I've been watching movies for a solid 25 years in theaters. No matter how cringey or stupid, there's always been something inside me that pushed me to see a movie until the end. I love bad movies. I find many of them endearing or at least entertaining in a fun way. Until today. I got up and left my seat at one hour in. I went to find a manager and I got a refund. Rogue One holds the distinction for being the first movie in MY ENTIRE LIFE that I just couldn't sit through.

Rogue One is a collection of mishmashed ideas that some group of writers thought that people like in their Star Wars. Dark-haired main female? Check. Rogue-ish Han Solo type? Check. Snide robot sidekick? Check. Planetary destruction event? Check. Old mentor character gets killed while the youngin's flee? Check.

Even the action is paint by numbers. Look, I'm the kind of guy who can turn his brain off and just enjoy a movie. But this movie was f*cking STUPID.

There's a scene at the beginning that paints a familiar story point: scout droid finds the family, they begin packing in a hurry and prepare to leave. Pops hugs wife and daughter goodbye and tells them to run into the hills/woods/wherever the f*ck. Big bad shows up, says search the house for the wife and kid. Well, what do you know? Who came back just in time to get snuffed? The wife! She holds a blaster on 5 Imperial troopers like it's gonna do something. And, of course, the daughter sees it and THEN she starts to run again. If those two had just done what the f*ck they were told AND what they had established they'd practiced, they would all be alive!

There's another, more egregious one scene where Jyn, the main character chick, is surrounded by stormtroopers with Han Jr. and they both have blasters. At one point in the action scene, Jyn puts away her blaster, pulls out a NORMAL BATON and starts beating the sh*t out of stormtroopers with it. Beating them with one or two strikes at most. WHAT THE f*ck IS THIS sh*t? THEY HAVE f*cking ARMOR ON!!!!!!!

Forrest Whitaker is in the movie as a old guy. We see absolutely nothing else about him, but the Rebel Alliance are like "oh yeah, he's an extremist because he's attacking the empire or something", but we never see him do sh*t. He's got about 10 seconds in the beginning, 5 minute scene and then he's dead, just in time to push the plot forward with all the subtlety of using a hammer to pound a screw into concrete.

Donnie Yen is the blind asian force master with a bunch of unfunny quips. He has a friend I don't care about, either. What kills me was in the same fight as above, he used a BOW to beat up stormtroopers with one strike each. Why the f*ck are people using non-electrical melee weapons on stormtroopers to such effect? IT MAKES NO SENSE.

Han Jr. is okay. Not great.

Jyn's actress is so f*cking wooden that when she masturbates, she bursts into flames. Completely awful. They try to make her character deep and rebellious, but it's TOLD to you rather than you SEEING her be a rebel. She is boring as f*ck and I have no connection to her whatsoever. She's a generic badass.

The snide robot was kinda humorous. Gotta give 'em that.

Jeezus, they f*cking CG'd Grand Moff Tarkin for this movie. Talk about the f*cking uncanny valley. When I first saw it, I felt something was off. Then I KNEW it was off. The CG was terrible for this. Why did they feel the need to not do practical effects for this one? SOMEBODY's gotta look like him. That sucked me out of the movie hardcore.

This movie was boring as f*ck. I couldn't stay awake. I was drifting in and out over that last 30 minutes I stayed. Longest 30 minutes I've felt in a good while.

I think a big problem is that the stakes were so unimportant. Prequels have a massive problem here when you know how it's going to turn out in the end. Here, you already know that they're going to get the Death Star plans and the Rebellion will win. SO, the important part of this movie is to build characters that you, as an audience, will care about so that when they die (or something), it would shine a different light on how significant that famous Death Star battle was.

Here, all the characters are extremely bland. They are just formulaic pieces shoved into a Star Wars generator and blended. I didn't give a sh*t about anybody and the movie didn't even try to build it.

What a failure of a movie.

It seems we are going to be forever at odds when it comes to movies. Though I will say a lot of your criticism I agree with generally. The CG on Tarkin really didn't do it for me, Yen and his friend were completely unimportant to the story, and the first have was generally pretty f*cking boring.

But that second half, man. That second half was exactly what I wanted. The attack on the base, the battle over the shields, capturing the plans, the base being nuked and ALL the main characters dying (as you know they would per A New Hope), and seeing the plans finally getting to Princess Leia ending just where Episode 4 starts was on f*cking point.

Not to mention never before have they ever portrayed Darth Vader as the badass he is. Seeing him just eat through rebels as they ran screaming for their lives was better than anything in all seven of the mainline films.

I don't blame you for walking out on the first half, since it was incredibly dull, but you missed out.

I do have to agree with you on this general point, that Storm Troopers - especially when they are the ones wearing the pretty thick-looking armor - getting owned so easily all of the time. But at least this movie made up for the typical bad guy suckage by having a really badass scene with Darth Vader at the end where I was genuinely terrified of him, a few more elite-looking Storm Troopers score noticeable kills on the rebels int he last battle scenes of the movie, and all six main characters die before the movie's end. You hardly ever see the bad guys make this much of a mark in action movies.

Overall, while the movie dragged and seemed formulaic for the first half, the second half made it worth it. And I am pleased enough.

... I really gotta wonder what kind of bad movies you've somehow sat through in the past if Rogue One finally did you in, though.

I thought it was aight

I finally saw the rest of this movie today.

The movie actually does pick up pretty well after the one hour mark. The final battle stuff is actually very good. But the one thing I can't help but think is that it would have had much more heft if I gave a sh*t about the fate of the main characters.

