Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The nostalgia for Star Wars: A New Hope doesn't work, and if anything, Rogue One proves only that I need to experience Star Wars with Skywalker, Solo, Kenobi, and others in order to enjoy them. Just the fact that the least important Vader steals the best scene for himself shows that the screenplay is losing in terms of anchoring new characters. I enjoyed K-2SO and Chirrut, but the whole group too willingly and conveniently marches into the role of some magnificent seven, which doesn't make much sense for some of them. If it wasn't for the action orgy in the last act, I would have left the cinema severely disappointed. I expected a much tighter experience, but looking back on the whole story, it could hardly have turned out otherwise. (2016-12-19)

Something is wrong if you have to wait 131 minutes for the first great scene in a film that is 133 minutes long. This film is not made out of love and fondness for Star Wars, it's made for people who will go to see it out of love and fondness for Star Wars, because any billion in profit is good. A woefully ordinary and completely useless film that doesn't fit in with either the old or the new episodes. (2016-12-16)

It took a long 33 years, but we finally got it. After Episode 6, the best film in the Star Wars universe. It doesn't feel contrived, it doesn't tell the story through bridges for morons, and it treats the main and episodic characters in a brash and bleak way, like in a real war. The beginning is perhaps too slow (my only complaint), but otherwise it's pure fan joy. I'd love to have a beer with Gareth Edwards, not only is he one of the few to understand the poetry of the original Japanese Godzilla films, but his rendition of Star Wars doesn't look like a cheesy coloring book either. Give him Star Trek, too! (2016-12-21)

Edwards filmed this exactly to my taste. A Star Wars fans’ dream come true. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t change anything about the saga; these sideline events aren’t vital to the big story, they “just" expand on it. Rogue One offers a great deal of action and exceptionally (with such little room to develop) layered characters, headed by a cruelly sincere robot. Felicity Jones je excellent, but everyone in the team is indispensible for final result, which forms a founding pillar of Star Wars. Mendelsohn is a dignified baddy. An ambitious villain who is disgusted at the inefficiency of his imperial colleagues and tries to find support in Vader. The fairytale atmosphere is replaced with semi-documentary wartime confusion and excellent action sequences, and the only smear on its beauty are the two digital faces. The demonstrations of power by the Death Star were much more horrific than in the original trilogy (the fifty megaton Tsar Hadra) and if this part of Star Wars had any purpose, it was this demonstration of the Empire’s newly attained power. A more than dignified farewell to Darth Vader. (2016-12-14)

More mature? Don't let it mess with you, it´s only dirtier and free of childish staff. It is true that the first hour is largely redundant and the movie would probably do without it. There is also no denying that describing characters as one-dimensional means adding one dimension to them. On the other hand, this has always been the case with Star Wars. You can recognize scenes that were shot several times and that's not good. And what they did to poor Cushing will make you turn in the grave for more than a decade. At the same time, however, the final half hour has unprecedented zest for this series, that it goes its own way and that Edwards works impressively with space and scale (at least in Imax, it works great in this respect). Yes, it's nothing more than intense disposable blockbuster. However, it is a pretty successful disposable blockbuster that does not try to be anything else which is nice, not in terms of events let alone in terms of not pop culture idol like other self-centered movies of this universe. PS: Although Giacchin's accompaniment is not as good quality or grateful/suitable for independent listening as Williams's, it is surprisingly better, as it does not draw attention to itself and, in fact, only serves the film. (2016-12-15)