Saw this the day that Carrie passed away, lot of feels about that. At any rate, I left the theater pleased with the experience. A few days on and I'm less so, there's a bunch of things that just kinda bother me about this production.
Can we please have more sets and more locations - christ that was a bit much.
Cassian wasn't believable for me, the movie establishes him as a follow-orders-kill-a-comrade-when-needed-spy-guy and then he spends the whole movie doing the opposite without any real motivation to change except perhaps of the sexual nature.
Let's introduce Forest Whitaker with body mods that seriously harken to Vader and hint that he's going to be a badass but then age him, give him crazy hair, crazy voice, and a mind reading tentacle monster with a squid for a vagina that makes people crazy...only it doesn't really make people crazy. Only temporarily crazy. Whatever, and let's have Saw stay and face his death for like no reason since fighting the empire was his gig. The character was the lynch pin of the first act and they just ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- all over it.
The Knights of Jedha were pointless additions that did nothing to drive the story. Their entire purpose in the movie was to flip a switch that didn't need to be flipped in the first place because obviously the rebels would be trying to reopen the gate, they just sent an X-wing squadron through it. They were so overpowered that they were unbelievable. These guys smoked how many storm troopers, and what the hell is up with their guns. Blind guy has the MIB noisy cricket in his walking stick and hairy guy outguns all but an AT-AT.
Erso's message was a worthless plot device. His message should have included the ---goshdarn--- plans, instead it was a message in a bottle to his daughter with the golden nugget of, "If you go get the plans for this thing you can figure out how to blow it up, because it has a weakness." Well no ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---? You're telling me that if I have the schematic that I can maybe find a way to take out the giant device? Really?! Fucksake. Not only that, the plans were labeled under his nickname for his daughter which was handy since there was literally no other way to tell which plans you needed than to remember that daddy called you Stardust. Handy, unless somebody else in the rebellion was trying to get the plans because, ya know, that might be important.
Also, if you're Jyn and the planet is exploding rather slowly towards your location and you need to beat feat outta there, don't you think you'd grab the USB stick with the hologram of your father you haven't seen in 10 years? Considering you have time to discuss life plans with Forest Whitaker? Considering it's why you came there?
Whatever. I shed a tear when K2-SO bit it, the only character worth a damn. Did you see how conflicted he was when they made him stab the imperial bot. Like K2 gonna need some damn therapy after that. ---smurfing--- Harambe and K2.
Edit - more rant. Vader, oh Vader. Why on earth would you hang out on Mustafar? Isn't that where you killed your wife and lost like 70% of your body? Gluten for guilt ridden punishment...not likely. Enjoy hanging out where you felt like your father figure and mentor betrayed you? That said, your scenes there are good. But during the rebel attack you go a pull a ---smurfing--- Yoda vs Dooku? Didn't we learn this lesson already? EpIII had ~23 years to let the steam go out of Yoda to ROTJ but seeing Vader bad ass around at the end of Rogue One is separated by literally a car chase with New Hope. You telling me that in the time it takes to track down Antilles' craft you've become totally different type of badass. They type that has zero blood lust, kills personally only on whim, and allows the peons to do the heavy fighting - because 20 minutes before you were the breach element for a much larger ship. It's incongruous. Sure we got the Vader we wanted, but not the Vader we needed.
And the death star - let's fire it at Jedha. Boom, Jedha instantly destroyed. Let's fire it at the base with all the important records and ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- we need to destroy to prevent the enemy from getting, miss by like 40 miles and give the heroes time to make it down to the beach (wasn't everyone just fighting there?) to hug it out in the glory of the impending death, which looks exactly nothing like the impending death on Jedha. Wouldn't it still cause giant rolling fuzzy gravity bits of planet to kick up on the horizon? Nope, just beautiful cinematic whiteness? Okay.
---fudgesicle---.