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YMMV / Rogue One

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  • Alternate Character Interpretation:
    • Did Krennic kill Galen's team out of frustration, or was it a case of You Have Outlived Your Usefulness? He believes the Death Star is complete, so the team was now a liability who could warn or even help the rebels.
    • K2-SO: as an Imperial droid reprogrammed by the Rebels, is he any more free, or is he just a tool they use; another weapon against the Empire? Much of his dialogue, such as his line to Jyn ("I'll be there for you. Cassian said I had to") suggests the latter interpretation. Then again, this dialogue is coming from K2-SO, so it's anyone's guess.
  • Award Snub: Despite the critical acclaim, the Oscars only nominated the film for two technical awards — Sound Mixing and Visual Effects — while missing out on other technical awards like Production Design, Makeup, and Costuming.
  • Broken Base: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
  • Captain Obvious Reveal: That all the main cast dies shouldn't come across as a surprise to fans that have seen the original trilogy, as none of them gets a single mention in that trilogy despite the great importance of their mission.
  • Cargo Ship: Krennic really likes his Death Star, to the point that when Tarkin takes it from him, he's ready to go to Darth Vader to get it back.
  • Catharsis Factor: The typical fan response to Darth Vader appearing on the big screen for the first time in 33 years and unleashing the full force of his power can be accurately described, on average, as lying somewhere between "gasps of shock and shouts of delight" and "orgasming all over the theater seats."
  • Character Rerailment: After Return of the Jedi and the prequel trilogy focused more on Anakin/Vader's sympathetic side and the angst that he went through, this movie is the first one in years to portray Darth Vader as a terrifying force of nature like he was in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, further updated to 2016 standards of Nightmare Fuel.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Wilhuff Tarkin sanctions the obliteration of rebel city Jedha and claims the victory as his own. Tarkin later has the Death Star fire on the Imperial base on Scarif to quell rebel activity, killing countless members of the Empire's own men as well as his hated rival Orson Krennic, while also wiping out the remainder of Rogue One and Blue Squadron.
    • When Orson Krennic's former friend Galen Erso escapes, Krennic tracks him down, resulting in the death of his wife before forcing him to complete the Death Star. Krennic later has it tested on the civilian city of Jedha after his original proposal of destroying the entire moon is shot down, and finds himself awestruck by the resulting mass casualties and destruction. And after learning that one of his engineers leaked information on the Death Star, he has them all executed just to hurt Galen even after he admits to being the leaker. Firmly dedicated to furthering his own career, Krennic will betray or murder whoever he has to in order to keep the command he feels is his by right.
  • Contested Sequel: It's another Star Wars film, what did you expect? A refreshing change of pace for focusing on how Muggles Do It Better, showing the brutality of the early Rebellion, going Black-and-Gray Morality, and addressing many of David Brin's and Chris Avellone's criticisms of the franchise. Or is it a joyless slog with an underbaked cast of characters, some hamhanded attempts to shoehorn Oscar Bait tropes into a Star Wars film, and an "Everybody Dies" Ending that subverts the whole Muggles Do It Better concept so that the cast really are nothing more than Red Shirts. GeekyGlassesTV claimed that those attempts to break away from Black-and-White Morality were quickly discarded and go absolutely nowhere. Fans of Kyle Katarn were put out because the very first mission of Dark Forces is contradicted by the events of this film. That said, the film is generally well-liked even among those who dislike the non-Disney+ Disney-era Star Wars content, and is at the very least less agressively base-breaking among fans than the Sequel Trilogy.
  • Continuity Lockout: As it was pointed out by Mr. Plinkett, for all the film's billing as a "stand-alone" spinoff Star Wars story, the movie does nothing for new viewers to introduce them to the setting or providing context for the conflict or establishing the stakes. Even the ending itself would qualify as a No Ending instance for someone who's not familiar with the rest of the movies.
  • Crack Pairing:
    • Luke/Jyn, as she dies days before they could have met. Much of this was due to a bit of speculation about Rey's parentage.
    • Before the film came out, there were some fans hoping for Jyn/Leia, due to the fact that they were both "rebels" (and for other reasons). Obviously, this ran into the same problems as Jyn/Luke: Jyn is killed in the end.
