SPOILERS obviously follow, so don't even start. 

There are two great Star Wars movies and two good ones; Rogue One is neither. Gareth EdwardsStar Wars story belongs in the same conversation as the much-maligned prequel trilogy even if it’s slightly less annoying than the saga of Jar Jar Binks and much more competently acted than the emotional doorstop that was Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker. But despite its earnest attempt to tap into the rich mythology that pervades the galaxy far, far away—something J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens managed to do quite well without bastardizing it—Rogue One suffers from an excess of fan service, an unimposing and forgettable villain, and far too much studio meddling in what could have otherwise been a stylish, standout war film.

Is a Star Wars movie automatically great simply because the hugely successful franchise tag is slapped onto the end of an otherwise interesting title? Of course not, even though a wide margin of fans and critics are besotted with this first anthology film regardless of its obvious flaws. Do people really want a movie that's chock full of ham-fisted nods to existing films that coddle audiences with a warm blanket of nostalgia rather than an original take from a creative director who could have delivered a visceral war movie set in the midst of the fictional galaxy's greatest conflict ever? Apparently so.

I’m aware that I’m in the minority here, and far be it from me to sap any enthusiasm for the film that you feel; I only wish I felt the same. But watching the assemblage of uninteresting characters be shuttled from asteroid to planetoid over the course of two and a half hours while only serving to fill in the story gaps of previous films left me far from entertained and without much hope for future anthology installments. Here’s why:

Fan Service

blue-milk-star-wars
Image via Lucasfilm

Any writer attempting to tackle a script for a Star Wars movie that’s shoehorned in between existing films faces a tough challenge: How do you match the look and feel of the films that came before and after it while also crafting an original story that stands on its own accord? Well, for starters, you could let visual effects guru John Knoll tell his story, one that began as a low-budget heist movie in the vein of Mission: Impossible and The Hunt for Red October. That script, pitched as "Destroyer of Worlds", had a “very militaristic, streamlined, and self-contained” tone that featured only “limited characters", according to concept artist Ryan Church. The relatively small scope of the film changed to a wider-angle war movie shot in a "kinetic" fashion with an emotional core centered around Jyn Erso once Gareth Edwards and screenwriter Gary Whitta came on board.

And then, somewhere along the way, someone decided to make Member Berry Jam out of the Star Wars mythology and smear it all over the script of Rogue One. There are certainly multiple entities to be blamed for these nostalgic callbacks (or call-aheads, at times) but the biggest culprits are the fans who absolutely eat up this cinematic sugar. Look, I'm as thrilled as the next Star Wars nerd to see a glass of blue milk placed lovingly on the kitchen table or to spare a moment for R2-D2 and C-3PO since they've appeared in every film so far, but I couldn't care less what Ponda Baba and Colonel Evazan are doing outside their wretched hive of scum and villainy on Tatooine (which also takes away from any fan-fiction that some folks may have written about them), or hearing K-2SO parrot a familiar line of dialogue ("I have a bad feeling about ...") that extends a running gag long past the point of being funny. There are cool Easter eggs related to Edwards' previous films and even films that influenced him, but the film pushes other distractions too far. While Saw Gerrera is a cool reference for fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (and soon Star Wars Rebels), the inclusion of Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader himself were the film's most glaring and nigh unforgivable departures; we'll get into the problems with them momentarily.

ponda-baba
Image via Lucasfilm

Rogue One could have been a tightly plotted heist movie wrapped in a dynamic, action-packed war film (and there are elements of both hidden under the stains of Member Berry juice) but that film was diluted by the decision to reassure Star Wars fans that this is still the universe they know and love, and that nothing new or interesting is going to challenge them. It's the equivalent of gently rocking viewers to sleep with a glass of warm blue milk.

CGI Resurrections and Rejuvenations

star-wars-peter-cushing-grand-moff-tarkin-1
Image via Lucasfilm

For those not in the know, the late Peter Cushing played Grand Moff Tarkin in the 1977 film, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. His character perished when the Death Star exploded in fantastic fashion. However, he had previously commanded the battle station and super-weapon, so clearly he had to appear in Rogue One, right?

Much has already been debated about the decision to digitally resurrect Cushing's character. My reasoning behind why this was a bad move likely differs from the main gripe. People are well within their rights to find the character distracting thanks to the Uncanny Valley effect; because the technology isn't quite there to pull this digital resurrection off convincingly, the decision to feature Tarkin in full view alongside a flesh-and-blood human character did not pay off. However, the first shot of Tarkin, in which he was seen in a reflection in the Death Star glass, would have been a perfect way to bridge the divide between Star Wars: The Clone Wars / Star Wars Rebels and A New Hope. The production simply took it too far.

