On December 16th, the highly anticipated “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” was released in theaters in the US. This will be the first in a series of spin-off Star Wars films which will include a Han Solo standalone film and possible Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett standalone films. Before the release of “Rogue One”, many reports claimed that the film would be very different compared to previous Star Wars films, and many critics compared the film to the highly praised “The Empire Strikes Back”. So, did “Rogue One” live up to the hype? Was it really something new? And is it worth watching in theaters?

If you haven’t seen any of the trailers or just never really cared about Star Wars, let me give you the gist of “Rogue One.” The movie takes place before “A New Hope,” the beginning of the Original Trilogy, and tells the story of a group of rebels who steal the plans to the Death Star. These plans are ultimately used to defeat the evil Galactic Empire in “A New Hope.” This will be the first Star Wars film that does not focus on a Skywalker (Luke in the Original Trilogy, Anakin in the Prequels, and Rey-- a suspected Skywalker-- in “The Force Awakens”). It was also reported that the movie would be more like a gritty war film than a sci-fi adventure.

I saw “Rogue One” this past weekend and I have to admit that I liked it (to say the very least). I definitely liked it even more than “The Force Awakens,” which was released last year and brought the Star Wars hype back up. When it comes to stories, I tend to be drawn to those that feature a darker tone, serious subject matter, and morally ambiguous characters, and “Rogue One” delivers. If you have fond memories of the Rebel Alliance from the original trilogy, then you might be upset to see that the Rebels are far from clean in this film. One of the members of the Rebel Alliance, Cassian Andor (played by Diego Luna) is even more of a ruffian than Han Solo, and that says a lot.

The main character, Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones) is a character who has already become as much of a Star Wars legend as Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Rey. Jyn Erso does not start out as a noble hero who is dead set on saving the galaxy from a corrupt empire; instead, her journey towards heroism is one that many from my generation will relate to, especially with recent political events.

This is also a film with featuring many actors of color that I would hope to see more of in future spinoff stories. There are a lot to name, but one character that I really loved was Chirrut Imwe (played by Donnie Yen), a blind, force-sensitive monk with incredible martial art abilities. I do not think that their has been an impressive martial arts display in a Star Wars film since Darth Maul (played by Ray Park) in “The Phantom Menace”.

The last thing that I want to mention is one character that I know every fan was hyped to hear would be making an appearance: Darth Vader. “Rogue One” is not a movie about Vader, so I did not go into the movie theater expecting a lot of the cybernetic black-clad villain. What I did get was AMAZING. I loved the Darth Vader scenes-- one in particular, which I won't mention for the sake of those of you who haven't yet seen the film. For those of you who have watched the movie-- you know what I'm talking about. In all honesty, I would probably pay to see “Rogue One” again just for Darth Vader.

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is a movie that will be happily accepted into the canon and one that has probably already sparked a lot of conversation between fans. I know that me and my brother are still talking about it. So, is “Rogue One” worth seeing? My answer is a resounding yes. If you love Star Wars, you have to go see this movie.