    • There's also a disturbing amount of support for Jyn/Orson. Amusingly, the two meet only briefly during the main story before they're both killed by the Death Star.
    • Cassian/Jabba due to Diego Luna saying he wants to touch Jabba in several interviews.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Admiral Raddus, the movie's Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Admiral Ackbar, picked up a fan-base for basically giving the rebellion a giant middle-finger by refusing to surrender, and sends his rebel fleet off to support Rogue One at Scarif.
    • Likewise, General Antoc Merrick, the leader of Blue Squadron, is beloved in the fanbase as a badass X-wing Ace Pilot who, like Raddus, follows Rogue One to Scarif and pulled an epic Big Damn Heroes to save them from the AT-ACTs from above while sprouting a joyful grin on his face. That spectacular moustache he has reminiscent of Biggs Darklighter definitely helps making him a fan-favorite.
    • The Hammerhead corvette Lightmaker, for ramming into a Star Destroyer, sending both it and another Star Destroyer careening into the shield gate.
    • Despite only seeing serious action in the opening scene and final battle, the Death Troopers were a big hit with the fanbase for their badassery, menace, and ruthless competence.
    • In the grand tradition of interesting-looking Star Wars extras, Benthic and Edrio Two Tubes were a big hit with the fanbase and seemingly Star Wars writers themselves despite doing almost nothing but look cool, as one or both of them have gone on to reappear in almost as many Star Wars productions as Saw Gerrera himself.
  • Epileptic Trees:
  • Evil Is Cool: Unsurprisingly, given Star Wars' predilection towards creating popular villains.
    • Darth Vader, arguably the Trope Codifier, returns in spectacular fashion. Not only is he a major selling point of the movie, but he's depicted at his scariest and most brutal here, reminding audiences of how horrifying he can truly be after years of being mostly known for his status as a pop culture icon than anything (diluted even further by how popular and heavily-marketed he is with kids).
    • Director Krennic's deliciously evil performance is enough to earn him a mention in this trope before even factoring in that Badass Cape and Grand Admiral-esque outfit.
    • Death Troopers. Their very appearance was cool enough to warrant a lot of love before the film's release, but the fact that their status as Elite Mooks isn't just for show and they're actually very dangerous indeed, which only makes them more awesome.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • Between fans of this and those of The Force Awakens and the rest of the Sequel Trilogy. Respective fans of both movies are quick to argue over which of the Disney-era Star Wars films are better, though there are plenty of people who enjoy both.
    • A minor one has sprung up with fans of Suicide Squad (2016). Both films, along with Fantastic Four (2015), were subjected to highly publicized reshoots months after filming had been completed, with rumors of the directors being given no say in the matter. In the case of Fantastic Four and Suicide Squad, both films were heavily panned for the Mood Whiplash and lack of pacing that they suffered due to these reshoots, though some fans of Suicide Squad were quick to trash Rogue One when its reshoots were reported, predicting that the same problems would arise. However, Rogue One received a widely positive reception, as Gareth Edwards was directly involved in the reshoots, which were more focused on Character Development rather than adding humor and action like Fant4stic and Suicide Squad.
    • Another one has appeared this time with fans of the Star Wars Legends for retconning out the plan thefts as depicted in Operation Skyhook. Fortunately, the film does try to honor its Legends inspirations with the Dark Troopers and Galen Erso as references to Dark Forces and The Force Unleashed.
  • Fan Nickname:
  • Fountain of Memes:
    • Krennic's uncharacteristically snarky, petulant personality (for an Imperial officer) and numerous zingers has made his quotes the star of many an internet meme. Same with K-2SO for much the same reasons.
    • Saw Gerrera makes up for his lack of screen time with his extremely memorable line delivery and quotes, to the extent that he manages to provide several of the film’s biggest meme lines during the few scenes that he is given.