And that's my main issue with these CGI-resurrections that serve nostalgia over story: they distract from the feature on the screen while also detracting from the rest of the films in the franchise. Imagine watching all of the Star Wars films in order for the first time. You'd see a digital representation of Tarkin in Rogue One just before the flesh-and-blood appearance of Cushing in the same role literally a few days later in A New Hope. That's a jarring visual effect similar to the one for which the prequel trilogy was raked over the Mustafarian coals.

But this new trend in computer-generated resurrection (like the Tupac hologram) and rejuvenation (like the plot of The Congress, or the plan to digitally de-age Robert De Niro) is a disturbing one. The upside of the technology is that Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) can make a brief appearance in Rogue One to serve as connective tissue/fan service bridging A New Hope (so many bridges) or that the leaders of Red and Gold Squadrons can show off more of their military service thanks to digital restoration of previously unused footage. This downside is that this is a disturbing precedent that opens up the use of the likeness of aging or even deceased actors, though admittedly either with their approval or that of their estate, which comes with its own complications. To me, that's more of an affront than George Lucas revisiting his original films to alter the order of events and add digital creatures and effects.

Toothless Villains

rogue-one-official-ben-mendelsohn-social
Image via Lucasfilm

There is no denying that Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) is one fashionable villain in the Star Wars universe. But that's about the only thing worth mentioning about his character. Essentially, he's a bureaucrat with aspirations of power who has no real skills beyond an ability to track people down and to look fabulous while doing so. That's not a villain. Krennic is afraid to get his hands dirty, always looking to others--be they ally or enemy--to do his wet work. He may have given the order to execute Jyn's mother (his troopers carried out the task) and he may have overseen the construction of the galaxy's most powerfully destructive weapon ever conceived, but he's essentially a middle-man. His longtime adversary Galen Erso was wiped out by a Rebel bombing run while he stood by and watched, only to meet a similar fate alongside the title rebels when his own weapon was used to destroy the infiltrated base he had occupied. Even when conversing with a digital representation of Grand Moff Tarkin or the Halloween costume-wearing approximation of Darth Vader, Krennic is spineless, and Mendelsohn knows not what to do with the character.

Speaking of Vader, many are calling his inclusion the best part of Rogue One. If you're one of those fans who needs familiar faces (and breathing patterns) to show up just to feel better about a Star Wars film, then this probably suited you. For those of us looking for Rogue One to distinguish itself from the Skywalker Saga, however, this was a disappointment. Not only was Darth Vader's introduction without awe or imposition, his appearance comical and cartoonish (trying to mach a 1977 costume budget with modern, high-definition film revealing every minor detail just does not jibe), and his conversation with Krennic lacking in tension or real purpose, the spectre of the Sith lord was wasted on fan service. (And I sincerely hope whoever forced poor James Earl Jones to read the line, "Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director," never writes another word.)

Imagine, for a moment, that Krennic held a conversation with Vader while he was still in the bacta tank, slightly obscured by its clouded contents and by more clever camera angles than the soap opera approach we saw in the film. (This would have been a nice transition from the reveal of Vader's home on Mustafar.) Not only would this have been a more mysterious and uncomfortable meeting, it would have set up a more powerful reveal later on when Vader donned his signature suit and fired up his iconic lightsaber.

rogue-one-ending-star-wars-beginning-scene
Image via Disney/Lucasfilm

That scene, the one with Vader laying waste to nameless Rebel Soldiers in an attempt to retrieve the stolen Death Star plans, would have been much more effective if, say, he was actually executing the very heroes of Rogue One who'd managed to get off the doomed planet after all, only to run into the buzzsaw that was the Sith lord. As it was, Saw Gerrera and his Vader-like breathing apparatus was a better villain as a rebel extremist/terrorist than any of the Empire's villains were in this film. Hell, even Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his ruthless, duplicitous nature gave him better villainous moments.

Ruthless Heroes

rogue-one-official-felicity-jones-diego-luna-social
Image via Lucasfilm

Untold numbers of Stormtroopers have fallen to Rebel blasters and Jedi lightsabers over the years, but never have I felt more sorry for the clone soldiers. Sure, they're the pawns of an Empire that has just emerged from the Clone Wars, exterminated nearly all Jedi in existence, and has begun to impose its power on the galaxy's various worlds and people. But in Rogue One, the supposed heroes tend to be just as brutal, if not more so, than the villains of the piece.

