11:00 pm, Thursday night, December 15, 2016: My girlfriend and I, along with our two other friends get comfortable in our reclining movie seats. We munch on popcorn, Raisinets, and blue raspberry Icees as the previews roll. The theater is packed with all manner of movie-goers, young and old. Everyone sits silently, except for the small noises of popcorn being crunched, or people holding their breath. The movie begins.

Two hours and thirteen minutes later, the entire theater erupts with applause that falls on a deaf screen. For the older people in the audience, nostalgia had surely hit them hard. For the younger ones, a love of what they were raised watching, or a new-found appreciation for an icon of popular culture, had been felt deep within them.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hit theaters this week. I was so excited about the first major Star Wars standalone movie that I bought advance tickets to the premiere as soon as they were available. Going into the theater, my expectations were relatively high. This was a Star Wars movie after all, so I hoped this new group of faces and unfamiliar production team would do well. I did my best to focus on the fact that this was not an episodic Star Wars film and that I shouldn't look at it that way. Still, after I left the theater, I couldn't help but jokingly think of it as Episode 3.5: Rogue One.

The truth is, I was impressed. This movie did well in terms of upholding the standards of the new generation of Star Wars films that, in my opinion, were set very high by Episode VII: The Force Awakens. This standalone film combined classic themes, characters, and a general feeling that all of the old films had which Star Wars fans know and love, with a very new edge to it as well. The unique cast, a new and different score for the film (no John Williams for this one, folks), and fantastic special effects made for a very special Star Wars experience.

For brief background on the plot of the film (don't worry, no spoilers): The story of Rogue One follows a girl named Jyn Erso, whose father, Galen Erso, has been taken by the Empire to be used to develop a familiar superweapon - the Death Star. Years later, she is now a rebellious, young woman who has been rescued from Imperial imprisonment by the Rebel Alliance in hopes of contacting her lost father to gain intelligence on the Death Star, which he has built. She works with a rag-tag team of rebels to eventually find and steal the plans of the Death Star, leading directly into the beginning of Episode IV: A New Hope.

So, it's a pretty cool idea for a film. It helped fill in a lot of information about the way things were just before the original trilogy started, and helped show us just how those rebels got a hold of the key to keeping their cause alive. The characters were ones you wanted to root for, especially the fearless Jyn. Cameos from old characters, including a remarkably well-done, computer generated Grand Moff Tarkin (played by the late Peter Cushing) and a badass Darth Vader, complete with the booming, sinister voice talent of James Earl Jones, help give the movie a deeper connection to fans of the original trilogy. The visual effects and costuming created gorgeous, outlandish worlds and creatures which the characters encountered along the way - another staple of the Star Wars universe. Even the new score, by Michael Giacchino, gave the fans a different taste of Star Wars music, while keeping the overall sound similar to the masterful scores of the episodes to be satisfying. This new music, as well as the characters who are unique to this movie alone, helped reinforce the idea that this was a standalone film, and I think that was the right choice.

Overall, the movie was fun to watch. My girlfriend, who has committed the sin of only seeing A New Hope before I forced her to see this with me, commented that this new movie had much more action, while the original was more about dialogue. While that may be because that film had the necessity to set up much of the story for the rest of the saga, it is true that this film relied heavily on action sequences, and the dialogue sometimes suffered. My other friends and I agreed that it did have a few rather corny lines, though that also seems to be a staple of the Star Wars movies. Even Vader's got a pretty good one-liner you should listen for. Those would be my only complaints about this first real attempt at a major standalone Star Wars film. I loved the movie, and I would stress to anyone wanting to see it to remember that it is not an episode of the saga! It does well on it's own, and is an aid to the episodes, but is different from them in small ways. Still, it was awesome to have the chance to go see a blockbuster Star Wars movie on opening night, even though I never had the chance to do so for the original trilogy (I am, sadly, a child of the prequel generation). But, this movie was fun to watch, and Star Wars fans, old and new, should appreciate it.

Final Score: 8/10