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • Solo would be criticized for giving backstories and explanations for very self-explanatory things, but this had its origins in Rogue One doing the same thing for points like the Death Star's weak point and the origin of the Rogue Squadron name; audiences had accepted for decades that the Death Star was a really big gun with an obvious design flaw, being a product of the same Awesome, but Impractical style the Empire favors enough to have built something like the Death Star in the first place (in the Legends novel Death Star, the fatal exhaust port was portrayed as just a dumb mistake and the request to fix it got lost in the bureaucracy), and the "Rogue Squadron" callsign gives all the explanation it needs by sounding cool. It worked anyway because these were major things in-universe and, though fans weren't particularly clamoring for explanations of where they came from, there was room to do so anyway, especially in the case of the Death Star's development, which for the most part only had a small handful of attempts at explaining anything about it that did little more than remind the audience it would be built eventually before going nowhere, and they developed into plot beats naturally enough. It got ridiculous when Solo tried to continue the trend by giving explanations to trivial things that not only did audiences never see any need to question, but which the crew couldn't come up with explanations for that weren't extremely silly, like the backstory of Chewbacca's bandolier boiling down to "he put it on" (which just raises the question of why he wore the same bandolier for several decades) or revealing that Han apparently never had a surname until the name "Solo" was given to him by an Imperial recruiter because he happened to be alone at the time (which makes audiences wonder why they're supposed to accept names like "Luke Skywalker" as real but not "Han Solo").
    • Rogue One also caught flak for having a few rather gratuitous references to the animated shows that had run earlier and concurrently to it, like background cameos from Chopper and the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels and Saw Gerrera from Star Wars: The Clone Wars being a major supporting character, which were more or less lost on people who only watched the movies. However, these were just bonuses for savvy fans and weren't distracting or confusing for casual viewers; Saw's role in this film as Jyn's mentor and surrogate father is still completely understandable within the context of the movie to people who hadn't watched The Clone Wars, and the other references were kept in the background for eagle-eyed viewers. Solo got it worse with major plot points that only worked for viewers who'd watched several TV shows or read several books, most infamously its reveal in the last half-hour that the Crimson Dawn's leader is Darth Maul - this was a major plot element clearly meant to set up for possible future adventures rather than just a small bonus for viewers well-versed in Expanded Universe works like the later seasons of The Clone Wars or Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir, and for anyone who wasn't it came completely out of left field, since to a casual viewer who'd only seen the movies, Maul's last appearance was getting bisected and thrown down a bottomless pit twenty years ago.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
  • He's Just Hiding: There are plenty of fans who like to think up possible ways Cassian and Jyn could have survived the bright flash that was presumably the laser reaching them. In addition, while it would have been hard to survive what came next Bodhi might have had time to get away from the grenade, and there's one web article that pushes the possibility that the Empire very well could recover K-2SO's body and rebuild him for information, assuming it didn't also get disintegrated by the Death Star.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • A young Princess Leia's appearance at the end, uttering the one line "Hope", has become this in light of Carrie Fisher's passing only a week and a half after the film's premiere. Particularly noteworthy as her passing was announced in the early evening, using GMT time, a prime time for cinema visits. A lot of audiences, especially in Europe, would have watched the final scene with Princess Leia, only to leave the cinema and immediately hear of Fisher's death. This got even worse when she and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, both died a day apart from each other, similar to Jyn and her father.
    • Cassian giving his life to ensure the Death Star's destruction gets a note of irony when his own series shows that he was briefly forced to contribute to its construction as well.
    • The heavy use of CGI face replacements to feature actors who'd either aged out of their roles, or died, was praised at the time. Arguments about their potential future use and compensation for them would become a major sticking point for the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, with studios including Disney refusing repeatedly to back down on a "if we scan your face we can do whatever we want for free" attitude.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight:
    • Grand Moff Tarkin's appearance was created using a CGI recreation of Peter Cushing, due to the actor's being long deceased by this point. The similar process being used for Leia's brief cameo at the end of the film becomes this and Harsher in Hindsight after Carrie Fisher's untimely death little more than a week after Rogue One's release.
    • In The Last Jedi, we see that Raddus has his own Resistance battlecruiser named after him, which, fittingly, is used to ram Supreme Leader Snoke's flagship.
    • In Season 1 of Andor, it's revealed that Cassian's adoptive mother Maarva Andor was an indomitable rebellious spirit who posthumously started an anti-Imperial uprising on her home planet Ferrix, and as such would have been immeasurably proud to learn that her son would become an officer in the Rebel Alliance and help to kick off the chain of events which would ultimately lead to the Empire's downfall.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The religion Badass Normal Chirrut Îmwe practices is basically canonized Jediism (he's not an actual Jedi but believes in the Force).
