First things first- this is far better than the sewer water that was
The Farce Awakens. Far better.
But still the lack of a true visionary in the vein of Lucas is evident
in almost every single frame. Making up for this by grabbing everything
from the original trilogy- mostly Return of the Jedi this time. And
banking on nostalgia by doing cameos of previous characters and
situations.
And coconut trees on an alien planet? Seriously??? And where the hell
was the Star Wars logo and theme at the beginning??? That put me right
off straight from the start.
The acting and characters have about as much depth as tissue paper. And
the dialogue is totally stupid, retarded, and yawn inducing, like it
was written by a bunch of adolescents. Add to that some cringe-worthy
situations and reactions by the totally miscast actors and you get ZERO
emotional impact once they all start dying (to my relief). Annoying
would be the best term to describe the characters. Plain effing
annoying.
Another problem with Rogue one is a lack of strong lead actor or two to
anchor the film. The Prequels had Liam Neesen and Ewan McGregor and and
Ian McDiarmid, Original Trilogy had Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness.
This has none. The lead character Jyn is utterly forgettable and her
horrible dialogue does not help. Her budding romance with the
castrated-Han Solo-rip-off-dude is ( I cannot even remember- I was
wishing I was somewhere else other than in that darkened theater). As
stated before the characters are just annoying and Donnie Yens
character is the most annoying of the lot. And you actually feel
relieved when they die off. Its that bad.
Lack of a proper bad guy does not help either- Vader comes through in
the end but somehow feels like its not enough- like he belongs in
another movie and has been lent into this to make it feel better.
However the space battles are far superior to anything in The Farce
Awakens and even though a total rip-off of Return of the Jedi are a
welcome respite to the boredom before it. At least they are coherent
and easier to follow than the stupidity of the Farce Awakens; however
they pale in comparison to any of the Lucas directed space battles.
They keep the same look and design of the original ships and combat
displays and call signs, even taking footage from the original movies
for the Red Squadron members. However its just too little too late.
Saving graces are the deaths of the two leads in an embrace (similar to Pompeii movie) in the
pillars of the Death Star destruction wave having managed to beam out
the battle station's plans back to the rebel fleet at the last moment-
which I did not expect and which lent a small emotional crescendo to an
otherwise dead movie.
As I had already feared without Lucas Star Wars is truly truly dead.
Disney will never be able to do anything totally new without the
God-like imaginings of George. This is getting out of hand. Instead of
making crap Star Wars movies after another maybe Disney should (as
another Disney princess sang) just let it go.
