Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (review)

Released: 2016
Grade: A

I loved Rogue One. This is such a good movie. In fact, I rate this second – right behind the Empire Strikes Back. It’s a very remarkable thing that this prequel movie actually makes the films that take place after it even better than before. Right after I saw Rogue One, my next thought was to immediately go see A New Hope.

I loved the characters in this movie – especially Jyn Erso. When we first see her, she only cares about herself – she has no interest in the Rebellion. At one point, she even says the Empire’s flag doesn’t bother her if she doesn’t look up.

During the film, we see her character change. It’s a gradual change, but she is definitely a different person at the end of the film than she was at the beginning. Why? Because she made this fight her own. She became converted to the cause of the Rebellion because she was able to see what this meant to her father. His fight became hers. And the change was so complete.

Felicity Jones did such a great job in this movie, and it’s extremely well-acted. The other characters were also outstanding – especially the main ones. I believe this film has the best acting of all the Star Wars movies.

One thing that was definitely unexpected was Vader’s scene at the end of the movie when he is trying to recover the stolen Death Star plans. Vader has never been so frightening, and you can almost feel his rage as he’s tearing through the ship, desperately trying to get that data disk back.

Much has been said about the CGI-Leia at the end of the movie. She didn’t look completely realistic to me, but at least she was only on the screen for a few moments. But on the other hand, CGI-Tarkin was very well done. I remember hearing people in the audience gasp and ask, “is that guy still around?” Few people seemed to realize they had re-created the character on a computer. Thankfully, Lucasfilm put the time and resources into this character that were needed in order to make it work.