It's established fairly early on that the Empire and the Stormtroopers are "bad guys", as if we needed reminding, when Krennic's troopers execute Jyn's mother and then spirit her father away to work on the Death Star. This is supposed to inform us that all Empire cronies are evil and they've carried out these same brutal tactics across the galaxy. There were scant mentions of this from the other members of Rogue One--one line from Cassian suffices but dialogue for the backstories of Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) and Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) never made it into the movie--so it's just assumed that the good guys are good guys ... even when Cassian executes an informant so that he alone is able to escape.

rogue-one-donnie-yen-1
Image via Disney/Lucasfilm

And yet the whole premise of Jyn's character, and therefore the group of Rebels by extension, is based on their lawlessness and anti-authoritarian behavior. Apparently this premise excuses gratuitous head-shot executions of numerous Stormtroopers, skull-crushing blows from droid K-2SO, and indiscriminate bombing runs and assassinations greenlit by the Rebel brass. There's a strange tension at play here: The Rebellion is in its infancy and has resorted to guerilla tactics of questionable morality to put a stop to the Empire's planet-destroying weapon; the World War II / Cold War comparisons are not without merit. However, the same Rebellion that has no problem executing a civilian scientist under the sway of the Empire takes issue with the terroristic approach of Saw Gerrera and his ilk. They're also reluctant to engage in all-out war against the Empire until the knowledge of the Death Star's weakness comes into their possession. This is messy, but not as outright nasty as the camera's penchant for lingering on the instances of death via execution. The problem here is tone: Rogue One is either a war movie where each life and ultimate death is meant to evoke emotion, or it's a four-quadrant crowd-pleaser that's 40% fan service. You can't have it both ways.

Misleading Marketing

rogue-one-marketing
Image via Lucasfilm

As fantastic as the world-building of Rogue One was, a lot of the most-anticipated scenes shown in the movie's marketing material never made it to the final film. Granted, at first blush that's a problem with the marketing department and not the movie itself, but reports of reshoots and script changes suggest that the alterations outpaced the release of the movie's trailers and clips. We've already done a thorough job of revealing what's missing from Rogue One that we've seen in the trailers. It seems like the old bait and switch. But what's unfortunate about this peek behind the scenes of the production is that, very likely, a much tighter movie existed but was lost somewhere along the way.

There are instances of exposition explaining important plot points, which would have been useful throughout the rambling narrative. There are fantastic action set pieces teased in trailers that audiences are now missing out on, despite the wealth of expertly crafted and wonderfully shot battle sequences that exist in the final film. And most importantly, there are glaring plot shifts that hinted at a very different third act for the film, notably altering how the plans were liberated and whether or not the members of Rogue One survived. These are major shifts, so major that no hint of them ever should have found their way into marketing, or the movie should have been left better off alone once the trailers started rolling out. Perhaps an ambitious editor out there can make a serviceable cut of Rogue One that's more in keeping with its original spirit...

Story: An Uninspiring Rebellion

rogue-one-cast
Image via Disney/Lucasfilm

Just because you know the end of a story doesn't mean that the film telling that particular story will be without dramatic tension. (See: Titanic or literally any decent documentary or biopic.) The idea of telling the story behind the heroic band of ragtag rebels who pulled off a covert operation to steal the Death Star plans in the hopes of giving the Rebellion a fighting chance was a solid one. The execution, however, was lacking. One of the major reasons behind this? Daddy issues.

If there's one thing the Star Wars universe needs less of, it's parental drama. Rogue One could have easily distanced itself from that trend to give audiences a standalone film worthy of its anthology tag. I don't recall needing to know the family issues of Major John Reisman in The Dirty Dozen or that of Kambei Shimada in Seven Samurai. Is the oppressive regime of an all-powerful Empire not be enough of a threat to unite a band of otherwise disparate and socially dysfunctional rebels without the added fluff of a father-daughter fable that falls largely flat? Apparently not.

mads-mikkelsen-alexander-payne-netflix-movie
Image via Lucasfilm

And it's not just the Erso Family Tragedy that fails to connect in Rogue One, it's the connection to the whole cast of heroes themselves. You might like the martial arts prowess of Chirrut and the walking weapon that is Baze, you might enjoy the chaste flirtation that occurs between Jyn and Cassian, and you might even get a laugh at the expense of the mentally damaged Saw and, temporarily, Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), but nothing about these characters gives us a reason to care for them, save Jyn's loose approximation of a backstory. The strength of the animated Star Wars series is that we get to know the rebellious characters through their actions over a number of episodes to the point that we actually care when they're in peril. But when the Rebel Council itself doesn't seem to care about the pyrrhic victory until the last moment, why should we?

Was it a surprising move to wipe out the heroes we'd spent two-and-a-half hours with at the movie's end? Absolutely. But did the movie itself earn any emotional impact from that final, climactic moment? Absolutely not. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story exists as a missed opportunity for something thrilling, unique, and memorable. Instead, it will stand as one of the biggest disappointments in a year littered with more of the same.

For Haleigh Foutch's counterpoint, click here.

rogue-one-reshoots-tony-gilroy