Well, mundane character with secret hidden background, orphaned, older mentor who she loses, there's not a lot different there. . Which doesn't matter, because it works.

TFA had a different mission, as a movie, though than this one.

I'm very pleased with both.

One missed opportunity from this movie was showing why exactly the rebels keep bringing their medium transports into major battles.

They must have at least a few guns to make them worthwhile but it's hard to say as you don't see them doing anything in either RO or ROTJ.

The message said that an explosion inside the reactor will initiate a chain reaction which will destroy the station. Not even a hint how he imagines the explosion to occur.

Obviously if the Empire intercepted Erso's message they would doublecheck everything he has done (and unlike rebels they knew exactly which parts he was responsible for) and would find the weakness faster than the Rebels.

There are plenty og Cg characters in movies I have been completely sold on, Gollum still stands out as perfection to me.

I was really happy with Tarkin, both his appearance and his contribution to the story.

Peter Cushing, entertaining from beyond the grave. I'm sure he would approve.

One missed opportunity from this movie was showing why exactly the rebels keep bringing their medium transports into major battles.

They must have at least a few guns to make them worthwhile but it's hard to say as you don't see them doing anything in either RO or ROTJ.

I assume you don't play Armada?

I saw the movie last evening and made it out just as the snow started to fall here in the NE. I liked the film, but it could have been better and I think that Disney messed with it. Jyn could have been much more the "rebel" and bad ass than she was made out to be. If you have seen the film go back and rewatch all the trailers. I was hoping for something closer to the trailers. For example, the scene where she is on the tower trying to insert the tapes to be transmitted. In the trailers, we see a Tie fighter rise up as she continued to march forward. The trailers had a much more deadly and hectic beach scene. Basically, the trailers made it out to be more heroic and Jyn was going to be more of a "Rebel" as she stated herself in one of the trailers. Instead, Disney dumbed it down and made story about Jyn and her father.

All in all good, I hope there is a future Director's Cut. I liked it but IMHO could have been better but someone stepped in to screw it up.

I'll hazard the opinion that without TFA the way it was, R1 could never have been this.

Rogue One had already been greenlit and was in development before TFA was released. Filming began in August if last year and I believe all the principal shooting was already done by the time TFA hit theaters. TFA being bland and forgettable was a product of handing the series off to the pumpkin spice latte of action movie directors.

Rogue One was going to be Rogue One no matter what TFA was. I have a hard time believing that if this is what was released last year instead, suddenly nobody cares about Star Wars, lol. TFA was what it was because it's part of an ongoing series. The Mouse was trying to make sure they made the safest movie possible. They didn't have to do that with Rogue One because it's a self-contained spin-off story.

If anything. Rogue One is what it is because Disney is trying to sell Star Wars to a slightly different audience than TFA. They paid four billion dollars for Star Wars. Making that money back means grabbing as broad an audience as possible for Star Wars.

There was quite a lot that was in the trailers that was cut.

I'm pretty glad that the one on one showdown with the TIE Fighter was one of those parts that ended up on the cutting room floor, because it wasn't "bad ass", it was rule of cool and stupid.

You can tell from what was cut that it isn't just footage they didn't use, it was an entirely different (maybe 2?) ending. Jyn running on the beach from the trailers, she has the plans with her. So they clearly got down again and onto the beach. And I think the Tie creeping up on her on the tower was originally how Krennic got up there/faced her down.

So I doubt we'll see them as a 'directors cut'. More just deleted/alternate scenes on the blu-ray special features.

Indeed. We do know that they had to reshoot a bunch of this movie. So it feels like they changed a lot in the ending. I think originally everyone probably didn't die. So there were probably a lot of extra scenes that would have been needed for them to escape the planet that got cut.

Whoever made that choice to change it if that's the case made the right call. The ending felt appropriate.

So was the Rebel crew aboard the ramming Hammerhead just expendable? I didn't catch any escape pods going off and they're with the disabled SD all the way to the end so...

In the same sense that Blue Squadron, the Rebel flagship, the entire Rogue One strike team and to be fair the Rebel fleet too are expendable.

If they don't escape with those plans the Death Star means game over.

I completely agree with the "tagged" sentiment; by all costs, and means necessary. The last 10 minutes explained that very well.

I grew up watching IV and V every Saturday morning back to back till I wore out the VHS's.

Rogue One just left me feeling like a kid again. I was back in "my" Star Wars universe, only it managed to do that without making me feel like I am a kid or patronised.

Ive been vocal about wanting at least 90% casualties for the rebel commando team. Not only did I get that but it was a wipeout and even better Vader was responsible for precisely zero main character deaths.

Did we just witness a somewhat competent Empire?

Not individually hence; the good guys managing to win. But through weight of numbers and superior might we see an Empire plausibly too scary to take head on. There's a very good reason the rebel council is so reluctant to engage.

Vader gets his moment. I was just beginning to think the movie was a missed opportunity when wham.. boarding party. Made me so happy to see a brutal and unstoppable Vader. I lived it was all raw power and brutality with hardly an ounce of finesse.

Had massive grin seeing Dutch and Garvin. Such a brilliant touch. Tarkin and Leia not quite so much.. Tarkin I almost believed they had found an awesome doppelganger and the rubberyness was from make up etc. Leia was needed but not sure we needed to see her face for the connection to IV to be made.

Battles were both awesome. Maybe the best we have had.

We saw some genuine world building which was great. We actually saw an oppressive regime at Street level.

