Holy crap you guys, Rogue One! Without spoilers let me say that I loved it, with a few minor caveats, and I'm so glad I saw it last night because even though under other circumstances I would be happy to go again today as per the other ticket I bought, given the way it's snowing right now, I'd really rather not make that trek. (I mean, last night I didn't even go home, I just went to Starbucks and had a hot chocolate, because the idea of going home, taking off all my various layers, and then putting them on again to go back out was just horrifying to me.)

Anyway! spoilers! Nitpicks first, I think:
- CGI Tarkin didn't work for me. They should have used the guy from the prequels or had him as a hologram or from behind/a distance/in reflection, or just used a different character (Yularen?) and had him come swooping in at the end to take over. I didn't mind CGI Leia as much because it was for so brief a moment and it was necessary, but yeah, let's not do that too often.

- I feel like maybe we didn't need to see Artoo and Threepio? I know they've been in all the movies, but that felt gratuitous, as did seeing Luke's cantina nemeses on Jedha. I guess they go right to Tatooine after this and are in a terrible mood because of it?

- Where all the women at? I was glad we finally got two lady pilots, but Mon remains a cipher (she doesn't even know Bail's friend is Obi-Wan???) and there were hardly even any women in background scenes. All of the Rogue One guerillas were men! What the hell? Like, with all the cameos, give us Norra Wexley or Shara Bey! Evaan Verlaine! Someone! Also, fridging the mom was ridiculous. I mean, I expected it, but it was lazy writing and also bad parenting and bad strategy. IJS.

- Jyn was underwritten, and my understanding is that a lot of the reshoots were to make her more likeable or something? I kind of wish they hadn't? I feel like I would have come around on a brasher/less doe-eyed version of the character - let her have been raised as an Imperial! Or let her have become one of Saw's extremists! Or let her truly be without loyalty to any cause but herself when we first meet her! Like, the hints were there - attacking the rebels who rescued her was great! But then she's giving inspirational speeches? It seemed pretty abrupt, even with having watched her father die and you know I am all about sad daddy-daughter feels. I didn't love her and I was prepared to. I was expecting to! I didn't not like her? ...I dunno.

I feel the one area TFA had it all over this movie, aside from nostalgia and getting to see the OT trio again, was that Finn and Rey and even as much as I dislike him, Kylo Ren, were all clearly established characters - you know who they are and what they want within minutes of meeting them. Here...not so much.

That being said, the things I loved and liked are many:
- The fact that they committed to the suicide mission and then EVERYONE DIED. You know I'm not a "rocks fall everyone dies" kind of person, but there were so many reasons this movie HAD to go there, and I knew Baze and Chirrut were going to die going in (Wen Jiang let it slip in an interview, iirc), but when Cassian Andor took that fall off the platform, I was like, oh shit, are they really gonna do it? But I still thought Jyn Erso would survive, and I'm glad she didn't. (Otoh, I want all the fix-its where Bodhi Rook does. Bodhi! I needed so much more of him in this movie!) But seriously, I cried, and while I cry at everything, I wasn't expecting it here and I'm glad I had tissues! So I guess that the characters were mostly underwritten didn't really matter to me in the end - I was still emotionally compromised.

- I need three prequels and a comics series about the adventures of Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus, cranky married Force monks! Oh my gosh, I would have watched three hours of them fighting, snarking, and being tender with each other. THEY WERE SO GREAT YOU GUYS.

- The moral ambiguity of the Rebellion was great - Cassian Andor! Doing all the nasty, dirty things rebels do and wanting it to have meaning or it was just doing bad things for allegedly good reasons! I am kind of in love with Cassian Andor: rebel or terrorist.

- And Bodhi Rook! Defecting! I wanted so much more of him than I got in the movie! And his death was so anticlimactic - if anyone was going to survive, I wanted it to be him!

- VADER! HIS CRAZY BACTA TANK! HIS SAURON-INSPIRED TOWER WITH THE LAVA WATERFALL! ON MUSTAFAR! JUST MARINATE IN YOUR BITTERNESS MAN! HIS TERRIBLE DAD JOKES! To all the people complaining about "Don't choke on your aspirations," may I remind you that this is the man who said, "Apology accepted, Captain Needa" after Force-choking the guy to death. I am just saying. Witty wordplay is not in his wheelhouse, so you know he was damn impressed with himself for coming up with that one. I feel like he embodied ALL the variations of Vader mentioned in this post to some degree, and then he got his very own hallway fight - someone watched Daredevil - and that was fantastic. And you can tell why he's so annoyed in ANH, having watched that little floppy disk elude him so narrowly.

I mean, I could have done without the castle on a lava flow? If only because I liked the idea of him not having a home, just living on whatever star destroyer he was currently commanding? But if Darth Vader was going to have a home, it'd be that hilariously extra. And that entrance as a giant shadow. A++ on that.

- I'm not sure how the Saw Gerrera we met on Onderon became this guy, though I guess twenty years under the Imperial regime could do it, but I liked that he was a foil to Vader, with his prosthetic legs and his breathing apparatus. Especially given that Anakin had a hand in training him to be a guerilla in the first place.

- Those wacky Mon Calamari and their vertigo inducing ships! HAMMERHEAD CORVETTE THO.

- GENERAL SYNDULLA! And I did spot the Ghost with the fleet, though I don't think it did anything in particular in the battle. At least, not that I saw.

- Bail! I don't know how the Bail-Mothma scene plays to someone who hasn't watched The Clone Wars, but I thought it was a nice little moment, aside from my continuing exasperation at Mon Mothma remaining a cipher.

- the ground battles were brutal here, and in a way the movies haven't usually gone for, and it was really well done. the marketplace on Jedha, and everything on Skarrif - it looked like a war movie, the way the others haven't, necessarily.

- showing restraint in the destruction! They couldn't blow up any planets because Alderaan was the first and they were tied to that, and it made for a much more powerful display of why they would be so hellbent on getting those plans, and of course we know it's worth it, because of Alderaan. Much better than Starkiller Base blowing up five meaningless planets and nobody ever commenting on it again.

- it also explained why the Death Star had such a catastrophic flaw, and as retcons go, it's pretty nifty, so I'll take it.

- and that allowed us to have that amazing final scene of Cassian and Jyn waiting for death on the beach. Fantastic!

- I think cutting loose from the Skywalker family saga did good things for this movie, and while I still roll my eyes at the unnecessary young Han Solo movie, I feel better about how it might go after having seen this. Now give me a movie about Ahsoka-as-Fulcrum!

So yeah, two enthusiastic thumbs up from me. I'm not venturing out into the snow to see it again today, but I will probably see it again in the theater, in a non-3D version, since I didn't feel the 3D added anything.

As for trailers, why on earth did they reboot The Mummy as a 'serious' thriller with Tom Cruise? WHY DO THAT? Dunkirk looks good, though. I will probably see that.

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