Just saw it last night.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. It struck me as basically what someone in 1988 would've dreamed up as a cool campaign for the West End Games Star Wars RPG, which ends in a total party kill (but victory, nonetheless). Lots of great nods to sourcebook material and such.
My main criticism, so far, is as follows (and apologies if this has been discussed, but I'm not searching through 44 pp of thread to find out if someone else addressed it already).
In ANH, Vader goes into this whole exchange with both Captain Antilles and Leia, where he demands to know what happened to the stolen Death Star plans. He says something to the effect of "Several transmissions were beamed to this ship by Rebel spies. I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you." Both Antilles and Leia try to claim that they're a consular ship on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan, but Vader isn't buying it.
Here's where I see the continuity error pop up.
If we take the events of Rogue One as canon, then EVERYONE knows that this whole line of discussion is just nonsense. Why would Leia or Antilles even try to claim that they're a diplomatic ship? Vader LITERALLY was at the door to their corvette before it escaped Skarif. He knows this is the right ship, and everyone on the ship knows that he knows! The whole deception is rendered utterly pointless because Vader was literally feet away from being ON the ship at Skarif.
The way I see it, the scene with the transmission of the plans should've gone something like this:
- Rogue One transmits plans to the Alliance fleet.
- One ship (pick your ship, but NOT the Tantive IV) manages to hyperspace out in the chaos of battle.
- Vader pursues.
- We then cut to a scene where the escaping ship has jumped to a random system, where we see the Tantive IV off in the distance (not close to the escaping ship).
- We see a sequence inside the ships of the data being transmitted from the escaped ship and the Tantive IV crew receiving it "over the air" so to speak.
- Vader's Star Destroyer (the Devastator) jumps in.
- Cut to interior Destroyer, where an Imperial Comms officer says "We're picking up a signal from the escaped ship. It looks like it was sent to that blockade runner" or something.
- Cut to interior escaped ship, where the captain says "Blast it, they've found us! Tantive IV, get out of here! We'll try to buy you some time. Helm, turn to point 7. Let's make them work for it!" or something.
- Leia's ship hyperspaces out of the system.
- Cut to interior of Tantive IV, and play the scene with Leia saying "Hope" as shot (but *****, do better CGI, will ya? Or just have her shot looking over her shoulder with part of her face obscured by her hood or something.)
See, Leia was supposed to be on a mission to get Obi-Wan, not blowing up the Empire at Skarif. It makes no sense for her to be there, narratively or in terms of continuity. And ANH already establishes this. So, it really ends up looking like they botch some details in the name of little more than fan service.
Other than that, though, I thought the film worked pretty well. It was the Dirty Dozen Parsecs, or the Wild Bunch In Space. Although I'll bet there's a version where a couple folks get off the planet alive somewhere on the cutting room floor.
I can excuse the characters who basically just stop doing what they're doing when their mission is accomplished, mostly because I think they recognize the reality of their situation: this was a one-way trip, and there's no way they're getting home. Most of 'em go down fighting or just sort of freeze because they know their death is imminent and unavoidable. Examples:
- Bodhi dies when a grenade lands in the shuttle. He knows he can't get out in time.
- Chirrut dies after the uplink is made, but he's already one with the Force.
- Baze dies fighting after wiping out the Death Trooper squad, because he sees a grenade that he knows he'll never get away from.
- K2 is destroyed after locking Jyn and Cassian into the data archive.
- Jyn and Cassian die on the beach, knowing they can't escape the blast, but having made their peace with it.
The rest of the faceless mooks pretty much die in action.
In terms of the story, they could've portrayed this differently. For example, Jyn and Cassian could've been racing to get to a shuttle to escape, only to die anyway. To me, that'd seem WAY more bleak and depressing than just having them embrace, knowing that they've won even at the cost of their own lives.
