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Rogue One

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So much better than The Force Awakens, but still a little way to go and it all ended a bit Blakes 7.

After the disappointment that was the Force Awakens, I approached Rogue One with some trepidation. It was slow going to begin with and I missed the usual scrolling introduction to the story so far, but as one of three standalone Star Wars movies I guess there was no story to tell.

My heart fell more when there started to be a lot of references to the other films, especially Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi, as this was one of the things that had detracted from the Force Awakens, but they were just references, it wasn’t actually the same story!

Half an hour in it was great and I really enjoyed it from that point on. I liked the way it was almost split into two stories with two separate climaxes. I started to get a bit worried towards the end. I remember the beginning of the original Star Wars film (now called A New Hope) and how the Tantive IV had received the transmitted plans for the Death Star. The way Rogue One was playing out didn’t look as if it would be consistent. Then the plot sped up, just like it does at the end of The Clone Wars and the story played out just as expected to align with A New Hope.

Rogue One did what The Force Awakens failed to do. It built some brilliant characters, but then it did the worst thing you can imagine. It killed them all. I know people have wrongly said that the story was borne out of Mon Mothma saying “...many Bothan’s died to bring us this information…”, but it wasn’t necessary to kill everybody!

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