In the battle against the Empire, the Rebel Alliance feels that all hope is lost when they learn of the Empire’s newest weapon: the Death Star. However, learning of a flaw in the design plan that could take down the weapon, a handful of the members of the rebellion set out to save the galaxy by stealing the blue prints of the Death Star.

As someone who would not consider themselves a Star Wars fan, I enjoyed Rogue One more than I thought I would. The acting was superb (I became teary eyed at several points during the film), and I enjoyed seeing a range of actors of all genders and ethnicities being represented in leading roles. While the overall plot of the story was serious, the audience received a nice dose of comic relief from the resident robot K-2SO, voiced by Alan Tudyk, which helped balance everything out. Probably my favorite aspect of this movie was how it flawlessly segued into the original Star Wars trilogy, which I found to be an advantage for audience members just getting into the franchise.

However, for me, one major weakness in the movie was the amount of jumping around that occurred in the beginning. It was hard for me to keep track of where they were and who all of the people introduced were. Despite being able to remember all of the characters relations to one another, I can hardly remember half of the characters names. I personally think this could have been avoided if in the beginning there was the traditional roll on synopsis (which was absent in this film) that helped explain what was going on before the movie actually started. Because although it starts in the beginning, it still starts at a middle point: the Death Star had already been built, and this is everything that happened after. I also thought the movie felt long. There was one point where I thought movie should’ve ended, but it kept going for about another 20 minutes or so. Luckily, I considered the ending of the movie to be one of the best parts so it was worth the extra time.

Overall, I thought Rogue One was a good movie. Despite the bit of confusion I had with certain parts, I think that both Star Wars fans and non-Star Wars fans would both enjoy this movie. And if you want to have a Star Wars marathon, it’s definitely a great place to begin before watching the original movies.