Stuff I liked:
- Gareth Edwards has an eye for visuals and there are some stunning, elegant shots.
- Vader was pure fanservice, but I won't lie, I did enjoy his display of villainy. And his ridiculous castle.
The bad:
- Flat, boring characters and flat boring line readings. JJ Abrams has many faults as a storyteller, but he can direct the shit out of his actors and bring out lively, natural performances and chemistry within the cast. Edwards is good with visuals and action, but he's shaky when it comes to living actors and human drama. None of the emotional beats worked for me and none of the characters clicked in any way. I'm especially disappointed with how badly the movie wasted Ben Mendelsohn, considering that Krennic was the only thing that initially caught my eye in the trailers. I could see he was trying to do something with the character but without decent direction he's just left flailing. Jyn's character suffers a lot from a super-rushed introduction - boom her family is taken away, boom she's a grown-up in jail. It made me appreciate Rey's introduction in TFA and the time we spend with Luke in ANH before the plot kicks in even more.
- The editing in the first third is just atrocious, frantically jumping from planet to planet and character to character.
- It looks great, but without any emotional engagement, the Star Wars action porn on Planet Dubai is just a brain-numbing assault.
The ugly:
- Forest Whitaker was outright terrible. I felt embarrased watching him overact.
- CGI Tarkin and Leia... ewwwww. I felt like I was watching one of my brother's video games all of a sudden. Sorry but the technology is nowhere near good enough yet to successfully simulate a living human being. Just absolutely ghastly uncanny valley stuff.
The premise of the film would IMO most naturally lend itself to a heist film, but it's like they tried to do a heist film, a war film and yet another "young hero on a personal journey with family issues" all in one.