Rogue One - A Star Wars Story par TheoC

I arrived with few expectations but being a sucker for the universe itself, I forgot quickly all I read and heard about it around 10 minutes into it.

This film is close to what I want from Disney's expansion's of the universe. New stories from new characters. It still relies heavily on the original trilogy obviously since the film ends like 5 minutes before the start of A New Hope. And I prefer the way Fantastic Beasts expanded the Harry Potter universe earlier this year with a completely independent story. But because I have new characters that I care for, and the winks to the original films aren't too heavy and unnecessary to the film's plot, I don't mind too much.

The battles were cool, props to the special effects supervision, it's not too packed like the Revenge of the Sith yet the battles are rich and intense. And most important of all, we have LAYERED characters. Oh my god that's my favorite thing in this movie, FINALLY Star Wars strays from good vs bad. The lead characters in this movie are GREAT for a blockbuster! Maybe the droid and the 2 asian monks were still a bit too much on the 'good' side but the two leads are definitely in the grey zone. Maybe we don't perceive terrorists as we did in 1977, maybe tons of shows like Games of Thrones proved that grey characters can still be likable, I don't know but I like it !

There is still numerous flaws in this movie so let's get into that.
The character of the droid is way too human. I liked him, he was funny, ok. But let's face it, he's supposed to be a bugged combat droid who has been reprogrammed half-assedly. And now he cracks code like R2 (combat droid?) and takes on dozens of stormtroopers? Come on... There's also an big issue on the rhythm in the first act of the story, we are thrown around from a planet to another without time to feel it or care for it. In 'A New Hope' there's only 2 planets : Tatooine and Yavin each being distinct in style. In 'Empire Strikes Back' 3 planets : Dagobah, Hoth, Cloud City. In 'The Return of the Jedi' 3 planets : Tatooine, Dagobah (briefly) and Endor. -------> Do you see the pattern here? The magic recipe? Not too many planets, very different in style, and with each one a real sequence of importance or a whole act of the film. That's where Rogue One makes a mistake. Lah'mu, Wobani, Jedah, that's the three we see in the first 10 or 15 minutes. And they all have the same desert theme. The audience is lost here. It gets better afterwards with Yavin, Eadu and Scarif which are quite different but it's still a total of 6 planets including 5 unknown, that's twice more than the other movies.
Another thing that bothered me is how repetitive the mantra "I'm one with the Force and the Force is with me" was getting. This is happening literally a day before 'A New Hope' remember how Han and everyone used to assume that the Force is nothing more than superstition and basically bullshit? That's the world we're supposed to be in. Yet here, everyone buys it, and I don't mean only the monks, I mean everyone.

All in all a good film that should please the fans of the universe and be enjoyable also to the others, it's not the film of the year, it's not even the sequel of the year, but it's still good enough and I enjoyed it. Don't hesitate to watch it if you have the chance.