Of the new Star Wars movies, this was the one I was the most excited about.
I had enjoyed The Force Awakens, but Rogue One felt new. It was going to expand the scope beyond the characters and the legacies we knew.
Plus it was working in a genre I liked - the men-on-a-mission war movie.
It is a format adopted in the first Star Wars movie, but this felt even closer to something like Guns of Navarone, with a small group pitched on an impossible mission.
When I first saw Rogue One in theatres, I was left vaguely disappointed.
The big issue I had was the characters.
The opening scene showing Galen’s (Mads Mikkelsen) kidnapping by the Empire is solid.
And then the movie turns into a blur, jumping between multiple worlds and characters.
Occasionally the film sparks to life - Donnie Yen adds a welcome note of levity as the blind Chirrut Îmwe - but otherwise we are watching a collection of scenes shoving us toward the mission.
The final third of the film is the one chunk of Rogue One where it feels propulsive. I actually felt myself engaged, as the crew lands on Scarif and starts working through their plans for the obstacles.
It’s not necessarily better, but the goal is clearer and the film does a good job of cross-cutting between the different elements of the operation.
The tropical location also makes the scenes stand out compared to the gloomy locales previously shown.
After watching a bunch of war movies last year, there is a familiarity to the men-on-a-mission hijinks that works, even if the people involved are not that well defined.
One wishes the movie had found a way to get to this mission sooner, since it is the first time it feels like something is at stake.
Darth Vader’s storming final act is great, but his earlier appearance - not to mention Grand Moff Tarkin’s various pop ups - feel unnecessary. They dilute Ben Mendelsohn’s Krennic as an antagonist.
With almost a decade’s distance, the choice to include a digital recreation of Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin is an anchor around this movie’s neck.
There is something disheartening about having a fine actor like Guy Henry performing an impersonation of another actor’s performance. It is stifling creativity and only makes the film feel more disconnected from the film it is supposedly preceding.
A fascinating break from the Skywalker saga, Rogue One is a flawed movie, but an interesting one. One hopes future Star Wars movies take the right lessons from it.
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