what is going to happen next. While the films are going to be a trilogy, they are being made up as the film makers go. TFA was created as its own entity at the time. This means that Abrams wrote that into the script with no meaningful idea about how it will be resolved. If it is resolved, it's because another, better film maker fixed the problem. He passed the bill onto the next guy, while basking in the credit of the first film. This is just conjecture on my part, but it's why I suspect he stopped working on the franchise after the first film. He gets to "save" star wars without having to resolve any of the plot points in the next several films. If the next films fail, then everyone gets to say that Abrams would have done better. Abrams does this all the time. He did it with Lost, when he told writers to just put weird things into the show, and that they'd worry about explaining it later. It never got adequately explained. This isn't uncommon in Hollywood, but it is lazy.

The ship was in dry dock and presumably hadn't been flown in at least the 15 odd years Rey was stranded on Jakku.

If it already had a tracker on it, then why wasn't Han able to detect it immediately after it was stolen? He was a general in the alliance fleet, and his wife was in charge of the army. Even if they were estranged at the time, I don't see why he couldn't hire some muscle and go take it back himself. Furthermore, what was the point of stealing the Falcon if they were going to leave it in drydock for fifteen years and not fly it a single time? The ship blew up the death star, it should be famous across the galaxy.

You are correct, he should not have, but it's practically tradition now for the Rebels to blow up large installations with only the airiest information to go off. How the "Death Star" is destroyed is kind of irrelevant, it's a question of how it's used in the film and whether it's an important device to drive the narrative. I didn't mind Starkiller Base, and I understand wanting to lose it quickly so it didn't loom over the entire trilogy, but I do feel like there were missteps in terms of their handling of it. Both in terms of it's over-swift construction (it would've been better as found/inherited technology) and Finn's contribution to its destruction (they wanted to give Finn an essential hero/protagonist beat, but you are correct, it's silly for him to have that information. The entire "I'm a janitor" thing is what ruined it, though, all for the purposes of a trash compactor joke (although it also set up the far superior "That's not how the Force works" joke when Han finds out). You could easily argue the film fell afoul of its need to relentlessly re-establish/echo the original trilogy there. Unlike some people, I put the primary blame for that on Lucas, and not Abrams or Disney. The prequels were so loathed and had been so viciously derided for their failure to capture the magic of the OT that nothing less than an aggressively safe return to form would do. Hence, the film drowns in fan service moments, some of which work and some of which feel decidedly forced.

Fair enough.

I watched a video not that long ago in which some Star Wars super-nerd actually breaks down the fight, going into specifically describing the Light Saber form Ren is using (no I do not remember the name, but it sounds like it was the kind of basic/aggressive novice form a new user might have first learned), how it was used, what its weaknesses were, etc etc. The amount of detail the guy put into the breakdown was pretty convincing. That's a level of superfandom I cannot and do not ascribe to so I cannot verify any of his assertions, but he sounded like he knew his shit.

Rey, he said, was using no particular form.

He also noted Kylo's major injury and spiritual discontent (killing Han messes with his head) as factors in his ragged performance.

I wouldn't call myself a star wars super fan, so I admit that I don't know about different fighting styles in the star wars universe. However, I do have several years of fencing experience under my belt. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I understand the basics. Kylo left himself repeatedly open during the fight, and generally acted like he didn't know what he was doing. Again, I get this for Rei, but I would expect Ren to know a little better. Even the saber fight from A New Hope, while kind of boring, looked like the actors understood the basics of sword play. Sir Alec Guinness himself had fencing experience, and you can see it in the way he holds his sword. TFA lacked that. I'm willing to buy the argument that he's wounded and confused, but I honestly think the encounter could have been handled better.

That said, I think this is a minor complaint, since TFA is far from the only film with this issue. It just feels like they put less effort and thought into this then the other star wars films.

And we're back to this, which is an unsupportable statement, really. It's hard to even say that about the prequels, although you can get much closer, because there was some effects work that was interesting and some strong music and the occasionally accidental competent performance.

I honestly can't argue with you on this one. I engaged in some hyperbole on an internet forum. There were a couple of things the film did well. I liked the music, the special effects were okay, ect. I don't think that the good outweighed the bad, but there was some okay material there.

