I was expecting to like 'Rogue One', but I wasn't expecting to love it as much as I did. Now, this may be a little biased, as I am admittedly a huge Star Wars fan, but I believe 'Rogue One' to be an excellent first film in the Anthology series, and it brings me great hope for what's to come.

Now, that's not to say 'Rogue One' doesn't have any issues -- the first act in particular is quite slow in comparison to the rest of the film, however justified when considering how well it builds the characters. In addition, the script falls a little towards the cheesy/bad side at times, but never reaches the lows that the Prequel Trilogy did, and for the most part the lines are acted well enough that it drowns out any cheese.

That being said, the characters and acting in the film are all top-notch. Characters like Alan Tyduk's K-2SO and Donnie Yen's Chirrut Îmwe steal the show, but pretty much every other character is also very well done. 'Rogue One', in addition, is full of CGI, but it looks great. AT-AT walkers and ships flying all look great, and there's some other CG surprises that I won't spoil.

If there's one thing the director, Gareth Edwards, is good at, it's scale. You could feel it in his previous film, 'Godzilla' -- every time the titular Godzilla showed up in that film, you could always feel his size, or rather, feel the human's perspective on how massive he truly is. 'Rogue One' is no different. Shots of the aforementioned AT-ATs are frightening, as are many shots of the Death Star. Good stuff.

Finally, 'Rogue One' is full of great moments, none of which I will spoil here. Whether it is comedy, a good action scene, fan-service moments (which surprisingly work better than they did in The Force Awakens), or moments of pure terror, 'Rogue One' always has something up its sleeve to shock and surprise you with.

Overall, 'Rogue One' feels like the 'Band of Brothers' of the Star Wars saga -- gritty and violent, it never shies away from showing what the "war" side of 'Star Wars' was really like. It has great moments, CGI, and characters that help to balance out a slightly slow first act, and made it skyrocket to being one of my absolute favourite Star Wars films. I can't wait to see it again.

I'm not doing it enough justice. Just go see this movie!!

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+Characters

+CGI

+Moments

+++ENDING

-Slightly slow first act

9 out of 10