Rogue One: A Star Wars Story answers that burning question: “How did Princess Leia get the plans to the Death Star?” When Disney bought the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas, they decided that to make money, they needed to bring out a Star Wars movie every year. But, in order to do that, they needed to develop alternate story lines…like Rogue One and the 2018 movie about the young Han Solo.
Rogue One begins with the Empire’s Director Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) forcibly “recruiting” scientific genius Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) to build the Death Star. Erso’s young daughter, Jyn (Felicity Jones) escapes. Years later, the Rebel Alliance breaks Jyn out of an Imperial prison to recruit her. Jyn is not interested in helping the Rebels at first, but later she leads a small force to attempt to steal the plans to the Death Star before the weapon of mass destruction is finished. My favorite character in Rogue One is former Imperial security droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk). If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll love this movie. GRADE: B+
George, this has just released in my neck of the woods. Although I’m tempted to watch ROGUE ONE, I’d first like to revisit all the previous STAR WARS movies. This, I think, is a standalone.
Prashant, no previous STAR WARS knowledge is necessary to enjoy ROGUE ONE. You’re right, it’s a standalone.
Interesting that they finally figured out how to make more money out of the franchise by doing this.
Patti, the demand for STAR WARS stories is huge. The success of the animated episodes and now a standalone movie will accelerate the process. It’s all about the money.
I hope to see this one soon.
Bill, the reviews say the 3D version is great!
I’m hoping to see this one soon, but first I want to see LALA Land (our paper gave it 4 stars to this ones 3).
Our paper had a review of another book, The Brand New Testament, but its only playing at our next to last art house type theater with no matinees.. God is a cranky old man living in Canada. the review made it sound really funny, so I’ll try to Netflix it when I rejoin.
Working on getting my DVR down to under 20% (at 22%). It may be easier because we’ve been getting warnings that cox is going to stop having CBS and METV, both of which I DVR a lot of (METV has old sitcoms like grounded for life and Cybill) When I turn on the TV today, I’ll see if its happened. I’ll most miss the big bang theory and madam secretary
Maggie, we just freed up a lot of space on our DVR by watching the live version of HAIRSPRAY. It was okay. We want to see LA LA LAND soon.
I am 22 % on my dvr with 298 shows Probably half of that is the tonight show with Johnny Carson.
I saw hairspray and thought Jennifer Hudson was great. The performer that surprised me was Martin Short. He was amazing. The one that I liked the least was the woman who played Tracy. Not sure why, just didn’t like her. Harvey Fierstein was also wonderful as expected.
Maggie, we thought the cast of NBC’s live version of HAIRSPRAY was good. But the constant interruptions and blather detracted from the performances.
Meh. I’m sure we’ll see it in Florida – bigger, cheaper, nicer theaters. But the Disney tie-ins are annoying me. We watch the local news on the Disney-owned ABC station and the amount of promos they get in as “news stories” is huge.
Jeff, Disney is struggling with their ownership of ESPN. People don’t want to pay premium prices for crappy sports anymore.
as a Disney stockholder, hope they dump espn
Maggie, Disney is making money on MARVEL and STAR WARS. They don’t need ESPN.
We are down to 5% on the DVR! But Fios gives us a lot of hours. Last year we were able to record everything while we were in Florida and never went above 20%! Now we’re watching stuff on Netflix and Amazon until the regular series return in January or February. We’re caught up with CROSSING LINES and nearly caught up with LONGMIRE.
Jeff, we recorded a lot of programs we should just erase. We have five or six episodes of DESIGNATED SURVIVOR. That should go.
Jackie still watches it but I gave up a couple of episodes ago. Just. Too. Stupid.
Jeff, DESIGNATED SURVIVOR was a far cry from 24!
He’s definitely no Jack Bauer, unfortunately. And Maggie Q. needs to kick more butt!
Jeff, in the episodes I saw of DESIGNATED SURVIVOR, Maggie Q was just standing around. What a waste of talent!
There are no shortage of Star Wars plots already in place; hundreds of novels and graphic novels in print with complete story lines, all available to Disney. Star Wars has been making money all along. That it’s Disney making it now is no surprise, though I fear they may overdo it and run it into the ground. They began running trailers on TV last summer for a film that came out yesterday! I want to see this film, I saw all the others in the theater, but I want to find a time when the local movie house isn’t crammed with noisy, obnoxious kids, so I’ll wait until school starts again.
I’m at zero on the DVR
(wait, we don’t have one)
Rick, the DVR is a lure. Time Warner gave us hundreds of hours of space so of course we recorded all kinds of stuff. Diane even has Christmas movies from 2015! Our New Year’s Resolutions will include getting the DVR under 50% full.
I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to hopefully seeing it again this week. I saw it in 3D, which I’m not particularly a fan of, but didn’t have much choice if I wanted to see it on Thursday and have reserved seats. I’m hoping to go to our local theater with an enormous 2D screen to see it this Thursday afternoon again.
It exceeded my admittedly high expectations.
Carl, I’m hoping there’s an IMAX version of ROGUE ONE in the works!