Vader coming through like a f*cking nightmare was great. It actually helped repair a bit of the damage that he had taken from the prequels.

The movie as a whole, instead of giving it a 0%, I give maybe 60%. The second half is incredibly stronger than the first half. If the entire movie had been like the second half (even half as interesting), I wouldn't have left.

Well, I mean, come on, Ix, what movie genuinely deserves a 0% score? .... Except maybe snuff films? =P

Finally saw it today on video! So I'm finally ready to read Ix's thoughts, and... Oh, he didn't like it. At all. Walked out on it.

Oh. (Plinkett voice)

Well, having sat through the whole thing, I think I agree with you. It was the usual Star Wars stuff with characters I don't care about, much like the original trilogy and prequels. Not even close to as good as Force Awakens, the first Star Wars movie to have three dimensional characters that I actually get invested in.

My reaction to Rogue One was similar to when I'd watch an original trilogy movie. "Well, that sure was a spectacle. I didn't care about anything that was happening or any of the characters, but... Hey, the special effects were good. Right? I guess it was okay. It sure was a spectacle."

Captain Cassian Andor was a big disappointment. After collecting some of the action figures just in case the movie turned out to be great, I'm disappointed in him and Jyn Erso. The rest were just kinda there because we need to have an ensemble cast. There wasn't anyone who really resonated with me. Nowhere close to how Rey and Finn do.

The action was pretty good. I like that they stole an imperial cargo shuttle. And they all die in the end. No surprise there. They all make the noble sacrifice for the greater good.

Something I definitely did not like is how dark it was visually. Didn't really look like how Star Wars should look. I dunno, almost everything seemed so dark and visually unappealing.

Vader's appearance did nothing for me. I can't stand him. Worst character in Star Wars, and not because the prequels ruined him or anything like that. He's terrible in the original trilogy. Well, I s'pose he's okay in the first one. It's Empire and Jedi where he's awful.

Anyway, I'll probably watch Rogue One again, but it really didn't grab me like Force Awakens did.

Having watched it a couple more times, I have dramatically revised my opinion.

1. Having gotten over my initial disappointment with Cassian Andor, I think he's a good character who encapsulates the lengths the rebellion is willing to go to in their resistance against the Empire. He executes a person who holds vital information to keep that person from revealing it to the Empire. That's something that must be done for the sake of the cause, whether we like it or not. We're presented with a darker rebellion here. A rebellion that has to make the tough decisions in tough situations. While joining up with Jyn at the end, Cassian says that he and his friends are guilty of espionage, sabotage, and assassination, all things that the rebellion would have to do to get by. I think he's a good character who presents us with something new in Star Wars.

2. Jyn Erso is actually quite relatable on a second and third viewing. She doesn't care about the rebellion at first and is just trying to get by, but as events progress the reality of the rebellion hits her in the face. She faces up to what has to be done to fight against the Empire, and realizes that she can make a difference.

3. Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus are badass. Good characters who I have come to like. Chirrut is the closest we get to seeing a devout Jedi, and Baze is a badass soldier with his big gun.

4. Once again, Tarkin is appropriately done in by his own hubris. In Episode 4, he goes down with his mighty machine of destruction because he doesn't believe the rebels are a threat. Here, once again, he doesn't start targeting the rebel fleet with the Death Star because he's confident that Lord Vader will handle it. The rebel ship escapes in the end because of Tarkin's hubris. Appropriate!

5. Also appropriate is that the Empire tested their mega weapon on a lower power setting. First on Jedha, then on the base at Scarif.

6. The big battle on Scarif at the end is actually kind of moving. Cassian says while giving instructions to his soldiers, "Head over there and light the place up. Make 10 men look like 100." There couldn't have been more than 20 guys in the assault group, and they fight valiantly against overwhelming odds. And their presence is just to create a distraction so that our heroes can get into the tower and retrieve the plans! They're fighting a hopeless battle just to get the Empire's attention and keep them occupied. Jyn and Cassian get trapped in the tower. K2SO heroically holds off the stormtroopers as long as he can. I have a soft spot for that single soldier valiantly holding off the enemy, fighting against impossible odds, so that his friends can escape (or complete their mission as is the case here). Jyn and Cassian realize that they won't be able to escape with the plans, so they heroically transmit the plans to the orbiting rebel ship. Self sacrifice for a greater good. And in the end, they sit on the beach while waiting to be annihilated by the Death Star.

7. In short, this movie has balls. Ballsy characters who are willing to do what has to be done, fighting a hopeless battle against an enemy with nearly unlimited resources, and emerging victorious but not without taking casualties and not without great cost. And isn't that similar to the tone of the original Star Wars? Two droids make a daring escape with the plans, get into trouble, and are discovered by an "ordinary Joe" kinda dude. They manage to escape the planet but then get captured and brought on board the Death Star itself. They manage to escape by the edge of their teeth, then the rebellion launches a daring assault against the behemoth. Many rebel pilots are killed during the assault, and the situation looks hopeless. How can they possibly prevail? Han Solo heroically saves the day, making it possible for Luke to make that difficult shot and win the day. Luke previals because he's had lots of practice at hitting small targets, and he uses the Force to know when to fire his torpedoes. In a hopeless situation where the bad guys can easily win, our heroes scrape by and emerge the victors, but not without suffering great casualties along the way. And so it is in Rogue One. I think it fits the overall tone of the original Star Wars from 1977.

8. Rogue One is still far from perfect and does have its flaws. In conclusion, I think it's good but not as great at Force Awakens.