This review contains spoilers for "Rogue One: Star Wars Story"

"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," the story of how the Rebels got the plans to the Death Star prior to "Episode IV," was released December 16th in the US. Overall, the film has been received fairly well by Critics, receiving an 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 77 percent by top critics. I saw the film recently over break with some old high school friends, and we all had varying opinions. A couple of my friends thoroughly enjoyed the film and compared it to being on par with the classics, looking past the cheesy moments and enjoying the aesthetic of the movie, which was quite unique and enjoyable. My other more skeptical friends also enjoyed the movie but remarked on weak main character development and some rather dumb moments. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle, rating this movie a solid 8.7/10, a B+ with some really memorable scenes and a great plot, but some unfortunately underdeveloped main characters.

The movie starts on an obscure farming planet, which somewhat resembles the Pacific Northeast, following an Imperial ship landing as a family hurriedly prepares to flee. There're a few really great shots that occur as the Imperial Storm Troopers and Orson Krennic cross the barren wasteland to reach the home of Galen Erso, father to the main character Jyn Erso, and one of the minds behind creating the Death Star. This opening scene is mostly pretty good, except I think that it might have been better done in a progressive and split manner throughout the beginning of the movie. The scene appeared as a prelude to the rest of the movie, explaining the back story of the Erso family and their involvement with the Empire, and while it did a good job of establishing roles, it could have been done better in how it developed the characters, mainly Jyn and Galen's relationship. The main reason this scene fell short as far as the storytelling goes, is that we felt no real connection to Jyn early on. While the movie did put in snippets of memories between Jyn and Galen to enhance their relationship, it didn't entice emotional reaction where desired, such as in a later scene where Jyn began crying after she watched a message from her father about how much he loved her and why he continued working on the Death Star despite the Empire killing her mother and forcing Jyn to flee. Their development had not developed enough by this somewhat early point in the film and as a result it was much harder to feel invested with what was happening. The opening scene also didn't much deal with the mother other than that she died at the hands of the Empire after refusing to put down her gun to shoot Orson Krennic. The establishment was weak, but I feel that if the movie had stuck with the story, and gone with well placed flashbacks to memories she had with her father and mother, it may have worked better. All we ever really saw of Jyn's past was her fleeing, returning to watch her parents get captured or die, and then get scooped up by Saw Gerrera, an extremist rebel leader. But like I said, it does enough to help the audience understand her importance, and why the rebels are reluctant to put trust in her later on. However, we did get some really good shots from this scene, something that is really strong in this movie.

Some of the strongest aspects of this movie involve set design, aesthetic, establishing shots and the action scenes. While the movie did start off relatively slow at the beginning, and at some points, I realized I didn't really feel invested in the story as main characters faced hurdles and hardships in the story, I always felt invested in the movie during the action scenes. The movie does a pretty great job in making you feel invested in the main characters throughout. One thing I will say about battle scenes is that I guess the storm trooper armor is essentially useless, as people seem to be able to knock them out with simple blows to what should be pretty thick armor. I guess the empire is cutting costs by investing in plastic uniforms for their troops, or something. Regardless of this, the action scenes always pulled me in. From our hero's escape from the exploding planet as they dodged falling planetary debris to escape, to their entry to the Imperial prison planet amidst the towering spires and the storming atmosphere. I felt right there with the crew and grimaced as they hit a spire and crashed down to the ground, now stranded and in imminent danger. The final battle which takes place both above and on the tropical planet were grandiose and a lot of fun. Between the two, however, I enjoyed the ground battle the most in this movie. The aesthetic felt very "Full Metal Jacket," with rebel troops wearing US GI uniforms from the Vietnam era, with ripped sleeved uniforms, and donning US Army pot helmets.

Giant AT-ATs were not expected in this battle, but they felt just fine placed there. I will say that the AT-ATs fell much more easily than they did in the original films, going from using the pilot's wits to bypass the thick armor by tripping them, to simply just blowing them up. The space battle above the planet was kind of cartoony, especially as the Rebel Hammer-head Corvette ship (which I think is a pretty cool name) managed to push an Imperial Destroyer about 50 to 100 times its size into another Imperial Destroyer, turning the course of the battle. Let's just ignore physics, shall we? The TIE Fighters that swarmed out of the shield ship also felt goofy, and I had to suppress a burst of laughter in the theater at how just overtly funny it was at how many TIE fighters piled out of this little ship above the planet's atmosphere. The space battle was overall pretty well done, and I liked how the rebel ship directly overlooked the battle that was raging below, as smoke was shown billowing up from all parts of the island. The characters that were the most enjoyable to me were Saw Gerrara, Orson Krennic, and K-2SO. All of them die, much like every other character in this movie except those that live on to the original movies, but the fact that we will never experience them again makes their appearances that much more enjoyable and unique.

So, would I recommend this film? If you like Star Wars, yes. It's worth the watch for Star Wars fans, and they do a pretty good job overall. Even though the CGI for characters like Tarkin are distracting, they definitely put in the money and effort into making it as believable as possible. The Mount Doom evil castle for Vader was almost comically evil, as were a lot of other aspects in this movie such as Jiang Wen and Donnie Yen (The Jedi and his bodyguard) which were cool but felt comical, which for the most part wasn't that detrimental. There was one line in specific that I was able to say to my friend sitting next to me as the Senator during the scene said how "Rebellions are built on hope", so there're lots of cheesy bits in this movie and fan service such as how R2D2 and C-3P0 were aimlessly shoved in. The fact that the Death Star plans were literally written onto what looked like an HDD rather than something super complicated and high tech was pretty funny to me. I swore I remember seeing Orson Krennic in "Episode VII" giving a speech to the Storm Troopers before blowing a bunch of planets up, but I guess I remembered incorrectly. So, even though the movie struggles in developing main characters, has some distracting and pandering elements, overall it's a pretty enjoyable to watch for cinematic reasons as well as getting to understand the background of the original movies. It holds up as a prelude to "Episode IV" despite its problems because of just how well the overall plot is put together, and generally it makes sense and you feel invested in the overall story. However, I'm not sure how someone who hadn't seen Star Wars would feel because of how little we understand about the main character's motives and how quickly their development is slapped together.