Rogue One

Movie Review #9412 ROGUE ONE.

Second attempt at seeing as the first ended up with me sleeping through most of it due to lingering jet lag!

The long awaited first StarWars story, as in not in direct line with the characters we all know and love, Rogue One is set immediately before the original StarWars and brings to life the comments from Mon Mothma in that movie that 'many fighters died bringing us these plans'.

As per The Force Awakens, the central figure is female (should keep the feminists happy) in the form of one Felicity Jones taking the role of Jyn Urso, daughter of the bloke who designed the Death Star, who is trying to find dad and figure out what the heck he's doing. Joining forces with a bunch of others also looking for dad to figure what the heck he's doing, she flies through scrape after scrape finally figuring out what the heck dad has been doing.

We also catch cameo glimpses of Darth Vader, Princess Leia (well, CGI representation thereof, an existence also enjoyed by Peter Cushing's Governor Moff Tarkin), C3PO, R2D2 and that rat bag who looses an arm to Obi Wan's light sabre in the original movie cantina scene, seems his lack of social skills has always been a problem.

Rogue One is a long way from the fairytale-ish simplicity of StarWars however it's played out on a grandiose scale and we see all the little StarWars familiarities and nuances represented here in one form or another. The story is also surprisingly reasonable, I was expecting something a little half-baked to be honest, and the sheer size of it all had me engrossed for the full two and a quarter hours.

A must for any StarWars fan and a should for anyone who enjoys a couple of hours of good old scifi escapist fun.

9/10.