3 spoilery thoughts about Rogue One

I saw Rogue One today. It was a bloated appetiser of a movie, quite fun but substanceless.

1. Given that the key part of the movie depicted a mission whose success gave hope to the entire free galaxy, the import of that mission was strangely downplayed. It came across as something the heroes did out of personal defiance, rather than out of commitment to some great cause. The reason some others later joined the mission was never convincing. At some point near the end, it became obvious that the mission was one of the suicide variety, but even that realisation was strangely devoid of feeling. The script did not give Felicity Jones and Diego Luna much to work with, and the silent looks and gestures which made up the bulk of their dialogue then emphasised what to me was a lack of chemistry.
2. Cynical me thought Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen were in the movie purely to attract into cinemas people of a similar colour, of which there are hordes, the size of which guarantees heaps of profit no matter the quality of the film. Nothing I saw made me revise that thought. The two played guardians of a destroyed temple, Yen a staff-wielding blind man who seemed to retain an almost comical faith in the Force, Jiang his burly laser shotgun-toting buddy. There was chemistry between the two of them, but only between the two of them, there being no meaningful dialogue between them and the others on the mission, which could have been a concession to their lack of fluency in English, though I doubt it because (i) at least Yen spent considerable time in the US when he was in his teens and (ii) subtitles are a thing. The script simply left the audience to fill in their motivations.
3. Apart from the poor script, I think two other things will stay with me. One is the new droid, used for both comic relief and emotion heft, and of course merchandise sales. Two is the cut-through-swathe-of-minions performance at the end by the imposingly helmeted one, voiced by James Earl Jones. It was a thrill to hear him.

P/S. The young Carrie Fisher – or maybe it was an older Carrie Fisher, with the appropriate digital enhancements – made a cameo appearance. I never knew her beyond the Star Wars movies. I did not know she was a writer, or known for being open about her mental illness and therefore bringing awareness to and banishing taboo from the same. She seems to have done good that will last beyond her time.