The following contains my SPOILER FREE review for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Enjoy!

Escapists be warned: Rogue One is way too real. You want to shove your head in the sand for a few hours to forget the horrors of the reality of our world right now? This movie is not for you! There is a lot of violence, tyrannical governments, and literal genocide in this movie.

Set in the months (or days? The passage of time is kind of vague) leading up to the events of A New Hope, this film will be familiar to fans of the Original Trilogy. It is the story of the team who stole the plans to the Death Star for the Rebel Alliance. It is the gritty, dark war story that Star Wars fans have been waiting for.

The [fascist] Empire has firmly taken control of the galaxy, and the Death Star is finally complete. Our main character Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is a criminal, in jail for crimes committed against The Empire. Not rebellion type crimes, mind you, just normal crimes that she would have been imprisoned for had this been The Republic. In fact she makes it very clear in the beginning that she is not interested in rebelling against The Empire. She is forcibly recruited to the Alliance to help find her father (A criminally underutilized Mads Mikkelson), the man who The Empire forced to build the Death Star. She is placed under the command of Rebel captain Cassian Andor and his wise cracking former Imperial robot K-2SO (Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk) to find her father and stop the Death Star from being completed.

This is the basic premise of the film, one that promised to not only expand upon the Star Wars Universe as these one shot films are intended to do, but also fill in some gaps left by A New Hope. I think the movie did so fairly well. I enjoyed watching this movie much more than I did The Force Awakens, which I was not thrilled with. My biggest problem with that movie was how it was all something we had seen before (Read my review here) and a complete rip off of the Original Trilogy.

Rogue One took place at pretty much the same time and yet managed to give us something completely different and fresh. We visited many different planets, were introduced to a bunch of new characters that bear no resemblance to characters we have seen before, and showed us a different perspective than we have ever seen in a Star Wars film. It was dark. Death was everywhere and you saw good guys doing "bad" things. This movie showed us the sacrifices a person makes in war when fighting the ultimate evil.

There was no Luke Skywalker being the beacon of justice and everything good. It was ordinary people doing whatever they had to in order to get the job done, and at times it was not pretty.  The Force played a role in the film, mostly through the character of Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), who the first ever Force user we have seen in the films who was neither a Jedi nor a Sith, but it was a pretty small role compared to what we have seen in the past. 

The visuals of the film were amazing, arguably the best in Star Wars yet. It was a beautiful movie to watch. It also filled in some plot holes from A New Hope that fans have been arguing about for literally decades in a satisfying way.
I know a some people will disagree with me on this point, but I found the fan service in this film to be just the right amount and made sense to the plot. We were shown characters we have seen before and loved, characters that were in the background but we now get to see in action, and some familiar sights from the Original Trilogy. However they were there for a reason other than evoking fan nostalgia, and that reason is because this is a story of that era and those people and visuals needed to be there. This does not apply to everyone of course. Did we really need a two second shot of C-3PO and R2D2 in the Rebel hangar? No probably not, but I enjoyed seeing them there all the same. 

Then of course there was Darth Vader. I am a huge Darth Vader fangirl. No shame there. He was my favorite fiction character of all time for most of my life. So when I heard he was going to be in Rogue One, seeing him was the thing I was most excited about. Although he had only two scenes, those two scenes were the best scenes of the film. He is the epic bad-ass we all remember from the Original Trilogy, but with modern technology they were better able to show the terror and skill that he was capable of in a greater capacity than when the Original Trilogy was made. I squealed and jumped up and down in my seat every time he was on screen.....yea. 

That was all the good, now for the bad. 

No, this was not a perfect film. For starters, it was way too long. At a whopping two and a half hours, it did get a tedious. The set up to the story took up a lot of time that we did not need to spend it on. Everyone knows where the story is going, let's just get there already! In fact, there were many elements of the story that were way too predictable. They followed a series of tropes that anyone who has ever seen a movie is probably familiar with, and the plot was extremely predictable at pretty much every turn. 

