Let's make this quick: SW VIII is better than SW VII - SW VIII is not better than SW II, III, IV, V, VI. Yes, better than I - but worse than II, well... that's my ranking, now some reasons for this...
First of all on the plus side, we have clearly a better shaped story compared to the previous episode, despite all the critics claiming that there are too many confusing twists. I honestly start having doubts either about the average IQ of the critic community in the States or the amount of movies they've watched. Probably in your first seen movie you'll have plenty of twists... don't know, that was loooong ago - here I've seen one and that was it (no spoilers), the rest was predictable. To be fair, there's actually one supposed twist (well... light spoiler) about some change in the main villain that I was hoping not too happen, but it was there... Which brings me to the first minus left from the previous movie - I stick to my opinion that Adam Driver is a bad choice for the main villain, and moreover the character is poorly built. We can evaluate all the major villains of Star Wars: Darth Vader, Darth Sidious, Snoke and even the lower ranked ones: Count Dooku, Jabba, even Boba Fett. There's a certain credibility in all these that a spoiled brat with a sword who smashes his fists into the walls when he gets angry doesn't have. The way Anakin Skywalker = Darth Vader was built in episodes I-III up to giving in to the Dark Side is way beyond what we have here. And the so much criticized wooden acting of Hayden Christensen was actually much more credible in respect to the "interior struggle" than the forced grimaces served now. Well.. Let's stop this here. What else...
We have lots of cliche, but you can expect that so let's give it a pass. The screenwriting is ok overall. What's bad is the editing, actually terrible for a movie at this budget. Example I: I understand that you don't need all the details, but we have at least one scene where you feel the need for something intermediate to figure out how the present characters got there. Example II: Carrie Fisher moved into a different dimension this year, and I suppose that some of the scenes were edited afterwards with/without a digitized Leia - that wouldn't be a problem, if you couldn't see at least once an overlapping of two characters in different shots (but well... maybe it's harder in 3D to take into account the look angle of an actor). Anyway... I could nag also about the title of the movie :) but I'd rather end this on the positive side. There is something that I think it's above what I've seen in the other Star Wars, and that's the role of Mark Hamill who never impressed me much as an actor (not that he's bad or something, but let's be fair... his career is mostly formed of voice-overs and less live). I was surprised once before in "Sushi Girl", but I thought that's an exception. The second one was here. Probably the script contributed to it, getting us to a main swordfight to remember (especially the scene just before). But enough spoilers ;) ...
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 ( just to be a bit above Episode VII :P )
I'll make this short: "Rogue One" suffers of what I could define as the "Two Towers" syndrome... Meaning, the unfortunate position of a middle piece. Not to be confused with the second episode in a trilogy, or the k < n part in an "n"logy. A second episode doesn't generally imply a finality in the third. A middle piece is a filling between an existing beginning and an existing ending. That's what we have here. This never works. And still "Rogue One", really manages to bring "A New Hope" in the "Star Wars" line, compared to the force awakening of last year ... Even if we don't have much of a story, set somewhere immediately before Episode IV as an excuse to bring on screen back the Death Star together with some short Vader scenes (= good way to cash in $), the result still seemed closer to the original trilogy feeling. At least the details and the way the characters were built felt like that... Even so, it looked a bit too much driven behind as a side story in one single piece (oops, big spoiler), just not to hijack the public of next year's Episode VIII...
First thing: If you didn't see any "Star Wars" and you'd like to start with this one, maybe it's better to stop reading here. You're the fortunate case! You might not get many references from the movie, but you might still like it. And it doesn't make sense to alter your expectations by getting a couple spoilers, which I'll try to minimize, even though it's impossible for me to remove them completely...
Now let's get to us, the rest who had a piece of the SW universe before. If I would do a statistic of my blog entries and the associated ratings, I think what I'd get would be at least 2/3 in accordance with most of the professional critics related to the "fresh" vs "rotten" verdict for a move. That's for saying that I can't be accused of being against the wave just for the sake of doing so. This was a disclaimer for what follows ... Because I'm baffled by the appreciation "The Force Awakens" gets. I simply can't understand, and unfortunately I can't say that I've read many reviews to get it .. but the reason for that is that they don't present reasons! at least not objectively! Besides subjective awe and ecstatic appreciation like wow, we finally find out that Force is in anything that's living (no man, we knew that already!!! - and seriously, I've seen that in a review by a "top critic"), that stormtroopers have heart and are capable of feelings (we knew that too! at least literally speaking = they're humans for God sake!), and others like these ... I'll try to make an objective analysis of what we're served with (as objective as I can). And I'll start with the negative part, because ... the dark side is stronger in this one.
