Rogue One : A Star Wars Story

Un autre Star Wars. Et excellent ! Un casting audacieux mais formidable avec souvent des visages méconnus, surtout pour les personnages principaux qui ne sont pas des Jedi élus, mais de simples mortels dont le destin est de jouer un rôle unique mais crucial dans la saga. Un rythme effréné avec une action variée et fantastiquement épique. Des lieux magnifiquement conçus et incorporant astucieusement l'action (les énormes AT-AT sur l'atoll maldivien sont comme un rêve d'enfance devenu réalité). Des épisodes réussis avec les personnages cultes de Star Wars, avec une connexion narrative précise avec la trilogie originale. Enfin, un mélange captivant et dense de nombreux personnages, chacun ayant son importance et dont les actions définissent les fondements de la première trilogie. Tout cela a été écrit par des personnes qui aiment Star Wars et qui savent aussi travailler les personnages et l'histoire dans des cadres autres que ceux d'un simple conte de fées. Ils n'exploitent pas l'univers de la mythologie de Star Wars, mais le complètent et le développent. Bravo ! (15/12/2016)

It took a long 33 years, but we finally got it. After Episode 6, the best film in the Star Wars universe. It doesn't feel contrived, it doesn't tell the story through bridges for morons, and it treats the main and episodic characters in a brash and bleak way, like in a real war. The beginning is perhaps too slow (my only complaint), but otherwise it's pure fan joy. I'd love to have a beer with Gareth Edwards, not only is he one of the few to understand the poetry of the original Japanese Godzilla films, but his rendition of Star Wars doesn't look like a cheesy coloring book either. Give him Star Trek, too! (21/12/2016)

The talk of dirty war action is just ruin or unfulfilled wishful thinking, where good characters are absent, or even unbearably obnoxious, giving the impression that whether it's the overacting or if it was built this badly from the start, it's hard to keep a film on such wobbly legs that you know how it's going to turn out. Therefore, any refreshment is welcome, rather than watching a generic blockbuster, of which you have a dozen a year, and it would have been enough to throw away 120 minutes and stick the last fifteen as a prologue to Episode IV. This is because few films this year have had as strong a highlight as the one when the red lightsaber lights up in the shadows. (16/12/2016)

I tried hard to think about how to write this review so as not to spoil the movie. Let me put it this way, Rogue One has a great premise and on top of that, it is shot beautifully. Especially the final war scene is possibly the best war scene I have ever seen in the world of Star Wars. The problem, however, is that Felicity Jones looked unbelievably beautiful in the poster but in fact, her role was one of the worst roles in any huge blockbuster in the last couple of years. Not only did she look as if somebody ate her breakfast, but she also looked offended and conceited in every scene, like a little baby. Maybe she only had a swollen face at the time, but it didn’t improve the final impression. I was really looking forward to her, but in the end, her fed-up approach to the role disappointed me terribly. And similarly, Diego Luna didn’t fit the second main character at all in my eyes. And when the two main actors from the blockbuster from the Star Wars universe don’t sit well with you, it is quite a problem. Fortunately, the set of supporting characters, who were a pleasure to watch, salvaged it and slightly improved the overall impression of the movie. Too bad, I was very disappointed. I haven’t experienced such a disappointing blockbuster in many years. Well, what can you do, maybe the casting of the lead roles will be better next time? (28/06/2017)

