I saw this the other day at the BFI IMAX, deliberately having read next to nothing about it since it was announced (other than up to my previous posts) so it wouldn't colour my initial opinions.
I liked it - far more understated tone than the main films. Also far more brutal and harsh. Separately from the brutalness and harshness, it was really refreshing to see the universe without the sort of silly 'bumbling' child friendly characters and dialogue, the same old same old I'm actually quite bored of seeing (i.e. Chewbacca, C3PO). I can understand why some people might feel that it lost a lot of the 'Star Wars charm' but to me it made it much more real and bleak (rather than sugary sweet)... in a 'firefly / serenity' sort of way. There were two slightly dopey moments that detracted from this, not a big deal, but I'll mention them because I thought they were so out of place:
1) The cheesy delivery of "rebellions are founded on hope" at the council meeting - somebody in the cinema laughed out loud at this which undoubtedly prompted smirking from others.
2) The bit where 'blind man' shoots a ship into the gun turret. It was just so far fetched and pointless - the x-wings then just flew off. Really quite silly.
The characters themselves (even the leads) were sort of incidental, and again, I kind of liked it that way and not having to be bothered by huge amounts of backstory or tedious 'foreshadowing'. Whilst the 'gun man' and the 'blind man' were fairly weak, I thought the pilot was good and the robot character was brilliant - the latter two having rather tragic endings.
I thought it expanded the world in a brilliant way. I liked all the planets and places, which were far more exciting and expanded than, say, the locations in Episode 2 and 3. The shield around Scarif and the importance of it was a fresh new idea and that planet looked amazing too.
One thing that did let it down was something I already indicated waaaaay back in my first post in the thread... another Death Star. Yes it's the same one as before and seeing it in action made it that much more evil and cold, but after revisiting similar themes in TFA I am really quite fatigued over the same old Star Wars cannon. If they pulled off the same sort of film with a completely original cast and downplayed some of the overused Star Wars concepts (i.e. the force, the empire etc) then that would be something I'd really look forward to because there is surely a really rich universe to delve into here outside of the same things we have seen dozens of times (well... ok, not that many!). I was even a bit bored of seeing the x-wings. Never thought I'd say that.
Also, how timely that it ended with 'Carrie Fisher'...
All things considered, a really refreshing approach to Star Wars and I'd like to see more in this style (that don't rehash the same tired characters).
7/10.
(2D)