Let's leave aside the many parts that are too SciFi even for a SciFi, because that's what we get in pretty much any movie of this size. This is minor. Let's get to what's much worse than this, and a first mark to make is the negative character: Kylo Ren. The comparison with Darth Vader is unavoidable. Both the one in the original series, and also Anakin Skywalker from Ep. I-III. The difference is huge. Hayden Christensen got many critics for his acting skills when he played Anakin, but ironically exactly his lack of expression served him extremely well for a character who's slowly dehumanizing. The voice of James Earl Jones for the original Darth Vader is the definition of charisma. That's totally lacking in the new movie. Maybe it's not that much the actor's fault, but the script is definitely to blame. Let's move over the unknown reason why the guy wears a mask, which is also damaged (maybe the Dark Side lacks funds for renewing helmets). The character is hilarious ... it's prone to parody. His nervous breakdowns when he strikes everywhere with his sword like a spoiled teenager made me think on the "Spaceballs" Darth Vader version. There's needless to say that even the movie itself makes a laugh out of it with one of the many jokes that aren't at all fit in the script = we have a scene when during such a breakdown, two stormtroopers change their patrolling route which passes by the the angry wielder of the red laser. May the Schwartz be with us ...
J.J. Abrams tried something that worked in "Star Trek". It made it more relaxed. And it worked because he had room to make it more relaxed (plus the crew of the original series fits with that). You can't do the same with "Star Wars". SW has already a wide target audience that's much less geek oriented compared to ST, and which includes also small age categories. There's no room, and in many situations as the joke above or other aspects it feels that "nope, that didn't work" ...
That's something more that Abrams got in "Star Trek", superbly I could say, and here gets close to embarrassingly bad. Trying to make key references through scenes close to the previous movies. Kirk's death scene in "Into Darkness" for instance, the exact opposite of the similar death of Spock in "Wrath of Khan" .. this was pure gold. Inverting the roles almost identically, the alternate timeline, the same negative character, the climax moment in the movie, there's lots of stuff that put together give a connecting point over years with the older movie, and it's impossible not to feel something about it if you know what dots to connect. "Star Wars" on the other hand is simply repetitive ... and that's it ... we start with a droid lost in the desert who carries a secret message (sounds familiar?) ... we have a bigger and meaner Death Star which does pretty much the same thing as the previous one: destroys planets ... and (spoiler alert) we have the climax scene as in "Star Trek", in which we also have here the role inversion, father-son with a reference to "Empire Strikes Back". Only that the symmetry we had in ST that hit you with a nostalgic feeling of "history repeats", that symmetry is really messed up here ... Ironically even if the symmetry is not that much there, probably unfortunately intending to obtain something original, this originality suffers of another huge problem: it's ultra-predictable! where ultra = you know what follows with something like 5-10 minutes before the scene's climax ... But, let's stop here and keep the "surprise" factor.
And still ... let's not drop it completely. Probably the scene wanted to be a key moment in the movie. A memorable one. It fails badly. Stuff that only happened (maybe) in "The Phantom Menace". In each of the other "Star Wars" we have at least a scene to remember. In "A New Hope" is either the first sight of Darth Vader, or the destruction of the Death Star. In "Empire Strikes Back" is the duel Darth Vader vs. Luke when the latter loses his hand. In "Return of the Jedi" is the death of Darth Vader and the first time when the mask falls down. In "The Clone Wars" is the duel Yoda vs. Dooku when we see for the first time why Yoda carries a sword. In "Revenge of the Sith" is the ending of the Anakin vs. Obi-Wan duel and practically the birth of Vader. In "Phantom Menace" maybe it wanted to be the death of Qui Gon Jinn, but that didn't work as it doesn't work now either ... you cannot have a key scene that looks like trying to repeat another key scene but it's also undecided about that ...
Let's move a bit to the light part ... at least a bit. The movie is long but you can't feel it. I have to admit this. And if one of the worst problems is the negative character, maybe the best part is the positive character: Rey. Finally, we have a girl as Jedi knight :) + the actress did her job perfectly. Unfortunately I can't appreciate much besides these. What I can, is to hope that "The Force Awakens" will be an Episode I "The Phantom Menace" comparing to what's coming after ...
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