With the end of 2016 came the second Disney Star Wars movie, this time in the shape of a prequel, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” Similar to its immediate predecessor, “Star Wars: the Force Awakens,” initial reviews for “Rogue One” have been positive resoundingly, praising it as a worthy advancement in the Star Wars saga. However, there are of course some exceptions, critics who disagree with the large consensus of audiences, and to be honest many of their complaints are valid. In this review, I’ll start off explaining what “Rogue One” does right, as in actually right, not just what made Star Wars fans happy. Then, I’ll explain what some of the film’s shortcomings were. Also, be forewarned, this review may contain spoilers.

Starting off, “Rogue One” does a great job of establishing the setting. It shows enough familiar things to be known to the audience, such as Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, and Yavin 4, but not enough to ruin the plot, like what happened with “Force Awakens.” Yes, there are some of useless fan service scenes here and there but these were thankfully few and far between. Rather, “Rogue One” opts to tell a new story instead of playing too safe with simply rehashing old plot twists.

Now, there are some critics who say that “Rogue One” leans too heavily on the shoulders of the previous Star Wars movies, saying that like “Force Awakens” the plot film feels much too similar to its predecessors. However, this is not the case. While it’s true that some of the props and sets are familiar, this should be expected given the era it is set. The movie is set just before “A New Hope,” of course it would share some similarities in regards to set design and costuming.

As for the feel of the movie itself, I found the darker tone for Star Wars to be a very welcome change of pace for the series. Star Wars has generally been a movie meant for all ages in the past, though the same cannot be said for “Rogue One.” It’s not as graphic as say “Hacksaw Ridge,” “Saving Private Ryan,” or any other World War 2 movie from which it drew inspiration. However, it’s also not a jolly adventure movie either. People die in “Rogue One,” a lot of people. This might be turn off for some, especially considered the light the franchise’s hearted past. Me on the other hand, I enjoyed the new tone. To be honest, I was rather nervous when I heard that Disney would be reshooting scenes to make them lighter, but I’m happy to say that the movie does not suffer as a result. If anything, I think the reshoots might actually help the movie. If it was any darker, people might actually have a right to say it was too grim for Star Wars.

Moving on to story, and for most part it’s fairly good. I can’t say it will masterpiece to be praised for decades, but then again the story telling in the original trilogy wasn’t really anything standout either. The story is better than most, but not as good as some, which is as good as Star Wars should be. The series has always been more about the adventure and suspense rather plot anyway. Long story short, the narrative “Rogue One” tells is decent enough. There a handful of minor plot holes or questionable scenes, but it will keep you entertained and you won’t complain much about it afterward. Still, don’t expect anything really thought provoking. There are themes and motifs present, as there are in every story, but they’re nothing stand out.

Now, onto the characters and this is where “Rogue One” starts to crack a bit. While all of the designs are top notch and impressively creative, the characters themselves don’t have as much substance I would like. None of them are really badly written and the dialogue is pretty decent as well. It’s just that past their costumes and well said lines, none of them are really developed aside from the main lead. Even by the end of the film, I was still scratching my head about some of their motivations. “Wait, why is that guy here? What does want out of all this?” I would ask. Barring the central lead, nearly every other character is shrouded in an annoying level of mystery. Throughout the entire movie, we never learn much about their pasts or motivations. Now, I’m sure that Disney will tell us who they are in the copious amounts of comics or novels that will follow the film, but that can’t be an excuse for the movie’s flaws. Most people only watch the films and will probably never even pick up any of the expanded universe novelizations.

Moving on to special effects, which I need to talk about considering it’s a modern science fiction movie.  For the most part, I’m happy with the special effects. It looked real enough and I can’t really complain about the quality of explosions or lasers. Even the few CGI characters that made appearances weren’t that badly rendered. I’ll admit that it was fairly obvious that they weren’t real people, but they accomplished their goals well enough. All things considered, they would look really impressive, if only they weren’t paired with real people.

All in all, I enjoyed “Rogue One.” I liked the darker feel of the story, the action, and special effects. However, it cannot be said that it is a perfect movie. Like every film before it, it has its short comings and flaws, though not enough for me to call it a bad movie. After considering all I said prior, I give “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” an 8/10.