Mhm, yeah, today I went to the only half-filled cinema to watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and here is my honest review. But first …

Okay, on with the review. Rogue One was the bestest Star Wars movie EVAR!!!!! No contest and no questions asked. Rogue One wins hands down. Yeah, maybe the certain magic of the old saga (Eps 4 – 6) is gone, and will never come back. These are vastly different times from 1977, when Epi IV first hit the theaters and was a charming oldfashioned little space opera.

And we aren’t the same audience neither, are we? We are mostly grown up by now, been through a lot, collected scars and are more or less wise and zynic aholes. So the rather dark and zynic Rogue One, at least for mature audiences, was a much better movie than Episode VII of last year. And that one was already quite good for what it was.

But Rogue One, now free of the SW saga shackles, could go wild and dark and spend most of the time showing our heroes fighting one or another battle. There wasn’t much time for charming character development, obviously not even for decent acting (Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang were playing on lower amateur theater level), we got our characters presented in a matter of fact fashion and had to have fun with them while it lasted. Only our herogirly Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) had a  proper backstory, even a rather sad and dramatic one. All the others were just ersatz dummies. Doesn’t matter, Rogue One was a kinda breathless battle race from start to finish. I indeed had a lot of fun with the Rogue One team.

My absolute favourite character was K-S2O (Alan [leaf on the wind] Tudyk), a reprogrammed ex-empire android, as witty and practical as possible where C-3PO was whiney and dramaqueenish. Oh how I wished for a droid like K-S2O in all the other SW movies.

Was  Rogue One perfect? Fuk NOOO! It was a decent movie and stood out from the SW kanon in almost every regard. But as I already feared when I heard about expensive reshootings, the Disney execs didn’t give director Gareth Edwards enough slack to break from the saga totally consequential. So Rogue One sometimes felt a bit like patchwork. I hope for a director’s cut that will hopefully be even darker and more sarcastic and have a better flow than the theatrical release I got to witness today.

Okay, after the little technical detour, are you still with me? Up for some hefty spoilers? Here we go: Contrary to what many SW nerds predicted, no, neither Jyn nor any of her rag tag Rogue One team will turn to the dark side and join Vader’s ranks. Because … because none of them came out of the deciding battle alive. Sorry to say, or actually not too sorry, Rogue One will indeed be a stand alone movie and won’t become another trilogy in 6 parts or something like that. They did their job and paid the ultimate price. End of story. And it was nicely set in scene as well. I guess I even saw a slight smile in Jyn Erso’s face when she and her wingman Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), both badly wounded, settled down on the beach, watched the shuttle with the stolen Death Star plans escape and waited for the fukn planet to assplode.

In so far Saw Gerrera’s (Forest Whitaker) question “What will you become?” from the trailer makes no sense anymore and was indeed edited out of the cinematic version. All this makes me think Disney fiddled with the final cut up to the last minute before they decided to cut live of Rogue One short. Maybe for once a good decision.

Yes, towards the end I was even a bit emotional. Weird how it always works for me in rather cold movies but never in the pathos loaden ones.

Nicely done, very nice.