"Argumentum ad populum" is a popular rebuttal to "it's popular so it's good", but you have to remember that simply pointing out something's popularity is not an argument for why it's bad. Film appreciation isn't really the right forum for the application of logical rigor to argumentative form anyway, as it's all highly subjective and thus comprised almost entirely of emotional whimsy. Generally speaking, if something is both hugely popular and critically well received, and you hate it, it's possible...even highly probable...that the outlier is you. If you're going to wait around for the other shoe to drop and for everyone to suddenly wake up from their fever dream and realize TFA was actually horrible, I think you're going to be waiting forever. The knives had come out long ago for Phantom Menace by this point in time, and the new Star Wars Universe seems entirely healthy and well received.

The problem with the appeal to popularity is that it fails to address any actual criticism. You've addressed my points, so obviously you're not guilty of this, but if I criticize an aspect of a film, and your rebuttle is that it's popular, then you've failed to actually address the issue at hand. You can say its critically well received, but even that fails to address the criticism. It's simply an appeal to authority. Point to a specific work of criticism that addresses my argument. Research it yourself, and then come back and prove me wrong. Lord knows I've been wrong before. I'm not too proud to admit it. But don't just point to a consensus and use that to shut down discussion. Again, I'm not talking about you, but a lot of people tend to do this.

And I'll say one more thing. In this day and age, the term critic is a pretty nebulous term. It can refer to a paid professional who has a doctorate in film studies, had made several films himself, who teachers film at a university, and who has written respected academic literature about the art of film making. It can also refer to a blogger, or a guy who gets paid by patreon to upload videos onto youtube. So, when we say that there is critical consensus, who are we actually talking about? Because the latter isn't any more qualified to talk about star wars then I am, regardless of whether or not their review is posted onto Rotten Tomatoes.

Now, on to Rogue One.

It was a pretty weak film. Miles better than the prequel trilogy, which I consider ranked high among the worst films made in the modern era, but probably the weakest of all the competently assembled Star Wars films. There are strong notes...some of the battle choreography is strong, the effects are gorgeous (although the CGI return of Tarkin and Leia thunders into the uncanny valley), the acting is all solid. But the film has a lot of issues holding it back.

Can't disagree with that. The only thing we seem to disagree on was whether Rogue One or TFA was weaker. I think the film stood up as an okay action flick once it got started, but the opening and ending were amongst the clumsiest I've seen in years. The editing and pacing were poor as well.

POOR OR INSUBSTANTIAL CHARACTERIZATION

Too many characters forced through too many action set pieces and not enough development given to any of them. No one has anything remotely resembling an arc. What is intended to be the emotional core of the film...Jyn's relationship with her father...collapses because there's no character development there to support it. Force Awakens suffered from having an overly busy middle chapter where a quieter/more reflective character building session would have served the film better, and TFA looks like a master-class in character development compared to Rogue One. Like or loathe them, you'd have no problems describing Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren to me in terms of their personality and how it develops over the course of the film. Good luck doing that with Rogue One. The acting is all competent, there's just little or nothing to work with. Particularly damaging is the flat protagonist, who glowers and squares her jaw resolutely and literally has no personality whatsoever to call her own. She has "Ye Olde Protagonist" disease. That should delight the mushrooms who want to shriek "Mary Sue" any time a female protagonist appears on screen and does something half competently. This one is actually bad guys. Go to town.

I think the motivations work within the film, given what we're told, but there's very little growth or change in Rogue One. The Jedi Guardian guy has his Come to Jesus Moment, and the protagonist decides to fulfill her fathers wishes. The french guy confronts his own demons and turns on the rebellion in order to do what's right. It works, but I admit it's rushed and awkward. I think both films were terrible in the character department, but TFA had the advantage of having mostly established characters. They only had to focus on two or three people, whereas Rogue One decided to go all Seven Samurai on us.

PACING ROBS THE FILM OF NECESSARY CHARACTER TIME

It's all over the place early on, lurching from planet to planet, and dithers around with some unnecessary side elements. The film badly badly needed a quiet middle chapter so we'd know and care about its roster of characters, instead of ending the film being hard pressed to even name half of them.

Totally agree. There's a good movie in there somewhere, or an incredible television series.

THE MUSIC IS...ODD

The attempts to marry the classic Star Wars music with Rogue One's own score fall rather flat. The new music never connects.

I thought it was okay. Not great, but better then a lot of the hollywood fair we're used to.

