There’s been more hype surrounding ROGUE ONE:  A STAR WARS STORY (2016) than a Cantina Band galactic tour.

I have a bad feeling about this.

ROGUE ONE:  A STAR WARS STORY is the first stand alone STAR WARS movie, which means it’s the first film in the series not to be part of a trilogy.  It tells the intriguing tale of how the rebels stole those Death Star plans which they used to blow up the massive weapon at the end of the original STAR WARS movie.  It also provides information to dispel that old joke about how stupid the Empire must have been to leave so fatal a flaw in their Death Star plans.  We learn in this movie that the flaw was no accident.

Since this is stand alone movie, it is chock full of new characters, and the film spends very little time introducing them, so hold onto your hats.  There are plenty of new faces here.  Here we go:

In the opening moments of ROGUE ONE, we see Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) coerced by main baddie Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) to work for the Empire, a coercion that includes the murder of Galen’s wife, and the attempted abduction of his young daughter Jyn, but the girl escapes and is eventually rescued by Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker).

The action jumps to several  years later where we meet the adult Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), and we find her briefly in a prison cell before she is rescued by the rebel forces.  Back at the rebel base, the rebel leaders are very interested in Jyn’s father, since supposedly he has helped the Empire design and build their new ultimate weapon, the Death Star.

But what the rebels want Jyn to do is find her old friend Saw Gerrera because Saw’s forces have apprehended a pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) who has information vital to the rebellion.  In return for her help, the rebels promise Jyn her freedom.

Leading the mission is pilot Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and a droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), but before they leave, we’re privy to Cassian’s private instuctions from the rebel leaders, which is to find and kill their targets, including Jin’s father.  On Saw’s planet, they are assisted by a blind warrior Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) who worships the Force and seems to wish he were a Jedi, and his friend Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang).

Once they find Saw, he privately shows Jyn a holographic message from her father where he explains that he purposely built a flaw into the Death Star plans, which if exploited, could destroy the entire weapon.  One explosion in the right place would set off a series of blasts that would destroy the Death Star.

Of course, the rebels don’t trust Jyn’s father and so they don’t believe the message. However, Cassian believes in Jin, and along with a small group of rebels, including K-2SO, Chirrut, Baze, and the rescued pilot Bodhi,  offers to help her seek out and steal those Death Star plans.  They name their ship Rogue One and head off on their own to steal the plans.

I had mixed feelings about ROGUE ONE:  A STAR WARS STORY.  For me, this movie took forever to get going before ultimately reaching a very satisfying conclusion.  If it were a weather forecast, it would be like a sunny day  without a cloud in the sky before suddenly and quickly becoming very stormy, and before you know it you’re stuck in a full blown deadly hurricane.  ROGUE ONE plays out like that.  For two thirds of this movie, I wasn’t overly impressed, and then just around the time where they name their mission “Rogue One” things pick up and pick up fast.  The last third of this film is really good and goes to some dark places that work very well.  While I wasn’t nuts about the beginning, I liked the ending to this one A LOT.

The biggest problem I had with the beginning was a lack of character development.  We meet a bunch of new characters, but I didn’t feel I knew much of anything about them. I just wasn’t invested in what was going on.  I don’t think the movie did a good job creating these characters at all.  In fact, dare I say it?  But during the first half of this movie, I was kinda bored.  I was enjoying the visual aspects of the film, but the story was putting me to sleep.

But then the ending gets much better and actually forgets that it’s supposed to be a kid-friendly STAR WARS movie and becomes a much more adult story about war, and the film is much better for this switch in tone.

Another thing I didn’t like about ROGUE ONE was its villains.  The main villain here was Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and I wasn’t impressed with him at all.  I found him very dull and boring.

Even the presence of Darth Vader (voiced once again by James Earl Jones and sadly sounding noticeably older) in a few scenes doesn’t really help things all that much.  Of course, the big news here is the return of Grand Moff Tarkin, a combination CGI creation and motion capture performance using actor Guy Henry combined with CGI effects to recreate Peter Cushing’s original appearance from the 1977 movie.

Initial word of mouth had been singing high praises about this effect, but I wasn’t all that impressed, honestly.  Maybe it’s because I’m such a huge Peter Cushing fan.  I mean, Tarkin here certainly resembles Peter Cushing, but he also resembles an animated Peter Cushing.  Plus the voice was wrong.  If you’re going to go to such great lengths to make the character look like Cushing, shouldn’t you go the distance and make him sound like Cushing?  Maybe I’m nitpicking here, but I wasn’t all that impressed by this CGI Tarkin.

I also wasn’t that interested in the power struggle here between Tarkin and Orson Krennic. I couldn’t care less that the two of them didn’t like each other and were vying for superiority over the other.  We already know who’s manning the Death Star in STAR WARS so this storyline did nothing for me.

The performances were fine, but for most of this movie I didn’t really get to know these characters all that well.  I liked Felicity Jones as Jyn, but I don’t think she made as much of an impact as Daisy Ridley did last year as Rey in STAR WARS:  THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015).  Like the rest of the cast and the entire movie, Jones gets better as the movie goes along.

I could take or leave Diego Luna as Cassian Andor.

I actually enjoyed some of the supporting characters more here.  I enjoyed both Donnie Yen as Chirrut Imwe and Wen Jiang as Baze Malbus throughout the movie.  I always enjoy Mads Mikkelsen, from TV’s HANNIBAL, and we just saw him as the villain in DOCTOR STRANGE (2016).  I also really enjoyed him as the Bond villain Le Chiffre in the first Daniel Craig Bond film CASINO ROYALE (2006).  Mikkelsen is fine here as  Galen Erson, even if ultimately the role doesn’t allow him to truly showcase his talents.

ROGUE ONE was directed by Gareth Edwards, and I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of his work.  He directed the Bryan Cranston GODZILLA (2014) which I thought was just okay, and he directed MONSTERS (2010) a stylish horror film that in spite of its title didn’t really feature too many monsters.  Edward’s films are always visually interesting, but I find he tends to struggle to tell a story. ROGUE ONE struggled to draw me in, and I wasn’t all that interested until the final third of the movie.

Visually there is a lot to like about ROGUE ONE.  I enjoyed the various worlds we visit, and some of the shots in this film were very cinematic.  I liked the sequence near the end of the film where Jyn and Cassian have to climb the massive tower.  It was suspenseful and visually exciting.

That being said, I saw ROGUE ONE in 3D, and I can’t say that the 3D effects really added all that much to the film.

Tony Gilroy and Chris Weitz wrote the screenplay, and it’s OK.  The actual story is very good, and my favorite part just might have been the plot point of Galen Erso purposely building a flaw into the design of the Death Star, which finally explains what had always seemed like a big glaring plot hole in the original STAR WARS.  But the characterizations were weak, and for most of this movie I didn’t feel like I really knew these characters, and that’s not a good thing.

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY is visually pleasing throughout, and while hardcore STAR WARS fans might not mind the threadbare character development during the first half of this movie, it left me feeling cold and disinterested in what was going on, until the end, when things pick up big time for one very exciting and near perfect conclusion that ranks as one of the most memorable STAR WARS endings yet.

—END—