Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2016, since it is the first of many Star Wars anthology films, which are movies that stray away from the regular numerical episodes. Fair warning, there are spoilers ahead.

Rogue One takes place just days before A New Hope and tells the story of how the Rebellion stole the Death Star plans that were used to destroy giant space station later on in the series. Personally, I believe this film was great, but there are some things that I think could be better.

There are many flaws in Rogue One, and a big one is the overuse and recreation of CGI characters, most notably Grand Moff Tarkin. Peter Cushing played Tarkin in Star Wars: A New Hope, and he did a fantastic job. But in this movie, the Grand Moff was completely CGI, or at least his face was. A lot of fans complained about this, and they had a good reason. There was just too much of him. He should have just had one scene, and maybe showed up on a hologram later in the movie. Many fans complained about CGI princess Leia, but fortunately she was only in one short scene rather than multiple. 

Another flaw of Rogue One is the overabundance of characters. The main characters of this movie are Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, K-2SO, Chirrut Imwe, Baze Malbus, Bodhi Rook, Saw Gerrera, Galen Erso, and Director Orson Krennic. That’s quite a hefty amount of people to keep track of throughout the movie. Some characters are essential, like Jyn, Cassian, Krennic and Galen; however some other characters should be in there too, like K-2SO, Saw, and maybe Chirrut, but that’s it. Bodhi and Baze are unessential characters, and some supporting characters are unneeded, like Bail Organa and General Draven. I don’t see why Draven could’ve just been replaced by Admiral Raddus, but I digress.

This flaw is one that’s not even in the movie, the many, many scenes that are in the trailers, but not the released film. This fiasco is due to the mass re-shoots to the film during the summer. For one, I’m disappointed that some of these scenes didn’t make it into the final film, because some of them looked pretty great! Like the scene where Jyn faces off against a TIE fighter at the top of a radio tower, or the scene where the entire cast are running through the citadel with the Death Star plans, or where they’re running head on into an AT-ACT on the beaches of Scarif while STILL holding the Death Star plans! Why didn’t any of these scenes make it into the film, they looked pretty great, but I guess that’s just my opinion.

So those are some of the flaws of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I believe it was a great movie, but all great things have some bad moments, or things that don’t really add up.