As a fair warning, this post does include some spoilers from “Rogue One” so if you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and stop reading now. Seriously, don’t even read this sentence. Go watch Yoda sing about how much he hates seagulls. Really, go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9t-slLl30E
OK, you’ve been warned.
  

I don’t really consider this a full review, just some thoughts on what I did and didn’t like about “Rogue One”. 

The Good

The best character by far is Donnie Yen’s portrayal of Magic Stick Man (If you don’t know what that is, do yourself a favor and watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CehVgQ43pn0 ). OK, Chirrut Imwe. And his partner Baze Malbus, portrayed by Wen Jiang. Those two have a great chemistry. Throughout the movie, Baze kind of teases his counterpart about his belief in The Force, but as Chirrut is dying and Baze picks up the mantra of “I am one with The Force. The Force is with me”, that was one of the most emotional parts of the movie.

The effects in space. A lot of the ships looked almost “bad” by modern standards, which is a good thing. They had the feel of models used in the original trilogy, which was perfect for a movie leading directly into “A New Hope”.

Some of the little cameos. The a-holes from the Cantina. A few of the pilots in the battle (I didn’t catch all of them, but a buddy pointed it out). The quick little bit with R2-D2 and C3PO.

Vader. Obviously. His best fight scene in any of the movies. And it dawned on me that there isn’t any other villain out there that can be actively beating up the good guys and you’re cheering it on.

Galen Erso and his intentional design flaw. I should put this first, because this is pretty darn close to what I predicted here http://www.jaimeh.com/2016/11/06/bold-prediction-rogue-one-a-star-wars-story/. Although I predicted that the exhaust port was intentional, I’m taking credit for the intentional design flaw that he built into the core. 

The direct connection from the end of “Rogue One” going into “A New Hope”. I love that it was almost like “Rogue One” ended with a teaser going into a commercial, and “A New Hope” is was starts up the next episode.

I loved K-2SO. I still love R2-D2 and BB-8 more, but he was great. And he actually had character development. Going from really kind of an a-hole to sacrificing himself to protect Jyn and Cassian was great.

The Bad

There wasn’t a lot that I would consider to truly be “bad” with “Rogue One” but a couple things do stand out. Tarkin. He was too obviously CGI. I felt almost like I was watching Shrek, but as a friend put it, a video game is probably a better comparison. I would have loved them to find an actor who looked very close and just use makeup or some prosthetics to fill in the gap. I really want to say the same for Leia at the end, but at least her shot was just quick.

Vader and the cheese factor. “Don’t choke on your aspirations”. Boo.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say after I go again next week, but those are my initial thoughts. What did you all think?