    • One of the earliest tie-in toys released is the rather large Jyn Erso Nerf gun. Fast forward to the actual movie, and there's a Running Gag about the Rebel Alliance people giving Jyn grief over keeping a rather small blaster. Made even funnier when it resembles the smallest Nerf gun from that line, listed as Cassian's sidearm, when the opposite is true in the movie — then turns into Harsher in Hindsight when we learn why Cassian has the bigger gun.
    • In the Missing Trailer Scene, Jyn's "I rebel" line is mocked by detractors. In the movie itself, we learn that she actually didn't believe in the Rebellion's cause for about half of the movie.
    • One of the concepts considered for The Last Jedi was making Luke Skywalker blind. If used, this would have made Luke Skywalker the second blind Force-believer in two years who forms a close bond with the young, brunette, female protagonist, completely ignores a massive hail of gunfire, and becomes one with the Force after accomplishing his mission.
    • In this movie, Admiral Raddus masterminds the Raddus Maneuver, AKA colliding two Star Destroyers together and then dropping them both into the Shield Gate over Scarif. Thirty four years later, the Resistance flagship named after him pulls a similarly spectacular stunt by ramming into Snoke's flagship at light speed, bifurcating the sixty-kilometer wide ship.
    • About a year and two months after the release of this movie, Star Wars Rebels had Kanan Jarrus sacrifice himself and die from a massive explosion just like Chirrut, leading to many jokes about how the Star Wars universe is not a safe place for blind people.
    • Darth Vader makes a choking pun while Force Choking Krennic. In spring 2017, not long after Rogue One's release, Ian McDiarmid accidentially made a lighting pun while talking about his character's Signature Attack in a interview. Vader learned from the best.
    • In this film, Forest Whitaker portrays the live-action version of Saw Gurrera, who is explicitly based on the Argentine revolutionary and guerrilla leader Che Guevara. Whitaker would later go on to play Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson in the crime drama Godfather of Harlem, in which Che Guevara appears and plays a major role in the show's third season.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Between Chirrut and Baze. They're just Like an Old Married Couple. Plus, Chirrut's demise is extremely intimate, and it's clear that Baze is thinking of him before he dies as well. To the point that there's an entire swath of fans whose Head Canon is that the two ARE an old married couple. Director Gareth Edwards has said he doesn't mind people reading a romantic interpretation of their relationship.
    • Krennic and Galen are a little... tense. Canonically, they met when they were teenagers and Krennic seems unduly obsessed with Galen even outside of his duties to the Death Star.
  • Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
    • Jyn/Cassian is affectionately known as Rebelcaptain in the fandom.
    • Chirrut/Baze is Spiritassassin.
    • Cassian/Bodhi is Sniperpilot.
  • I Knew It!:
    • Many people figured out that Darth Vader would be one of the main villains of the film long before it was officially announced. Many also correctly guessed that he'd be the person inside the bacta tank which was shown in the first trailer.
    • Rebels fans concluded that if Cassian is a member of Alliance Intelligence and has a history of recruiting people into the Rebellion, then he must've been a Fulcrum informant. All There in the Manual confirmed this is indeed the case.
    • While the theory that the Death Star's design flaw was done on purpose existed before Rogue One was even announced, many fans correctly speculated that the film would confirm it.
    • Upon the revelation that prior to Season 3 of Rebels Recon (the recap show for Rebels on YouTube) that Chopper was sent to England during the hiatus, due to apparently not being sent over for Celebration London, people started theorizing that he was going to show up in Rogue One as a cameo. Watch and listen carefully.
    • Fans correctly guessed that the Ghost would get some sort of cameo as being a part of the Rebel fleet, with the most likely character to appear or be mentioned alongside it being Hera.
    • A lot of people guessed that most if not all of the main characters would die.
  • It Was His Sled:
    • The entire Rogue One team dies at the end.
    • The Death Star's infamous weakness was indeed an inside job.
    • Thanks to its prominence in the EU, basically every Star Wars fan knows that "Project Stardust" is the codename for the Death Star, or at the very least, the name for the Death Star’s reactor/exhaust system.