Star Wars for me has always been a saga based on adventure, laughable naivety, likable heroes, and fairly one-dimensional but ultimately fun characters. Rogue One has none of that. Nothing against trying to make a darker story, but the attempts to turn the rebels into sort of bastards who aren't afraid to slaughter innocents because "the ends justify the means" are more distracting than interesting, as are all the other attempts at a grittier atmosphere and the efforts to make this sci-fi flick into a war movie. Although it could work, it would just have to have more interesting characters that we know something about. Not two Asians who are teamed up with the heroes because they happened to meet in the city and became best buddies during a scene that probably ended up in the editing room. No one in the bunch is the least bit interesting, failing to evoke any emotion and just being there, either pretending to be a blind halfling or a fat lover of big guns, and that's where all ends. Nobody is funny, nobody is cool, nobody is scary, they're just there, flying from planet to planet and you're supposed to root for them because the director said so. And the more the minutes tick by, the more tedious and annoying the whole thing gets. Fortunately, Rogue One looks great and pulls a truly epic space carnage out of its sleeve in its last half hour, so in the end I left the cinema not satisfied, but certainly not angry – although I did feel more and more embarrassed with each successive reference to Episodes 4 to 6. A moderately entertaining film and a pretty big step off for the entire saga. I hope it's the last one. (15/05/2017)

The Star Wars universe has never seemed so empty, two-dimensional, and pointless. A film that fills two sentences from the epilogue of A New Hope and fulfills its role mechanically, without enthusiasm, without exciting characters, but with lots of wooden sentences and abbreviations. The film contains disposable heroes - heroes without a past and a future. And if it sounds like a good starting point for a war film on paper, it creates an incoherent hermaphrodite on the screen, which gives me almost physical feelings of discomfort when I watch it. Like 2016, the incredibly disgusting and unbelievable digital resurrection of the two characters in the original trilogy. Episode VII showed that old clichés can have a new life. Rogue One is the corpse that contains the best and most chilling scene in the last five minutes. Until then, you are watching the clashes of opaque and poorly drawn characters in space, which, despite jumping from place to place, resembles someone's cramped living room. A disappointment of galactic proportions, there is no doubt about that. P. S. Bonus points for reviving Forest Whitaker from Battlefield: Earth: This is truly a feat for lovers of recession. Edit: Given this year's Christmas competition, I have to add a third star. It simply does not deserves the same treatment as Assassin's Creed and Passengers. (14/12/2016)

More mature? Don't let it mess with you, it´s only dirtier and free of childish staff. It is true that the first hour is largely redundant and the movie would probably do without it. There is also no denying that describing characters as one-dimensional means adding one dimension to them. On the other hand, this has always been the case with Star Wars. You can recognize scenes that were shot several times and that's not good. And what they did to poor Cushing will make you turn in the grave for more than a decade. At the same time, however, the final half hour has unprecedented zest for this series, that it goes its own way and that Edwards works impressively with space and scale (at least in Imax, it works great in this respect). Yes, it's nothing more than intense disposable blockbuster. However, it is a pretty successful disposable blockbuster that does not try to be anything else which is nice, not in terms of events let alone in terms of not pop culture idol like other self-centered movies of this universe. PS: Although Giacchin's accompaniment is not as good quality or grateful/suitable for independent listening as Williams's, it is surprisingly better, as it does not draw attention to itself and, in fact, only serves the film. (15/12/2016)

The nostalgia for Star Wars: A New Hope doesn't work, and if anything, Rogue One proves only that I need to experience Star Wars with Skywalker, Solo, Kenobi, and others in order to enjoy them. Just the fact that the least important Vader steals the best scene for himself shows that the screenplay is losing in terms of anchoring new characters. I enjoyed K-2SO and Chirrut, but the whole group too willingly and conveniently marches into the role of some magnificent seven, which doesn't make much sense for some of them. If it wasn't for the action orgy in the last act, I would have left the cinema severely disappointed. I expected a much tighter experience, but looking back on the whole story, it could hardly have turned out otherwise. (19/12/2016)