THE TONAL DEPARTURE WORKS, BUT DIVORCES THE FILM FROM THE SERIES THAT BIRTHED IT

The desire to make a "Bridge too Far" style classic war film inside the Star Wars ethos was laudable, and to a large degree they succeeded, but take away the monomyth and spiritual grandstanding and grand fates colliding of the tentpole films and there's actually not a whole hell of a lot of substance to this universe. It feels "not particularly Star Warsy", in both good and bad ways. A success as a stand alone film, perhaps, but it stands perhaps a bit too far apart at times. All in all I'm not sure these stand alone films are a terribly good idea. It's neat to think about expanding the universe and finding different kinds of stories to tell within it, and I'm sure fans of the old expanded universe would happily argue with me all day long about how rich and varied and amazing it can be, but there's a terrible risk of oversaturation, and the FILM universe of Star Wars has a very, very narrow scope and intense focus.

I'll disagree here, I think. The Star Wars franchise risks cannibalizing itself if it just relies on the original trilogy forever. At some point it actually has to stand competently on its own, or else there's no reason for it to exist. Lucas tried to do this by making a classical greek style tragedy instead of a telling another monomyth story, and combining the fall of a hero with the fall of democracy. All very grand, sweeping ideas that could be interesting in the hands of a better director. In fact, on paper, I think this would be the proper direction to take the franchise. The problem was always with the execution, and the fact that Lucas is amongst the worst film makers in the history of hollywood.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I admit, I should probably clarify. I do think that TFA is a bad film. However, it takes time for a film as large as this to gestate in the popular consciousness. When a film as hyped as this is first released, it's going to have a popular boost. People haven't had time to really think about it. As time passes, however, the cracks begin to show. A lot of pop films are forgotten before they really have time to be looked at critically. I mean, how many people really remember I robot? This isn't going to happen to TFA, however. It's going to be remembered because of its franchise. Over time, as more star wars films come out, I expect that it will become the awkward middle child in the series. This doesn't mean that I think people are stupid for liking TFA. It means that I think popular consensus changes over time. If I came across that way then I do apologize.

I was waiting to see if this would happen myself, as it took a good five-six months for the initial glow of "Star Wars is BACK" and re-viewings to become commonplace for the consensus on Phantom Menace to change from "It's good! The fight was fun!" to "Uff. There were a lot of problems." and then eventually to "This is unwatchable". We're now over a year out from TFA, and it still seems to be quite well loved. Phantom Menace's poor reception showed in the diminished box office enthusiasm for Attack of the Clones. As a stand-alone story, Rogue One had a surprisingly robust opening weekend.

I think in the long view, TFA will be judged roughly approximately with Return of the Jedi in quality, which is appropriate. I think there are a few things the new films will likely do much better than the OT...simply through the strength of being contemporary...but they'll likely never wrap their hands around the original "magic" either. Disney is too crass and commercial for that, and you can only be truly original with an IP once.

I think it's more then that, though. I am tired of the monomyth, but I try not to be too harsh on stories that follow that formula. Especially if they don't do it on purpose, of if there's still passion in the project. There's still a lot of room within the monomyth for experimentation. When I say that TFA was lazy, I don't just mean that the film makers copied the monomyth. I mean that they copied A New Hope. Nowhere in the monomyth is it stated that the heroes need to blow up a death star with an x-wing starfighter. They copied the formula in a much more literal way, and the result felt rather souless.

So back to that Jedi comparison...this "New Hope" criticism I feel is one of the most tossed off and poorly expressed of the many criticisms facing TFA (not nearly as bad as some of the criticisms of Rey, but those tend to belong to a different avenue of the internet). Yes it opened on a desert planet, yes there was an aging "mentor" character, yes a hero's journey appears to begin and yes it ends with an assault on a planet sized superweapon. Those things are all true. But the film echoes Jedi more in its overall structure.

Both films open with action set pieces on desert planets involving most if not all of the cast. Both segue into slapsticky middle segments with some painfully forced attempts at humor that clumsily transitions the narrative and prepares it for the final act. Both end with a two tier drama in which a high stakes interpersonal conflict between Force wielders plays out against the backdrop of a space battle. Like in Jedi, the actual "death star" is redundant. It's window dressing. The real drama is playing out between Rey, Ben and Han. A father figure is slain! Truths about familial connections are possibly exposed! An attempt is made to woo a light side force wielder to the dark, and is rebuffed! Said light side force wielder possibly gets a little too close to touching the dark side during said refusal! There is a daring last second escape from the exploding base! Etc, etc. It's very, very Return of the Jedi.

Now all of this might seem completely superficial because "Okay fine, they copied a different film. NYAH." but it goes to show just how similar the FIRST films were to one another too. TWO THIRDS OF THEM HAD DEATH STARS. But at least Empire was original and magnificent, right? Here's some criticism of Empire Strikes Back when it was released.