  • Just Here for Godzilla:
    • No pun intended, considering the director. But all this trope needs is four words: Darth Vader is back.
    • Other fans only watched the film because Donnie Yen's in it. Interestingly, both he and Jiang Wen were both expected to help Rogue One bring better numbers into the Chinese box office than The Force Awakens did, though this turned out not to be the case.
  • Memetic Badass:
  • Memetic Molester: Bor Gullet. It being a tentacle monster is bad enough already but its shtick is mind raping its victims.
  • Memetic Loser: Krennic never catches a break once in the movie, and everyone knows.
  • Memetic Mutation: ARE WE BLIND? DEPLOY THE MEMES!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
  • More Popular Spin-Off: Despite being an Anthology movie and not a numbered episode, fans treat Rogue One as just as important as the main episodes, especially for how nicely it ties into A New Hope. In terms of ticket sales, Rogue One surpassed both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, meaning that this first spinoff was more popular theatrically than the Series Fauxnale. It also outperformed the later domestic gross of the Series Finale The Rise of Skywalker 3 years later, which only narrowly outgrossed Rogue One worldwide.
  • Narm Charm:
    • Saw's delivery of "Save the rebellion! Save the dream!" is much better in the actual movie than it is in the trailer. Still cheesy, but the proper amount of cheese for a Space Opera.
    • Digital Tarkin has an Unintentional Uncanny Valley look to him, but then again, Tarkin wasn't a canny man to begin with. Something about the artificiality just makes him seem more villainous.
    • Orson Krennic's Large Ham tendencies suit his desperate power-hungry ambitions very well. He's an Imperial Director who is at a loss for out-doing Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin on the Imperial hierarchy and you can feel a sense that Krennic is stuck at a dead-end in his ambitions.
  • Older Than They Think:
    • This is not the first spinoff movie. That honor goes to Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, which aired in 1984.
    • Due to Rey's status as the main character of The Force Awakens and Jyn Erso following suit merely one year later, some have mistakenly accused Kathleen Kennedy (Lucasfilm's CEO) of using Executive Meddling to push a feminist agenda with the franchise. Even putting aside the implications that somehow having a female lead in two films after the previous six had male leads is a "feminist agenda", the idea of the movie's protagonist being a woman came from John Knoll, the guy who wrote the story to begin with — and he came up with the idea before The Force Awakens was even greenlit.note  And even before that, some of the earliest drafts of the movie that eventually became A New Hope had the protagonist as a teenage girl instead of a teenage boy.
    • This movie's script may not have been written until the 2010s, but the general premise of the film — a group of Rebel spies managing to steal the Death Star plans during the Rebel Alliance's first winning battle against the Empire — can be traced back to the first sentences of the first movie in the series. Rogue One gives names to those fabled "Rebel spies" and a concrete location to that fabled "first victory" 39 1/2 years after the first film hit theaters, but the basic details have been established Star Wars canon from the very beginning, and was even briefly portrayed (as the Legends Battle of Toprawa) in the 1981 A New Hope radio drama.
    • Given all the comments on YouTube and Twitter, one would get the impression Darth Vader never made a single quip in his life. In truth, his rather dark sense of humor has been a constant staple for the character. There are few pieces of media Vader's seen in where he doesn't make some sort of witty remark, and in fact, in Empire Strikes Back he makes several. Hell, one of his most iconic scenes in A New Hope, has him making a quip about how he finds Admiral Motti's lack of faith in the Force disturbing while Force-Choking him.
    • Vader's hallway massacre against rebel soldiers was first imagined as a card image for Fantasy Flight's game back in 2013. Star Wars: Battlefront II featured a similar scenario by letting you play as Vader on the Tantive IV raid from A New Hope, all the way back in 2005.
    • The story of stealing the Death Star plans had previously been covered in a variety of expanded universe materials, most notably as the first mission in Dark Forces.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Darth Vader's screen time in the film is fairly limited, but he makes every single moment we see him count. Most likely an Intended Audience Reaction, considering his status as a selling point for the movie.
    • Bail Organa has a very small role, but as one of the Prequel Trilogy's most beloved characters, his presence here was much appreciated by fans.
