Rogue One gets the tick (no spoilers)

Despite being so badly burned by the abomination that was episode VII, I remained tremulously optimistic about the next Star Wars movie to be made under the auspices of the mouse. Surely Rogue One would not be a derivative and incoherent mess like the Force Awakens? Then yesterday I saw a review online that gave it three stars and said that it was essentially a movie of callbacks and incoherence. Noooooo! Should I bother? Would I just leave feeling emptier than when I went in? I gritted my teeth and purchased my ticket...

And I'm bloody glad that I did. I don't know what that reviewer had stuck up his arse, but this is a good movie. It is what Episode VII should have been. It is very coherent. It does have callbacks, but they add rather than detract. The humour used fits well every time. The characters are developed archetypes. They have this in common with the Lucas Star Wars movies. This is something that episode VII did so badly, as it just didn't develop those archetypes. With the exception of Kylo Ren all of the Episode VII characters were bland, pointless and boring. He was annoying, but at least he had that in common with Anakin. Whiny Skywalkers are a stock aspect of Star Wars.

So I heartily recommend Rogue One. I walked out smiling, so different to a year ago when I looked at my mate as the credits rolled and said 'What the fuck was that?' While I'm at it, for those that don't get why I'm so anti- Episode VII, I found a video on Youtube that does a good job of explaining a lot of why I thought it was rubbish. It is long, but it has to be in order to point out just how awful the force awakens truly is. I'm no great fan of Episode 1 (although I will take on anyone that says that Episode 2 and 3 weren't as good as the original trilogy any day), but at least it was coherent.