?The Empire Strikes Back is not a truly terrible movie. It?s a nice movie. It?s not, by any means, as nice as Star Wars. It?s not as fresh and funny and surprising and witty, but it is nice and inoffensive and, in a way that no one associated with it need be ashamed of, it?s also silly. Attending to it is a lot like reading the middle of a comic book. It is amusing in fitful patches but you?re likely to find more beauty, suspense, discipline, craft and art when watching a New York harbor pilot bring the Queen Elizabeth 2 into her Hudson River berth, which is what The Empire Strikes Back most reminds me of. It?s a big, expensive, time-consuming, essentially mechanical operation. The Empire Strikes Back is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank.?

"This movie, of course, is Star Wars II, and while it?s hardly the worst sequel ever made?Exorcist II retired that trophy?it?s not up to the original either. The spacecraft-laser-battle gimmicks are familiar now, so even though these are the most special of the special effects, they are no longer so fascinating. Worse, the more one sees the main characters, the less appealing they become. Luke Skywalker is a whiner, Han Solo a sarcastic clod, Princess Leia a nag and C-3PO just a drone."

There was a general chain of criticism directed at the film that it was "no longer fresh". Too much repetition of tone, of ideas. I'm not even going to go digging for criticism hurled at Jedi for re-using the Death Star. Star Wars as a film franchise has always been very much like the trench run on the Death Star. Very narrow, very shallow, very intent on hitting a very small part of the public imagination with explosive results. And unfortunately, like the RLM guys, I'm generally of the opinion that the films are the part of the Star Wars that actually matters. It's neat that the expanded universe is there, but it all stemmed from the films, not the other way around. These movies were inspired by FLASH GORDON for pity's sake. Lucas didn't set out to make something profound or thoughtful. The original title was "Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journey of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. Han Solo was going to be a goofy, Jar-Jar style alien. C3PO a smarmy used cars salesman. It's almost an accident of alchemy that the mixed efforts of the group of people that toiled on it came up with something iconic.

I'm sure the people above who excoriated Empire Strikes Back were sat around thinking history would vindicate their criticism as well, but as it happens that never really came to pass. The reason the prequels became so wildly loathed is that once the veneer of Star Wars hype was stripped away you were left with incredibly incompetent films. Whatever small talent Lucas had as a director was long fled by the time he sat down to tackle Phantom Menace, and if the last Indiana Jones film is any indication the man should never be let near a writer's job again. Whatever slings and bolts one might choose to direct at JJ Lens Flare Abrams, the man knows his craft. He might not be an exciting or visionary or Oscar-quality director, but he knows how to get a film from point A to point B without sticking the boom in the shot. He understands the basic language of film.

This remains to be seen. I would actually be surprised if this receives a meaningful answer, but I suppose it's possible. However, I will say this, and it's more of a criticism of J.J. Abrams then of Star Wars: we know for a fact that the plot was not written ahead of time. Abrams himself has stated that he doesn't know what is going to happen next. While the films are going to be a trilogy, they are being made up as the film makers go. TFA was created as its own entity at the time. This means that Abrams wrote that into the script with no meaningful idea about how it will be resolved. If it is resolved, it's because another, better film maker fixed the problem. He passed the bill onto the next guy, while basking in the credit of the first film. This is just conjecture on my part, but it's why I suspect he stopped working on the franchise after the first film. He gets to "save" star wars without having to resolve any of the plot points in the next several films. If the next films fail, then everyone gets to say that Abrams would have done better. Abrams does this all the time. He did it with Lost, when he told writers to just put weird things into the show, and that they'd worry about explaining it later. It never got adequately explained. This isn't uncommon in Hollywood, but it is lazy.

I know about his mystery box, but I don't hate it the way some people do. Lost was a particularly egregious example because it used mysteries as bait, and left a lot of people thinking the show was about resolving said mysteries when it never had an inkling of hope about doing any such thing. Having seen something similar occur with X-Files, I was anticipating an ending to Lost where nothing was ever satisfactorily answered, and I was not let down by the accuracy of that prediction. Resolving the open-ended questions of Force Awakens will not be difficult. You and I could probably figure out a suitable ending for the script right now in about twenty minutes. Yes, the film left a lot of plot points flapping in the breeze, but it's film one of three, not film one of one. The umbrage it received for not answering every question frankly baffles me. "HURR HURR HOW DOES REY KNOW SO MUCH IT IS UNPOSSIBLE. STAR WARS BAD. ABRAMS BAD. MARY SOOOOOO." Holy fuck, wait for all three movies. THEN complain about unanswered plot details.