    • Leia gets the last line of the movie, which perfectly sets the stage for A New Hope and ended up being a sendoff to Carrie Fisher, who died of a heart attack only days after Rogue One opened.
    • Artoo and Threepio appear just once at the Yavin IV base, letting them keep their status as the only two characters to appear in every Star Wars film. Until Solo.
    • That one doomed, nameless rebel trooper who gets trapped behind the jammed door during Vader's massacre. He has less than a minute of screentime and no name, but the sheer unadulterated terror he displays in the face of death, in a franchise that tends to gloss over how terrifying warfare can be, and the fact that he essentially saves the galaxy by seconds and inches makes him hard to forget.
      "HELP US!!!"
  • Questionable Casting: Despite Stephen Stanton having played Tarkin in both of his animated appearances, looking a bit like Peter Cushing◊, and being present to voice Admiral Raddus, he doesn't play the Grand Moff in this film. Instead, the character is portrayed by Guy Henry, with Cushin Iig's face recreated with CGI. For what it's worth, Stanton has voiced nothing but approval for Henry's portrayal and the technology that went into it.
  • Rooting for the Empire:
    • After the confirmation that Darth Vader was in the film, many fans were hoping he'd get a fight scene to show off why he's one of the most feared beings in the galaxy. He does.
    • In the film itself, as terrifying as it is, let's face it: Who didn't root for Darth Vader in the corridor scene?
    • Admit it, as much of a monster as Governor Wilhuff Tarkin is, you definitely had less sympathy for Director Orson Krennic and were probably cheering to at least some extent when Tarkin eliminates him near the end of the film.
    • More humorously, a number of people have admitted to sympathizing with Krennic throughout the film, thanks to his unbroken string of rotten luck. Who couldn't sympathize with swanning around your workplace in an awesome white cape, even when it's possibly against dress code because no-one else is wearing one, getting backstabbed by your favorite coworker, yelling at your bosses when they take credit for your hard work, and finally getting shot in the back by some rando and then obliterated by that same boss you hate right at the moment of your ultimate victory?
  • Salvaged Story:
    • The Death Star's often ridiculed design flaw has for decades been used as the main example for the Empire being a bunch of idiots that even the primitive Ewoks can defeat. This movie shows how much blood and sweat went into getting the info on that flaw, while also revealing that the flaw was built on purpose by an inside man.
    • Similarly, the question of why the Empire were chasing after the plans in the first place is neatly addressed. Yes, it's clear the Empire wants to figure out what's wrong with the Death Star since the Rebels apparently believe they have information that will help them destroy it, but why not get the people in charge to analyze the station and find the weakness? This film explains it. Not only was the lead scientist, Galen Erso, sabotaging the thing and wouldn't be likely to talk had the Empire realized the bigger problem, but Krennic has Erso's entire team killed for what they thought was a smaller problem of conspiracy, and Erso himself is killed by the Rebel ships arriving on the scene. This reckless behavior on Krennic's part (well, and the miscommunication in the Rebellion) has the unintentional effect of forcing the Empire to defend, and later, track down the recorded copy of the plans, as reviewing them becomes the only way they could find the flaw and make the Death Star indestructible. On top of that, it also explains why the Empire can't just look at their archival copy of the plans to find the problem themselves: Tarkin blew said archives up.
    • After 40 years of Star Wars being the go-to franchise for "henchmen never hit main characters" jokes, Disney averts the trope with a vengeance by killing off every new character, hero and villain alike, who wasn't already Saved by Canon.
    • On the other hand, in A New Hope, the weak lightsaber duel between Vader and Obi-Wan has often been explained away by fans as being due to Ben's old age, Vader's crippling, and both characters being weaker than during the Republic era. However, a scene towards the end of this film shows Vader using quite a bit of his power to overcome a line of Rebels, showing that Vader wasn't weak at all. In this film, Vader's physical actions are still relatively slow, plodding, and deliberate. However, he exercises much more creative use of the Force than he manages in any version of the original trilogy in just a few short scenes. And despite the slower, deliberate lightsaber swings, there are clear remnants of Anakin Skywalker's fighting style in them.
    • For the fans who'd grown tired of the franchise's perceived Black-and-White Morality treatment concerning the Rebellion and the Empire, this film showing a far less savory side to the Rebel Alliance with their desperate situation driving them to some very shady actions is quite welcome.
