In the opening sequence set several years before the main action, we meet four important characters – Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen, Hannibal and Dr. The first two-thirds of the movie deal with bringing our rag-tag heroes together, and do so in a jumbled, confused mess – one that comes across as an editing nightmare so astoundingly unsympathetic in its disorientation that within the first half an hour you’ll feel like an arthritic pensioner conducting a salsa of planet hopping proportions. Hope you have a blaster handy to get us out…Set in the immediate lead-up to the original Star Wars: A New Hope, Rogue One focuses on the Rebel Alliance acquiring evidence about the existence of the Death Star and the subsequent hunt to steal the plans for the moon-based battle station. Good, you’re still reading…which means we’re both in the Sarlacc pit.

It’s a hard line to explore in depth without going into minute detail, so if you haven’t already watched Rogue One, the rest of this review will contain spoilers, so fair warning: turn away now if you don’t want be thrown like Boba Fett into the belly of the Sarlacc to explore the pros and cons of Rogue One. The crowd from the former camp will stand defiantly, beating their chests and bellowing curse words at the stars, bleating like a malnourished goat that I hated it and that I’m just looking for an excuse to trash it. The thing with Star Wars is that there are mainly two camps of people when it comes to the franchise: there are (mainly) those that will stare gormlessly at the screen like blank-eyed glove puppets, dewy eyed and slack jawed at every little mention of The Force, chewing up every minute detail of information slipped into every frame, and then there are those that shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Yeah, it was okay I suppose.’ I liked Rogue One, but didn’t love it. All the fundamental pieces are set in place: there’s an eclectic cast, solid archetypes, acute attention to detail for the iconic Star Wars mythos, dizzying dog fight battles that play like a cross between old news footage of spitfires during World War Two and the twinkling stars you might see while suffering an unexpected blow to the back of the head – it’s all here. If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’ll enjoy Rogue One.

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