If it already had a tracker on it, then why wasn't Han able to detect it immediately after it was stolen? He was a general in the alliance fleet, and his wife was in charge of the army. Even if they were estranged at the time, I don't see why he couldn't hire some muscle and go take it back himself. Furthermore, what was the point of stealing the Falcon if they were going to leave it in drydock for fifteen years and not fly it a single time? The ship blew up the death star, it should be famous across the galaxy.

This becomes difficult to answer because Star Wars works oddly as a far flung futuristic society. The Falcon was already at "classic car" status by New Hope, and is now a good 30-40 years older and more run down. Luke thought it was junk THEN. People thought the Jedi were a myth despite the fact they'd been running around and interfering in government on a grand scale a mere 20-30 years ago. It would be like people in 2020 thinking the Clintons were a myth. The Death Star was a rumor in New Hope despite the fact it was a planet sized superweapon floating around and getting tested. Wouldn't that be all over the space internet?

This galaxy clearly does not communicate the way ours does, and the rate at which technology decays and becomes obsolete is never clearly established, outside of the very obvious recurring joke that everyone outside of Han and people who "know ships" thinks the Falcon is a piece of shit. However, I'm also not terribly investing in defending this aspect of the film, because as already established, I think it was weak. The entire middle chapter was weak. There were a lot of ways to get Han Solo back into the narrative. This one feels weird and poorly thought out.

I wouldn't call myself a star wars super fan, so I admit that I don't know about different fighting styles in the star wars universe. However, I do have several years of fencing experience under my belt. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I understand the basics. Kylo left himself repeatedly open during the fight, and generally acted like he didn't know what he was doing. Again, I get this for Rei, but I would expect Ren to know a little better. Even the saber fight from A New Hope, while kind of boring, looked like the actors understood the basics of sword play. Sir Alec Guinness himself had fencing experience, and you can see it in the way he holds his sword. TFA lacked that. I'm willing to buy the argument that he's wounded and confused, but I honestly think the encounter could have been handled better.

That said, I think this is a minor complaint, since TFA is far from the only film with this issue. It just feels like they put less effort and thought into this then the other star wars films.

Found the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE8-YaoKa-o

Again, I have no idea if anything this guy is talking about is canon-accurate, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was. The ancillary elements, like Kylo's wound, were very obviously established, so that much I agree with 100%.

As to the encounter itself, it's possible I am biased. I think the saber fight in the snow is one of the very best Star Wars moments in all three films. It looks fucking amazing, the stakes are high, and I love the simple emotional harshness and weight of it. It (again) echoes the moment in Jedi where Luke snaps and temporarily reaches for the Dark Side...he throws aside dueling and is simply hammering on Vader with unrestrained rage. This was very divorced from the airy, weightless, overly choreographed nonsense in the prequels. Saber fights MEANT something in the OT. They were meant to illustrate plot elements. Obi-Wan and Vader don't just have a "stiff, poorly choreographed fight". That's not the point. That moment wouldn't have been improved by Obi-Wan doing triple backflips. That Kylo's fighting style is ragged is 100% appropriate and important for his characterization. I suspect the same will be true of the fact Rey is able to center herself, and also the fact she's briefly compelled by a killing rage but is prevented from acting by the split in the earth. These are action films, yes, but they're most essentially CHARACTER films.

And I'll say one more thing. In this day and age, the term critic is a pretty nebulous term. It can refer to a paid professional who has a doctorate in film studies, had made several films himself, who teachers film at a university, and who has written respected academic literature about the art of film making. It can also refer to a blogger, or a guy who gets paid by patreon to upload videos onto youtube. So, when we say that there is critical consensus, who are we actually talking about? Because the latter isn't any more qualified to talk about star wars then I am, regardless of whether or not their review is posted onto Rotten Tomatoes.

I concur, but I would consider a "critic" to be someone who puts some time and effort into substantiating an argument supporting their like or dislike of something. Not just someone who will tell you that they liked or disliked it, but go into detail why. The more expansive their knowledge of the medium, the more informed their criticism is likely to be.