    • The Rebel soldiers' infamously poor showing in the opening of A New Hope against a Stormtrooper boarding party who couldn't otherwise hit the broad side of a barn is probably the franchise's most infamous example of Early-Installment Weirdness. This film fixes that seeming continuity problem by explaining what happened to those soldiers to make them so weak and demoralized: Vader. Vader happened to them.
    • Construction on the Death Star was revealed to have begun in the closing scenes of Revenge of the Sith. Considering it would take nearly twenty years for the base to be completed by the time A New Hope would take place, but only a handful of years to have an even larger, mostly completed and fully operational one in Return of the Jedi, many fans were left scratching their heads. In the opening scene of this film, it was revealed that construction of the first Death Star was completed long before A New Hope, but — due to Galen Erso's absence — the Superlaser was not operational for many years, stalling the base's deployment.
  • Shocking Moments:
    • The sheer amount of named character deaths. The first Death Star test firing. The epic final battle of Scarif, both on the planet's surface and in space. Last, but not least, we have Darth Vader's arrival to the battle. It's marked by his Star Destroyer ploughing through Alliance ships when it exits hyperspace and ends with him carving a path through rebel soldiers like they were made of cardboard.
    • The first live-action return of a functional AT-AT variant since Return of the Jedi, stomping through to attack the Rebels, giving lots of Battle of Hoth nostalgia.
    • The Hallway Scene deserves attention. Just this scene alone — of Vader effortlessly cutting his way through terrified Rebel Red Shirts in pursuit of those stolen plans — has turned into the most-talked-about scene of the entire movie, and it happens in under two minutes of screen time.
    • The destruction of the Shield Gate over Scarif. They don't just ram it with one of the rebel flagships, oh no. They use the smaller ship's leverage to ram a Star Destroyer into another Star Destroyer, causing them both to smash into the Shield Gate and obliterate it.
  • Signature Scene:
    • A Hammerhead Corvette ship ramming a Star Destroyer into another Star Destroyer during the final space battle.
    • Jyn and Cassian quietly hugging each other before being killed by the impact of the Death Star's laser.
    • Chirrut's epic fight scene with the stormtroopers.
    • Darth Vader's rampage against the Rebels at the very end. This particular scene has been cited by many as one of, if not the best scene in the entire Franchise. Which is amazing, considering that this is pretty much a Spin-Off.
    • The surprise appearance of Leia in the very final seconds of the film, delivering the last line, dressed in her Iconic Odango Hair Buns and Pristinely White Dress from A New Hope. Audience could be heard making a collective gasp of awe at this.
  • Stock Footage Failure: The Red and Gold Leaders reappear through archival footage. Unfortunately, these shots have a noticeably different quality to them (mostly because they're much more grainy) compared to the rest of the film, which sets them apart and makes it obvious that they're both from a different movie.
  • Special Effect Failure: Wilhuff Tarkin is fairly impressive on its own yet comes off as obviously digitally animated when juxtaposed with real human actors.
  • Spiritual Adaptation:
    • This is effectively what Star Wars: Dark Forces would be like if it had been a movie. An unusual example in that both works are part of the same franchise, albeit Alternate Continuities. It also draws elements from the Han Solo trilogy of novels, given that Jyn Erso has parallels to Han Solo's former flame Bria Tharen, who became a significant Rebel officer who died stealing the Death Star plans.
    • The second part of the movie could also be considered an adaptation of X-Wing, since the latter depicts space battles in which part of the plans for the Death Star were stolen. Of course, those were different battles with different participants, but still.
    • Some have even called it a Star Wars RPG game on the big screen.
