I'll bite too. I liked Rogue One.

The three checkboxes thing (characters / story / emotion) seems a bit oversimplified. I think it is possible to have a *great* movie if any ONE of those things is great, and it is possible to have a very good movie without any of them being fantastic.

Beyond that, it seemed like his biggest complaint was that Rogue One requires you to have some basic level of familiarity with the Star Wars universe in order to enjoy it; that it doesn't stand up particularly well on its own. ...Well, duh. Any time a setting / universe is used for more than one film, you're going to have to spend much more time on the exposition and getting people familiar with how things work in the first film (A New Hope) than in later films. Actually, I thought that Rogue One would have been very watchable and enjoyable even for people that are familiar with Star Wars even in only the broadest strokes.

I'm with @SDGundamX. The original trilogy stand as my favorite 3, but I liked Rogue One more than The Force Awakens (and TFA was *way* better than any/all of the prequels).

Huh, this criticism feels more like a Zero Punctuation-type review to me in that it grossly exaggerates actual flaws to make them sound far more problematic than they actually are. He's asking us to view the movie from the perspective of someone who has never heard of Star Wars and that's just so preposterously stupid that I had a hard time getting through to the end of his video. The whole point of this movie is that the lore and the world has already been established--there's no need to re-tread everything and explain every connection. It's not meant to be a "stand-alone" film--nor were Empire or Return of the Jedi, which also rightly assumed that people watching the movie had seen (or at least understood the major plot points) of the previous films.

Personally, I find his criticism of the characters wholly lacking as well. Why did he not like the characters? Why did he not find them compelling? I personally loved them all. One flaw in the movie is that there are so many things going on that most of the characters don't get enough screen time for us to get really deeply attached to them, but then again none of the characters are meant to survive the movie so that could be intentional? Certainly a few of the characters (Baze, Chirrut, and Bodhi) suffer from being one-dimensional as a result of this.

Fair enough if he doesn't want to check the character box because of that, but he never explained why the story and emotion boxes weren't checked. I mean, my wife cried both at Jin's father's death and Jin and Cassian's deaths. They were the three characters that were the most fleshed out of the cast. We understood their motivations and their internal conflicts (Jin's father between protecting his family and helping the Empire, Jin's struggles with trust after the feeling of betrayal at being left behind by both her father and Saw Gerrera, Cassian's struggles with duty and morality further complicated by his growing feelings for Jin). And their deaths were meant to underscore the harsh reality of the rebellion for the common foot soldier.

For me, this movie is probably the 4th best Star Wars movie to date after the original trilogy--much better than The Force Awakens, in my book. It's fine if Plinkett disagrees, but his video is completely disappointing as it doesn't really explain or give examples of how he came to this opinion. He just makes a blanket statement and then proceeds to monologue as if we should take his opinion as fact without him offering any evidence.

Mr. Plinckett is right as usual. I watched it in IMAX 3D yesterday, but didn't feel immersed into the story all that much. While watching it I couldn't help but think that a panel of Disney marketing geniuses meticulously thought out what we wanted to see, to guess our expectations, more than the brain child of someone with a vision, with a true story to tell. The girl-that-every-girl-wants-to-be with great athletic prowess and wit as the main character to try and get women to go and see it. The two popular Chinese actors were obviously there to appeal to the ever more important Chinese market. Nostalgic re-enactment (or pre-enactment?) of the ROTJ final battle. Darth Vader! Tarkin! The Death Star! There's someone and/or something for everybody in this movie. Maximum appeal to go and see it.

I think all characters did have potential, but there wasn't any time for them to really come alive, as we were introduced to too many locations and too many people. On the topic of coming alive, resurrected Peter Cushing was very clearly stuck deep into uncanny valley, and watching him was a little... morbid I think.

Like with the Force Awakens, I left the cinema not really unsatisfied, but not really happy either. Just kind of... okay. That was something all pre-Disney SW films did way better for me.

Your video, Mr. Plinkett's The Force Awakens Review, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Why CG Sucks (Except It Doesn't) has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.

Behind the Magic: The Visual Effects of The Force Awakens has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine.

No, they don't.

Fury Road and The Force Awakens were probably the two most hyped "hey we're doing practical effects" movies of the last year or two and both have a tonne of CGI, it's just hard to see.

Practical effects are great for some stuff, but good CGI allows for things that are simply impossible with practical effects.

Both have their place.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Why-CG-Sucks-Except-It-Doesnt

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Behind-the-Magic-The-Visual-Effects-of-The-Force-Awakens

That scene in The Force Awakens was stop motion? I would have thought they would have used cgi.... cool.

After watching The Force Awakens and the Rogue One trailers, I had forgotten just how awful the prequel CGI is.

hah! Why am I thinking of Star Wars: The Force Awakens with the character Rey dragging her salvage across the sand?

"What you brought me today is worth... hmmm, one quarter portion."

I guess it would be a rude awakening for her to realize that nobody in the rest of the world can tell the difference between the Australian and New Zealand ways of life.

Truth be told: I will wait for VOD. The only Top Budgeted Studio films I bothered to crawl outta my hole to GO see in 2015 were Fury Road & Force Awakens. Haven't even hit Avengers , Jurrasic, or Furious 7 on VOD yet...they strike me as "meh".

Will wait and see for this one. Was disappointed by Force Awakens. Not a bad film, but flawed in a lot of ways. Hopefully they'll tone down the attempts at nostalgia-inducing scenes in this one and focus on a compelling and believable story.

I lol'd at that. It ended like Force Awakens.