Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

This is weird. First of all, yes, I saw Rogue One over the weekend. Of course I did! And I liked it. Yet, I have been avoiding this review like the dickens, and I don’t know exactly why. My best guess is, I liked it better than it probably deserves. The first act was scattered, and the second act was solid enough[1], but the third act was 100% predictable due to its inevitability. It’s hard to drum up much care about characters whose arcs you already know when you sit down in the theater, you know?

Nevertheless, I did care about them. I cared about all of the new characters[2] and I cared about watching the journey, and I didn’t mind the CGI faces very much, and basically everything that happened was good. Hell, even the music! Not composed by John Williams, and it still felt like a Star Wars score. Which is good, 2016 being the way it has been.

Anyway, that’s my point. It was part hot mess, part incapable of surprising plot twist, and could easily be accused of leveraging nostalgia for everything left that was any good. But screw it, it felt like a Star Wars movie, and a thing that feels like a Star Wars movie is going to be unavoidably good. Hell, it was better than The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. Also: I feel like they earned the title, and I was not confident I would feel that way.

[1] albeit with a missed plot hole that you could drive a Star Destroyer through[3]
[2] except maybe the insane terrorist guy on Jehda? I gather that maybe he’s in the Rebels cartoon that I haven’t watched any of, and maybe it would be easier to care about him if I had? But I did not, at all.
[3] Plot hole in comments, due to spoilers.

2 thoughts on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

  1. Chris Post author

    Plot hole, in multiple parts: 1) The Death Star got blown up, maybe a couple of weeks after it was fully operational and mere days at most after that was verified. 2) The chief scientists/engineers involved in the super-weapon part were all killed for treason by Director Krennic. 3) The copy of the plans in the Imperial Archive (along with the entire archive!! wtf Tarkin) was destroyed by the Death Star.

    So… how did they build a second Death Star? Or, let’s say they started while the first one was in progress, because okay, sure, it was pretty far along to justify only 3-4 years of time passing. How did they get it operational again that fast, without the plans or the minds behind the first one?

  2. Pingback: Beauty and the Beast (2017) | Shards of Delirium

Comments are closed.