A Star Wars Recap: Rogue One

 

Okay, since I reviewed The Force Awakens and recently watched all eight movies in one sitting, I figured a review of Rogue One is also in order.  I was pretty pumped in the lead-up to it, despite the PC pandering that was obviously in high gear.  The idea of exploring stories apart from the Skywalker saga was very enticing.  Plus, when the backdrop is precursory events merely mentioned in A New Hope, it was hard to resist getting a little excited.  With Gareth Edwards, who had recently given us a moderately entertaining and fairly mythos-honoring monster feature in 2014’s Godzilla, Lucasfilm again was not going with the time-tested big-name director.  Plus, there was a wildly diverse cast.  Would it pay off? 

A Star Wars Recap: Episode VII

Okay, so my friends basically insisted that I write a review for this before The Last Jedi arrives in theaters in 50 hours, so here it is.  I was so pumped for this movie, but I was afraid that it would be more Terminator: Salvation, rather than Batman Begins. It exceeded my expectations on many levels, but it wasn’t better than Hope or Empire.   It has aged (if a movie can age in two years) pretty well.  Maybe not as well as Jurassic Park, but not nearly as poorly as the prequel trilogy.  It’s not perfect, and there are legitimate reasons to be a detractor from the overwhelmingly positive response.  However, for the saga, in my humble opinion, it was a win.