When Rogue One first came out, I thought it was an okay movie; better than the prequels but doesn't hold a candle to the original trilogy, or even the Force Awakens.
It seems though, that the more I think about it, the more I despise the film, and now, I absolutely hate it. It's honestly about as bad as the prequels. The plot is a mess, with the first and second acts accomplishing nothing and being practically the same story-wise (Jyn goes to a planet to get information from her father figure, but before she can get everything she needs, a disaster from above ends up killing said father figure, and the plot goes on for even more). The characters are boring, with almost none of them being memorable (Again, I didn't like TFA, but I at least remembered that the main characters were Rey, Finn, and Poe, and even knew the names of side characters like Maz Kanata. I didn't know the names of Donnie Yen's character or his friend after I watched the film).
The film was so stuffed with fanservice whatever interesting elements and characters it has end up being overshadowed by callbacks to A New Hope. I was looking forward to Ben Mendelsohn as Krennic, and I thought he was the highlight of the previews. However, because the film sees the need to stuff in both Darth Vader and CGI Grand Moff Tarkin (cause it's what the fans want to see, instead of what the movie actually needs), that he comes off as barely memorable because, although he's the villain, he has to share his time with two other villains, making things crowded and taking away time which could have been used to polish his character (I really liked him in his first scene, before the appearance of Tarkin started crowding things, and he should have been the singular focus of the villains' side).
The action is well shot, but because I wasn't invested at all in the characters, it really did nothing for me. It attempts to manipulate you into feeling emotions. Now, you can say that all films do that, but that's not really true. The difference is that other films, like the original trilogy, actually put in effort to get you invested in the characters and their relationships. They get you to understand the leads and how they care about each other. Rogue One doesn't bother with that, instead choosing to try and manipulate the viewer with grand gestures that are ultimately empty, because who needs good, interesting characters when you can put in a scene where Darth Vader kills people that clashes with the tone of the scene before that will surely have the audience clapping because it's DARTH VADER!!! AND HE'S USING THE FORCE!!!
Rogue One is like a sociopath when it comes to emotions. It understands the concept and knows how to follow techniques good movies use to make their audience feel emotions, but it doesn't understand what makes those techniques actually work, because it doesn't want to put in the effort. It takes something which should be sad (like Galen's death) and has sad music playing and characters crying, but doesn't understand that you need to put in work to build those characters' relationships in order to make to feel invested in what happens, and by extension, feel the loss the characters do. We barely see Jyn and Galen interact, same with Jyn and Saw as well, and yet the film expects us to feel sad when they die, even though they never put in the effort to show what the characters mean to each other, instead choosing to tell the audience (... wait a minute. Characters explaining their relationships, instead of the film showing us... that's seems familiar.) It's a bad script and a bad movie, and I honestly don't know if I'd put above the prequels on my Star Wars ranking, and if I did put it higher, it would barely be above Revenge of the Sith).