I think the motivations work within the film, given what we're told, but there's very little growth or change in Rogue One. The Jedi Guardian guy has his Come to Jesus Moment, and the protagonist decides to fulfill her fathers wishes. The french guy confronts his own demons and turns on the rebellion in order to do what's right. It works, but I admit it's rushed and awkward. I think both films were terrible in the character department, but TFA had the advantage of having mostly established characters. They only had to focus on two or three people, whereas Rogue One decided to go all Seven Samurai on us.

I think both films lacked quiet character growth moment, but TFA did a much better job establishing simple arcs for their characters and, well...letting them BE characters. Kylo Ren is driven and relentless and wants to fulfill what he sees as the glory of his grandfather and weight of his family's legacy. He's obsessed with his own destiny and lineage ("That Lightsaber. It belongs to ME"). He's given to overt insecurity (his sidelong looks when Hux sees him without his mask are very well done) and fits of petulant rage. He's also consumed by "light side temptation" and sentimentality and fears it is holding him back. He attempts to banish this by killing his own father and travelling fully to the dark side, but something goes wrong (again, easily readable in the actor's expression) leaving him more conflicted than ever. Rey is the simple scavenger girl with the mysterious past held by a geas like compulsion to wait for a family she seems to barely remember. She's got a quick mind and adventurous spirit but is stubbornly independent and doesn't work or play well with others. Her innate compassion (first expressed through finding and helping BB-8) and thirst for adventure (first expressed with her wistful look at a ship going off-planet) are what drives her into the story, although this being Star Wars it's fairly obvious the Force is getting its hands dirty. Due to the fact she's at the center of Abram's mystery box, Rey is the most hastily sketched in character. Finn is a career Storm Trooper who collapses mentally under the stress of his first real action, both in losing a comrade and in seeing the depredations he is expected to carry out. How long he's been considering leaving is irrelevant, we just see his break point. He appears to be "too soft" for a Storm Trooper, and possibly a bit of a coward as well. He wants to run and never stop running, and repeats this character beat (excessively IMO) at the Cantina. His arc is largely closed at the end of the film where he finds both a spine and a place he does belong (the Resistance), risking his life to save Rey and again when he fights Kylo Ren. Finn igniting the saber and standing against a far superior opponent is his defining moment. He could be completely absent from the next two films and be considered a character who more or less enjoyed a complete story arc inside a Star Wars film.

As for Rogue One, I saw it two days ago and I'm having a hard time remembering anyone's name outside Jyn. NO ONE HAD A PERSONALITY. At best, they had a SINGLE thing that defined them. This guy is kind of like a Jedi, only not. This guy has a beard and a big gun. This guy is an angry spy. This guy is a nervous pilot.

I get the feeling there WAS a lot more depth to these characters. The pilot in particular...it FEELS like he had a "coward's arc" that got closed when he sacrificed his life to set up the communications line that got the plans out. But if there was more meat to any of them, it was left on the cutting room floor.

I'll disagree here, I think. The Star Wars franchise risks cannibalizing itself if it just relies on the original trilogy forever. At some point it actually has to stand competently on its own, or else there's no reason for it to exist. Lucas tried to do this by making a classical greek style tragedy instead of a telling another monomyth story, and combining the fall of a hero with the fall of democracy. All very grand, sweeping ideas that could be interesting in the hands of a better director. In fact, on paper, I think this would be the proper direction to take the franchise. The problem was always with the execution, and the fact that Lucas is amongst the worst film makers in the history of hollywood.

I think that MIGHT have been an interesting story, but it was blown the moment it became a "Darth Vader prequel". Vader's fall to the dark side is not a story that needed to be told, and watching characters that we all know the futures of faff about robbed the films of any dramatic tension. If he wanted to explore the collapse of the Jedi Order and rise of the Empire he should have done it with new characters and had the Vader stuff just occurring somewhere off to stage right, as backdrop.

The prequels were also just as slavishly dependent on the OT for fan-servicing as Rogue One and TFA, it's just handled (somehow) even more clumsily. R2D2 and C3PO are shoe-horned in at every opportunity. Boba Fett's lookalike is inexplicably crammed into two movies. As RLM pointed out, they were a hair away from introducing "Young Han Solo" and trotting an 8 year old Han Solo out to make poodoo jokes and elicit a ragged cheer from the audience.

I think Rogue One was an interesting experiment in seeing how an off-tone, off-central story Star Wars worked, and I think the results were...mixed. I am not convinced that this IP is actually rich enough or even INTERESTING enough outside of its central Dark/Light Force conflict to merit a new stand alone film every two fucking years. At least with superheroes each one is different and has a wealth of writers exploring comic book ideas and themes over 20, 40, 60 years. This is like if they tried to make a new Captain America film every year. I love Captain America but there are limits to what you can do with the guy. But we'll see what happens. I stand by happily waiting to be proved wrong.