  • Strawman Has a Point: The senators on the Rebel Council are Obstructive Bureaucrats for rejecting Jyn's plan to raid the Imperial archives on Scarif base yet their rationale isn't entirely unfounded. Vaspar views such an attack as too risky for the fledgling Rebellion while Jebel and Pamlo fear that the Empire would respond by attacking civilian populaces. Their fears are proven valid as Vader and Tarkin nearly wipe out the entire Rebel taskforce at Scarif and the Empire retaliates by destroying Alderaan. Even looking past the Empire's potential response, Jyn's background as a street urchin and daughter of a supposed Imperial collaborator wouldn't make her the most trustworthy advocate of a dangerous suicide mission.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: The "Guardians of the Whills" suite seems to share some notes with "Across the Stars", Anakin and Padme's love theme from Attack of the Clones.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While the pre-release response has been largely positive, some fans complained how Rogue One would focus more on gritty realism while not featuring the Jedi and the Force. For these fans, Rogue One "doesn't feel like Star Wars". Ironically, many of these same people complained that The Force Awakens didn't do enough to change things. That said, the film itself dispels much of these fears with the Force being a source of spiritual guidance for several characters and Vader's incredible display of Sith power in the finale. In fact, the latter is arguably more effective as a scene due to how grounded the threats were until that point.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Saw Gerrera only appears in a few brief scenes and doesn't partake in any action scene presented in the movie despite being hyped up as one of the main characters. Fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars were interested to see what he was up to after the series and eager to see him getting back into action again. Instead, he has only a little role and isn't even part of Jyn's Rogue One group as he's killed off after Krennic tests the Death Star on Jedha. In addition, some were expecting an allusion to his sister, Steela, but there is none in the film whatsoever. He also has a clear paternal dynamic to Jyn, though little time is devoted to that. That being said, the plot of the film wouldn't have happened without his appearance, and some fans who were unfamiliar with The Clone Wars see the character as an Ensemble Dark Horse. These concerns were addressed with his appearances in Season 3 and 4 of Star Wars Rebels where Saw and his faction resort to extreme measures that make other members of the Rebel Alliance more wary of him, although some people still felt that he was underutilized in Rogue One itself.
    • There's some opinion that, while all of the main cast are interesting — Chirrut and Baze as former temple guardians and Bodhi as a defecting Imperial pilot in particular — we never really get to know too much about them or their backstories.
  • Too Cool to Live: The entire main cast to varying degrees, given that they died sticking it to the Empire, but particularly Chirrut, Baze, and Kaytoo. Also Admiral Raddus, the only guy in the Rebellion brass willing to take the fight to the Empire. And Antoc Merrick (aka Blue Leader), who's just as eager to go into battle.
  • Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The digital recreation of Grand Moff Tarkin's face on Guy Henry. He appears frequently in the film and — though the quality fluctuates from scene to scene — he never looks 100% right. Depending on who you ask, Leia's digital recreation is either worse or better, though she fares better by only appearing in one brief scene.
  • Unexpected Character: Saw Gerrera's appearance in the film was a surprise to many. He was a character introduced in The Clone Wars, making him one of the first characters to jump from a Star Wars show to a movie, and also a jump from animation to live-action. While this has since become commonplace for the franchise, at the time it was quite a novelty. Prior to the name reveal of Whitaker's character, there were references in Rebels and Bloodline about Saw, meaning it was to build up the surprise.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Ben Mendelsohn as Orson Krenic was a hit with many viewers thanks to his memorable performance and even having a face-to-face meeting with Darth Vader where he gets choked as a way to be humiliated (non-fatal). It helps that his Narm Charm can be seen as suiting the hyper-ambitious character very well. Cosplays have been performed thanks to Krenic's unforgettable presence in the film.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Excepting the digital resurrections, the effects in this film are so consistently good that it is often impossible to tell what was practical and what wasn't. For example, K-2SO looks so real despite being motion capture, and some aliens, like the prisoner across Jyn at the labor camp or Admiral Raddus may look CGI, but they were practical animatronics and puppets.
  • Win Back the Crowd:
    • Early reports state that one of Darth Vader's scenes in the movie is truly horrifying, which re-establishes him as the nightmarish villain he was perceived as back in the original trilogy and undoes some of the "softening" that the prequel trilogy and marketing overexposure have done to him. Both of Vader's brief scenes display him at his most terrifying best. The movie even ups his snark factor while keeping him perfectly in-character, for those who found that he was too grim, serious and formal in previous movies.
    • While The Force Awakens did this to the public at large, some fans found it to be too derivative. Rogue One won back most of those fans by providing a unique and much darker take on the franchise. Unfortunately, it did lead to a bit of Broken Base between the Force Awakens fans and the Rogue One fans.

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