My only real gripe.. the Tantive being there. More specifically with Leia on board. Literally no reason IMO. Made an easy close out but it's a bit lazy for me.

Do I have a new favourite Star Wars movie? I don't know. It's hard to beat that magic of being a child. I think Rogue One is a better movie than all but Empire. A New Hope is the best Star Wars movie though as it is Star Wars. That I can even consider Rogue One I. The same bracket at all is massive praise. It's better than all but IV and V by far. Jedi of TFA are good Star wars films but not particularly good films and the less said about the prequels the better.

Now to go see it several more times!

I loved that final space battle, because it was such a great scale. 2 big Imperial ships vs a bunch of random Rebel junk. Big enough that it feels like fleet action, small enough that every ship is contributing. You can follow the action better than in giant space battles.

I had the feeling that this is the kind of fight that would be the Rebel's bread and butter in later years, a flotilla of one real warship and smaller support ships and fighter squadrons hitting a target and running. Obviously, most operations wouldn't have the stakes of this one, so the fleet would pull out sooner.

The best thing was it seemed like the Empire had won he battle and secured he plans and then they didn't. Now we know why Darh Vader was very aggressive with Leia when she said she was on a dipolmatic mission from Alderaan

Oh and to add.. knowing anyone and everyone was expendable for the story added an element of tension that's always been missing from Star Wars films. Really loved that.

-Kinda weird the DS blasts created what looked like nuclear blasts. It was too contemporary and distracted me momentarily.

FWIW, and almost off-topic, but...that is just what a large detonation in atmosphere looks like. Back in the early days of nuclear testing, the US did at least one detonation of an equivalent amount of TNT (IE., totally conventional, 'non-nuclear' explosion) - and it produced the same effect, mushroom cloud and all. Even some volcanoes have created a similar effect.

ANYWAY, I really enjoyed Orson Krennic's surprise on it - "Oh! It's beautiful ."

That was just so... perfect ...for the character.

We know Hera Syndulla is in it right before they leave to scarif over the speakers of the base we hear general hera syndulla report to the control room

Not only this but I also spotted everyone's favorite grumpy, homicidal droid Chopper in the film. When the comtech comes running out of the tunnel to inform Mon Mothma and Bail Organa about the attack on Skarif, if you look at the lower left corner of the screen you can see Chopper in the shot. It's a bit out of focus but you can see the shape of his head and the dish antenna on top.

I'm really looking forward to see how they tie the show and movie together.

I was really wondering about that - supposedly, 'Chopper' (from the weekly Rebels Recon show) was flown over to England during the reshoots. It would make sense for him to have been in a scene, then, but I didn't see him. Will have to pay attention to that shot next time...it was only ever going to be a cameo (same as the Ghost in the fleet, and 'General Syndulla' on the comms)

Only if they were looking for it. The Empire didn't know there WAS a weakness. They thought the Death Star was invincible. Only the Rebellion knew there was anything to find.

The discussion was centred around why didn't Galen Erso be more specific about the weakness he constructed. My theory is that he was attempting to mitigate the chances of the Empire discovering the weakness by not referring to it directly, so that even if they discovered his message they would be unlikely to discover the weakness.

He may not have had a specific plan for how to detonate the reactor, either. He may have imagined the attack would take the form of a commando team infiltrating the base and just setting off a bomb they smuggled in. That the chain reaction could be triggered by another means, externally, ended up being just a bonus.

As others have said already, this thing was awesome! When vader prepared to board the flagship I thought "really?" one lambda full of troops against all the people on a ship that size? Then : Vader, the one man brute Squad and I'm like hmmm, one lambda ought to just about do the job then, carry on.

Also, I'm amazed at them literally resurrecting the dead with tarkin. Unbelievable.

Absolutely amazing. Far exceeded my already high expectations. So happy with it.

...and that ending!

Starting about a year ago, I told a bunch of people that I hoped the very last scene of the movie was... Exactly what it turned out to be. So good. So very good!

I am a little ashamed to say so, but I didn't realize Tarkin was CGI. I was trying to figure out what was up. Did lucas clone him when he cast him so he could use him in later movies cheap? the Liea one didn't look as good as tarkin did. I thought for a minute they must have found someone who looked very much like him and dubbed in cushing's voice pieced together from previous. I didn't see it in 3D, but I did not immediately recognize that it was CGI.

On another note, did anyone else think that liea smiling at that moment might have been a little out of place? A whole lot of people just died and they were in the midst of a desperate escape after all.

where are all the dead bothans I was promised?!

where are all the dead bothans I was promised?!

Preparing to die getting the plans for the second Death Star...

But watching this movie just made me realize how disappointing, lazy, unimaginative, bland and missed opportunity The Force Awakens was.

Rogue One is everything The Force Awakens wasn't.

TFA was a greatest hits album by a really good cover band. It was incredibly safe, and did exactly what it needed to do, and did it with flair.

I'm glad JJ Abrams isn't directing the next one, and I'm very pleased that Lucasfilm was willing to take chances by producing this one. With luck, it will be as successful as I think it should be, and Lucas will take more chances in the future.

It's all thanks to the vision of Kathleen Kennedy. Long may she reign!

Sorry if this has been mentioned...

Loved the movie (although it traumatised my seven year old daughter). But....

Why did the bad guy (in white) get a super sleek shuttle where the Emperor and Vader are willing to slum it in a normal Lambda Shuttle (so common that Luke has one as a toy) for their journeys.

He should have been in a Lambda!