Edwards filmed this exactly to my taste. A Star Wars fans’ dream come true. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t change anything about the saga; these sideline events aren’t vital to the big story, they “just" expand on it. Rogue One offers a great deal of action and exceptionally (with such little room to develop) layered characters, headed by a cruelly sincere robot. Felicity Jones je excellent, but everyone in the team is indispensible for final result, which forms a founding pillar of Star Wars. Mendelsohn is a dignified baddy. An ambitious villain who is disgusted at the inefficiency of his imperial colleagues and tries to find support in Vader. The fairytale atmosphere is replaced with semi-documentary wartime confusion and excellent action sequences, and the only smear on its beauty are the two digital faces. The demonstrations of power by the Death Star were much more horrific than in the original trilogy (the fifty megaton Tsar Hadra) and if this part of Star Wars had any purpose, it was this demonstration of the Empire’s newly attained power. A more than dignified farewell to Darth Vader. (14/12/2016)

Something is wrong if you have to wait 131 minutes for the first great scene in a film that is 133 minutes long. This film is not made out of love and fondness for Star Wars, it's made for people who will go to see it out of love and fondness for Star Wars, because any billion in profit is good. A woefully ordinary and completely useless film that doesn't fit in with either the old or the new episodes. (16/12/2016)

I don't have a single problem with it. The film differs from the others by its dark atmosphere, which is enchanted by sometimes breathtaking shots and original settings, but it is still Star Wars with everything that it encompasses. It's adventurous, with interesting characters, a clear plot (the fact that uninitiated viewers might find it harder to navigate it doesn't really make me wince), rewarding humor, but not too much of it, and an absolutely amazing villain, Orson Krennic. The special effects are perhaps not even worth praising, but I would point out how sympathetically they helped the digital returns of some of the characters, which pleased me (and actually not only the digital ones, I'm thinking of the pair from the bar in Mos Eisley, who this time wander through the city of Jedha), the direction is all excellent (the western intro!) and especially the final battle, plus everything that comes after it, is one of the best ever seen in Star Wars. Music by Michael Giacchino... It's admirable what he was able to put together in a month (also thanks to about six or eight orchestrators) and it's really good to listen to, although I have to say that Desplat's soundtrack would have interested me just as much, if not a bit more. (16/12/2016)

A full-fledged interlude in the most massive cinematic universe that completely eschews George Lucas's intergalactic soap opera and doesn't even follow its predecessors in the stylistic layout of its scenes, but by the standards of the quality of the script itself, all of the technical and narrative choices are nearly superb. From the actors portraying not very fleshed out characters to the hugely impressive locations to the coldness and increased authenticity of the action sequences when compared to other instalments. We're not watching icons of the silver screen, we're watching authentic and very likeable characters fight against a seemingly invincible enemy, and in the final battle scenes we feel for them and worry about them – and when the undeniable icon, Darth Vader, does appear as expected, his moments are so wonderfully rendered and nostalgic that you could almost shit yourself with excitement (his battle scene is one of the best moments of the entire series). I expected from Edwards perhaps a little more atmospheric action, but otherwise he handled such miniature events in the scope of two hours really impressively, with a considerable amount of fatality and, most importantly, innovation, and once again showed that he is a master of the process of "evil is most terrifying when it is not too visible" (Godzilla last year, now Vader). Plus the excellent music, Williams can retire in peace. (19/12/2016)

I liked the idea of making a movie that parallels the main Star Wars story, because I like to look into the galaxy from time to time, even if I'm not a die-hard fan. Rogue One offers a similarly brisk ride as previous installments despite its slower pace, with everything escalating in the last half hour in a breathtaking finale. I have to say that I was definitely intrigued by the somewhat unconventional ending for an American film. All in all, a quality piece that's great as an appetizer while waiting for the next Star Wars, while making nice connections to the fourth episode. (14/01/2017)

I’m giving the film two stars, but even then, I think I’m overrating it. It’s practically just for the costumes, which match the original trilogy, and for the characters of Governor Tarkin and Princess Leia, who were very faithful to the originals. The rest was a disaster that deserves a “Boo!”. Apparently, a lame script wasn’t enough for the filmmakers, so they poured in barrels of pathos, and even a blind kung fu hero appears as the proverbial nail in the coffin. I think such endeavors should be abandoned for the sake of humanity. (11/06/2017)