a ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY musing

ALRIGHT HERE WE GO. a STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE musing: (tl;dr: 8/10 for now…)

To be completely honest, I had to leave the theater (twice) for the first time in at least 10 years to use the restroom, so I missed a few key scenes. Because of this, I didn’t catch important character moments and it robbed me of any emotional beats that had the potential to hit really damn hard. I was also just completely in awe and thinking to myself “Wow, this is really happening” (as in, I couldn‘t believe I was watching a war film set in the Star Wars universe), and I distracted myself from really connecting to what was going on, so take everything below with a few grains of salt.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I really liked this movie. Can’t say I loved it just yet (for reasons I just mentioned), and I will need a second or third or fourth viewing to fully appreciate it. Having read CATALYST, I felt a deeper connection to the Erso family and Krennic than most casual viewers would, and I’m not sure that their relationship met its potential on film; I only cared about Jyn and Galen because of what I know from the book. Otherwise, Felicity Jones kills it as Jyn, and Diego Luna is just too damn charming. Everyone else in the Rogue One crew creates a memorable character in Star Wars canon.

But whatever problems I had in the moment with story and characters all went away in the third act of the film. Seeing Rebel and Empire forces put a huge smile on my face and brought me back to my childhood and all the action figures I used to play with and fantasies I’d imagine. The appearance of the Empire (in film) brings new and old characters, and MY GOODNESS they bring back a certain old character AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWERS.

I am still in disbelief that this darker war story would be told on big screens (see my previous post on canon in general), and am so happy that this expanded the Star Wars universe within its contained boundaries. It’s a great movie for casual fans, but so damn rewarding for hardcore canon fans like myself. (And if you’re not, get on it! Ask me and I’ll gladly let you know where to start!) This will be just a temporary score since I feel like I couldn’t fully get immersed because of my fascination, but I’ll give it a solid 8/10.