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. (18/12/2016)

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. (14/12/2016)

I tried hard to think about how to write this review so as not to spoil the movie. Let me put it this way, Rogue One has a great premise and on top of that, it is shot beautifully. Especially the final war scene is possibly the best war scene I have ever seen in the world of Star Wars. The problem, however, is that Felicity Jones looked unbelievably beautiful in the poster but in fact, her role was one of the worst roles in any huge blockbuster in the last couple of years. Not only did she look as if somebody ate her breakfast, but she also looked offended and conceited in every scene, like a little baby. Maybe she only had a swollen face at the time, but it didn’t improve the final impression. I was really looking forward to her, but in the end, her fed-up approach to the role disappointed me terribly. And similarly, Diego Luna didn’t fit the second main character at all in my eyes. And when the two main actors from the blockbuster from the Star Wars universe don’t sit well with you, it is quite a problem. Fortunately, the set of supporting characters, who were a pleasure to watch, salvaged it and slightly improved the overall impression of the movie. Too bad, I was very disappointed. I haven’t experienced such a disappointing blockbuster in many years. Well, what can you do, maybe the casting of the lead roles will be better next time? (28/06/2017)

Star Wars for me has always been a saga based on adventure, laughable naivety, likable heroes, and fairly one-dimensional but ultimately fun characters. Rogue One has none of that. Nothing against trying to make a darker story, but the attempts to turn the rebels into sort of bastards who aren't afraid to slaughter innocents because "the ends justify the means" are more distracting than interesting, as are all the other attempts at a grittier atmosphere and the efforts to make this sci-fi flick into a war movie. Although it could work, it would just have to have more interesting characters that we know something about. Not two Asians who are teamed up with the heroes because they happened to meet in the city and became best buddies during a scene that probably ended up in the editing room. No one in the bunch is the least bit interesting, failing to evoke any emotion and just being there, either pretending to be a blind halfling or a fat lover of big guns, and that's where all ends. Nobody is funny, nobody is cool, nobody is scary, they're just there, flying from planet to planet and you're supposed to root for them because the director said so. And the more the minutes tick by, the more tedious and annoying the whole thing gets. Fortunately, Rogue One looks great and pulls a truly epic space carnage out of its sleeve in its last half hour, so in the end I left the cinema not satisfied, but certainly not angry – although I did feel more and more embarrassed with each successive reference to Episodes 4 to 6. A moderately entertaining film and a pretty big step off for the entire saga. I hope it's the last one. (15/05/2017)

The Star Wars universe has never seemed so empty, two-dimensional, and pointless. A film that fills two sentences from the epilogue of A New Hope and fulfills its role mechanically, without enthusiasm, without exciting characters, but with lots of wooden sentences and abbreviations. The film contains disposable heroes - heroes without a past and a future. And if it sounds like a good starting point for a war film on paper, it creates an incoherent hermaphrodite on the screen, which gives me almost physical feelings of discomfort when I watch it. Like 2016, the incredibly disgusting and unbelievable digital resurrection of the two characters in the original trilogy. Episode VII showed that old clichés can have a new life. Rogue One is the corpse that contains the best and most chilling scene in the last five minutes. Until then, you are watching the clashes of opaque and poorly drawn characters in space, which, despite jumping from place to place, resembles someone's cramped living room. A disappointment of galactic proportions, there is no doubt about that. P. S. Bonus points for reviving Forest Whitaker from Battlefield: Earth: This is truly a feat for lovers of recession. Edit: Given this year's Christmas competition, I have to add a third star. It simply does not deserves the same treatment as Assassin's Creed and Passengers. (14/12/2016)