The characters were not very well fleshed out or developed. They were certainly likable and interesting, but by the end of the film we barely knew who they were. We had a superficial understanding of their basic personalities, but nothing more. The emotional connection that we felt for say Finn, Ray, and Poe in Force Awakens was just not there, and therefore the climax of the film lacked the emotional punch I think they were going for. 

The CGI characters. I will not reveal who, but there were two characters from the Original Trilogy brought to life through the use of CGI. Many people I spoke to thought it was well done, many others thought it was creepy and looked off. I am part of camp creepy. I appreciate how much work it took to accomplish what they did, and that they did a very good job, but it still took me out of the story every time I saw one of these characters and made me shiver a little. 

Overall, it was a decent movie. I am sure on a second viewing I would enjoy it a lot less than I did the first time, but after one viewing I was pretty pleased with it considering I was expecting the worst. I have higher hopes for the future of these Star Wars one shot movies than I had previously, and am glad that this one was made. I highly recommend seeing it, just don't expect a masterpiece. If anything, it made my appreciation and interest in the Original Trilogy grow even more. 

Thanks for reading! If there is interest expressed I may do a spoiler filled review in the future of specific things in the film I loved/disliked, but we shall see. Till next time! 

I actually made it out to the cinema this week and saw the film Arrival staring Amy Adams!

Arrival is an alien invasion story, but deviates from all the worn out and tired tropes of the genre we have become familiar with over the last few decades. It all begins with the arrival (haha see what I did there) of our elusive aliens. Twelve ships arrive on earth in seemingly random locations throughout the world, and naturally all of humanity freaks out. What do the aliens want? Do they intend to wipe us out? What do we do?

This is all happening in the background. The real focus of the story is on Louise, a highly respected American linguist. She is plagued by memories of a different life, a life spent with her daughter, who died young of an unspecified, but incurable disease. It is through Louise's perspective that we see the beginnings of how earth responds to the aliens. The respective governments where the ships have landed are telling the public nothing, not admitting to any contact with the aliens and generally staying pretty mum on the entire situation. Naturally this incites panic, and the world begins to fall into chaos. Louise attempts to keep calm and continue her life, but that quickly falls apart when she is approached by a colonel who she had done translation work for in the past. He gives her a recording of the aliens "speaking", asking her to translate. This begins Louise on her journey to establish contact with the aliens, learn how to communicate with them, to figure out what they want and why they are there. Louise, our hero, believes fully that the aliens are there in peace, that they wish to help humanity not harm them. She must work against the fear taking over the globe in order to prove it.

As someone who has studied linguistics, I really appreciated the approach they took to the entire process. Usually in these types of movies, the aliens have some sort of magical translation box, already know English, or there is no attempt at communication and war is inevitable. In Arrival, all the countries in the world send in their own language experts, they all attempt to communicate in their own languages, and they all make progress based on their different approaches that arise from their cultural differences. In the beginning they all share what they know with each other, but as time goes on and chaos erupts around the world, this collaboration falls apart. The methods used to decipher the alien's language, and attempt to teach them all were all based in actual techniques used by linguists working today. There is a feeling of realism in this film that is gripping, despite the ten foot tall octopus looking aliens that are a main feature. The way that people react, the way that governments react, are all very relevant and familiar to how we see people behaving in today's difficult climate.

Amy Adams was spectacular, flexing her acting muscles to portray this complicated, intelligent and driven woman. Louise is a character that never doubts herself, knowing that she is right and never gives up till the very last moment to solve the puzzle and ultimately save the world.

The story is emotional, complex, and riveting. I found myself on the edge of my seat more than a few times. When the climax hits and all the pieces come together it is a moment of pure triumph. I wanted to cheer in the theater I was so delighted. And, without giving anything away about the ending, it tackles another subject common in sci-fi that I have always found to be very poorly done, by giving you just enough to for it to make sense but not so much that you are confused and over analyzing.

There a lot of good films out right now, and bigger ones are just around the corner (Star Wars strikes again, will this one be any good? Stay tuned...), but if you get the chance go and see this movie, I highly recommend you do so. Not many movies are made anymore at this caliber.