 

[Nickolai77]

I thought it was a pretty decent film and I preferred it to The Force Awakens which felt like a re-hash of the New Hope just with a larger deathstar. I agree with some other posters that the first half of the movie jumps around a bit too much with the narrative but once that's all settled and the premise is laid out it gets better in the 2nd half. I liked how it fleshed out the star wars universe a bit beyond what the jedi are up to, but I don't think there was anything especially remarkable about it that really stood out for me aside from the strong female lead character perhaps.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I think it's an absurd notion to try to paint it as the worst yet. I doubt any conscious effort could make anything approaching the amateurish guff of the prequels, let alone match them by accident.

It was arguably completely inessential in terms of story, but as a proof of concept for a grittier, bleaker Star Wars film made with tremendous craft? It knocked it out the park. Some of the best visuals seen in any SW film yet, too.

I rather loved it for how it told its story, not for its story or characters, per se (though I didn't have any real issue with its stripped back character narrative). But after TFA gave us SW's soul back, Rogue One had some leeway to indulge itself. I ultimately really enjoyed how far it took the story up to A New Hope's beginning, as well.

 

[happyninja42]

I think it's an absurd notion to try to paint it as the worst yet. I doubt any conscious effort could make anything approaching the amateurish guff of the prequels, let alone match them by accident.

It was arguably completely inessential in terms of story, but as a proof of concept for a grittier, bleaker Star Wars film made with tremendous craft? It knocked it out the park. Some of the best visuals seen in any SW film yet, too.

I rather loved it for how it told its story, not for its story or characters, per se (though I didn't have any real issue with its stripped back character narrative). But after TFA gave us SW's soul back, Rogue One had some leeway to indulge itself. I ultimately really enjoyed how far it took the story up to A New Hope's beginning, as well.

Eh, I personally wasn't too impressed with it. The lack of character development made me totally uninvested when they died. I just didn't care, hell half of them I didn't even know their names, they were so "placeholder" in their design.

What they did feel like though, was a tabletop gaming group, each with their own specialization, and paper-thin backstories that only vaguely justify the bunch of them joining together and do an adventure. It just happens to be a session that ends with a Total Player Kill event.

But as a movie, I just never cared. Characters did things that didn't make sense motivationally, and they even had something in it that reminded me of Galaxy Quest. That closing/opening hatch that Jan had to climb through?


I give the movie a 6/10. It was ok, had several issues that annoyed me or pulled me out of the story, didn't grab me emotionally with the protagonists, and overall was just a "meh" experience. I had more emotional reaction to the rebel soldier at the door, frantically screaming at someone to help them when Vader shows up, and then just begging for them to take the plans when he knows he's going to die. That dude had like 2 minutes of screen time, and he got more emotional reaction from me than 2 hours of the other people. So yeah, not really written well, or acted well in my opinion.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So yeah, not really written well, or acted well in my opinion.

I don't know that it's fair to blame the actors. There are some good actors in that cast, capable of doing some good work. But there isn't much for them to hook into in terms of characterization.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I just didn't care, hell half of them I didn't even know their names, they were so "placeholder" in their design.

I didn't mind that. Ideally they could've just cut the ensemble down a little, but Jyn was our primary perspective on the story and world, so I felt it worked as well as it could.

That dude had like 2 minutes of screen time, and he got more emotional reaction from me than 2 hours of the other people. So yeah, not really written well, or acted well in my opinion.

I think critising the acting in it is a bit daft and very unfair. Going with just Mikkelson, Mendelsohn, Jones and Yen, none of them exactly slacked off.

As for emotionality?

Spoiler

I found Mikkelson's message to his daughter very moving, K-2SO's death quite affecting, and Jyn and Cassian's death suitably bittersweet.

Hell, I even had sympathy for Krennic at various points. I cared more about those characters and scenes than in anything in the braindead, soulless prequels.

I wouldn't give it a score out of 10 as I feel scores are a terrible way to gauge a film's general qualities, but in terms of the SW films I'd say it's better than any of the prequels, and arguably, technically, a notch above Jedi. The originals, after all, aren't actually that good as films when the fanboy/fanboygirl hat's taken off.

 

[happyninja42]

So yeah, not really written well, or acted well in my opinion.

