Movie review - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

It is a trend these days for reboots to copy their originals. Take Jurassic World, for example. Same plot, updated visuals and new actors. Or Star Wars: The Force Awakens, for that matter. It is essentially the same story as the original one with again, updated visuals, minor additions and character replacements. However, this spin-off story, which I was less interested to see what it had to offer, was actually a better Star Wars film than SW 7.

The story actually bridges the gap between Episodes 4, 5, 6 and 1, 2, 3, 7 (that is the order of the Star Wars movies if you feel like binge-watching them). If you had to start from Episode 1, you will basically get the famous crawling text to get you up to speed. Rogue One is essentially the entire text in movie form. Reading through that text may be boring for casual fans but watching this movie never will be. The story takes its time to get going. It starts a bit slow, but the second half is really entertaining. The plot lays the ground work for the second half of the movie but it definitely kept me invested throughout. Having said that, this movie felt like a spin-off movie. For instance, there was no trademark crawling text at the beginning, or the iconic wipe transitions. And if you are coming from the previous Star Wars films, you will notice that this movie has a dark tone to it from the beginning. To put it simply, this is a war movie set in the Star Wars universe, and to that end I was totally satisfied.

The acting was good but I can tell you that no actor is going to be nominated for an Oscar anytime soon. However, the main characters are extremely dull and one-dimensional. No character depth whatsoever. They were your basic good guys for the sake of being the good guys. The supporting characters were far more interesting than the protagonists. The ones that stand out were K2SO who is thankfully less annoying than R2D2 and C3PO, and Donnie Yen's blind swordsman type character. They were funny and badass at the same time. The villain, Krennic, was also no slouch either. He had a purpose, was intimidating and you hate him whenever he comes on screen. There are also some characters who were entirely CG. Moff Tarkin was one and there was also another, which I won't spoil for you. The CG on these characters were 90% well-done. When they start to speak, they look like videogame character models and that is when you realize they are CG. This was already done in Tron: Evolution and it was very apparent in that one. But less so here.

The action sequences were very, very good. Even better than TFA. Like I said, it is a war movie with Star Wars weapons and tech. My only disappointment was that there were very less light-saber battles. That being said, that Darth Vader scene at the end though... if you ever felt that Darth Vader was not that scary or intimidating in the original ones, wait till you see the last five or so minutes of this movie. Pure badassery in display.

That is all I have to say about the movie. Most of the movie feels different yet similar. Some sections of the movie were very reminiscent of old SW films. Kinda like a nod to the main events of the originals. In my opinion, that is the way reboots should be made without entirely copying the old ones. Any person even remotely interested in SW universe can get a kick out of this film.

                                                                         Score - 8/10

P.S. I have made a revision to my SW 7 review which I had originally given a score of 8/10. On seeing this movie, I feel that this movie does it better and therefore, I had to reduce the score on that one. Wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!