A short time ago in a theater not far away…

I was amazed by Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Visually breathtaking, engaging, and full of nostalgia moments, the first standalone film made in the Star Wars franchise definitely did not disappoint.

Rogue One detailed the story of a rag-tag group of guerilla fighters struggling to uncover the plans for the Empire’s superweapon, the Death Star. We are dropped into this story as Galen Erso, a former (and future) Imperial science officer, is found by an Imperial director who essentially forces him to continue work on an Imperial weapon (which those of us familiar with Episode IV can assume is the Death Star). His daughter, Jyn Erso, escapes the Imperials unlike her mother and father and is (as we learn later) raised by a militant extremist named Saw Guerra on a desert world.

We skip ahead several years and see Jyn being recused off an Imperial labor planet by members of the Rebel Alliance. Recused in order to help the Alliance get to Saw Guerra and subsequently her father, Jyn meets a Rebel captain named Cassian Andor and a former Imperial strategy droid called K-2SO, and travels to the desert planet of Jedha. During their travels they meet a Jedi-like monk and his berserker companion before eventually making it to Saw Guerra’s base, and learning about the Death Star’s fatal flaw from a hologram of Jyn’s father.

The city outside of Saw’s base is later used as a testing sight for the Death Star’s awesome power. The city and Saw’s base is destroyed (Saw with it), while the mismatched group barely escapes the destruction adding an Imperial defector to the group. The group eventually heads for a remote Imperial base where Jyn is briefly reunited with her father before he is killed by a Rebel attack on the base. The crew scarcely avoids the devastation, but manages to make it away with an Imperial shuttle.

Once they are back with the Rebel command on Yavin IV, Rogue One’s crew takes an unsanctioned and unscheduled departure with a large group of Rebel assassins, spies, and mercenaries in the stolen Imperial shuttle. The group infiltrates Scarif which houses thousands of Imperial records, and battles with Imperials throughout the data complex. Eventually, the Rebel fleet also arrives to lend aid. The Imperial forces are caught completely off-guard and are forced to regroup. Kyn and Cassian are able to get inside the data complex, and send off the Death Star plans before being killed in a massive blast from the Death Star to destroy the compromised base. The other members of the group are killed in battle, while t fighting off Imperial troops or setting up ways in which to transmit the plans. In the end, the plans make it to Princess Leia right before the beginning of Episode IV.

Overall, I would give the movie an A-. The exposition was a little slow and pedantic to begin with, not to mention confusing. For a beginning so slow, it was disappointing that the writers never really developed the father-daughter relationship between Galen and Jyn that was supposed to run through the movie; they said all of maybe four or five practically meaningless sentences to each other. The names were also a bit confusing and difficult to follow, as Galen, Jyn, and Cassian are a bit harder to remember then Han, Luke, and Leia. I also would have liked to see more exploration of the tougher moral issues such as sacrifice and the toll of war in this movie. I felt as they just skimmed the surface in that regards.

With all the above out of the way, the movie was a delight. I was thoroughly excited and engaged for a vast majority of it. There were tons of little “easter eggs” and trivia pieces in the movie that made me chuckle or smile. For instance, there was a scene in which the same ruffians from Mos Eisley in Episode IV are seen trying to pick a fight with Jyn and Cassian, while they were in Jedha. Throughout the movie, we also got glimpses into the Rebel Alliance and the Imperial war machine that helped to place the movie chronologically with other events in the Star Wars universe. We even got a brief look into Darth Vader’s lair (which was so awesome!). For me, Darth Vader’s scenes made the movie (especially the last one in which we get to see him in action). The battle scenes were varied and interesting, but the best part was how the movie led all the way up to Episode IV. This made the movie very satisfying.

Rogue One is definitely worth at least one view.