I don't know that it's fair to blame the actors. There are some good actors in that cast, capable of doing some good work. But there isn't much for them to hook into in terms of characterization.

Eh, maybe it's just bad writing, but I think there are plenty of scenes, with the lines they had, that just didn't come across well. Everyone just seemed bored with what they were doing. Maybe that's a direction issue, and the director told them all to act disinterested or something. But it could also be bad acting. Just because they are good actors, doesn't mean they can't be bad actors at times. Every actor has a few shit performances in their career, this felt like some of those to me.

I just didn't care, hell half of them I didn't even know their names, they were so "placeholder" in their design.

I didn't mind that. Ideally they could've just cut the ensemble down a little, but Jyn was our primary perspective on the story and world, so I felt it worked as well as it could.

Yeah but I didn't care about Jyn either. She spent 90% of that film, also not giving a shit about anything but herself, and then she sees her dad, and then turns around and suddenly is berating the Rebellion for wanting to run? I'm sorry but where does she get off condemning them? Her "rally the troops" speech felt incredibly hollow to me, given that she was exactly like they were, not 10 minutes before in the movie. She just didn't inspire me to care about her plight, so I didn't care about what happened to her at all.

That dude had like 2 minutes of screen time, and he got more emotional reaction from me than 2 hours of the other people. So yeah, not really written well, or acted well in my opinion.

I think critising the acting in it is a bit daft and very unfair. Going with just Mikkelson, Mendelsohn, Jones and Yen, none of them exactly slacked off.

I don't think it's daft or unfair at all. Like I said in response to Guppy's comment, just because they are good actors, doesn't mean they can't give shit performances. I mean, look at Forest Whitaker's character. He's a joke, across the entire internet. Mr. Whitaker is a fantastic actor, but that performance was terrible, it was a walking joke. Now maybe he was told to act it like that, and if so, he has my sympathies, but I don't believe he couldn't find a way to make that come across with more feeling and gravitas. But hey, maybe he did better takes, that the director didn't choose for the final edit. I don't know, but what I saw on screen was not good, for just about any of them.

As for emotionality?

Spoiler

I found Mikkelson's message to his daughter very moving, K-2SO's death quite affecting, and Jyn and Cassian's death suitably bittersweet.

Hell, I even had sympathy for Krennic at various points. I cared more about those characters and scenes than in anything in the braindead, soulless prequels.

See his message just felt like a letter to the fans to get them to shut up about the "obvious flaw in the design". He felt repetitive too, unnaturally repetitive. He kept saying that he didn't want to work for them, over and over. Yeah I get that he probably felt guilty, and wanted to hammer that home, but the delivery felt very scripted. I didn't get any emotional reaction to that. Like I said, it didn't feel like a "letter to my daughter" but a "letter to Star Wars nerds".

I wouldn't give it a score out of 10 as I feel scores are a terrible way to gauge a film's general qualities, but in terms of the SW films I'd say it's better than any of the prequels, and arguably, technically, a notch above Jedi. The originals, after all, aren't actually that good as films when the fanboy/fanboygirl hat's taken off.

I think a scoring system is just fine, if you are consistent with the rating system. For me, a 5/10 is an average movie. It didn't do anything great, but it didn't do anything absolutely terrible either. A 6/10 is a movie that was slightly better than average, but still didn't really blow me away, or evoke any emotional reactions. Just saying a movie is "good" or "bad' doesn't really give anyone else a metric to understand what you mean. What's good to you could be different to me. For example, you saying it's better than the prequels doesn't really say much for me, as I don't really dislike the prequels much. I don't think they are very good, but I don't think they are the festering cancers on the franchise that a lot of fans think they are. So to me, you are basically saying "it's better than an average/ok movie that is one of the prequels". And saying it's better than Jedi, also doesn't say anything, because most fans think Jedi sucked, because Ewoks, and merchandising, etc etc. Personally I think Jedi is the best of the original trilogy, so you saying it's better than Jedi, means, to me, it's the best movie of all Star Wars movies, and I don't agree, like at all. So, we can bounce terminology back and forth about good/bad/better, etc, or I can just give you a score and be done with it in a few words. xD I prefer brevity when possible.

But I don't think the originals are perfect movies either, they have their flaws, all movies do. I would say that they all fall into the range of 7/10-8.5/10, maybe 9/10 for Jedi personally. They weren't perfect, but I enjoy them to this day, they still effect me emotionally, and I never get tired of watching them. So they are higher up on the scale. The prequels are about equal with Rogue 1, and get about 5-6/10.