God knows how long I’ve been looking forward to this movie. I cannot express how much joy that Star Wars has brought me and my brother since we were little kids. We’ve seen the saga on VHS, on DVD, on Blu-Ray, on the fan-edited DeSpecialized edition that replaces all those terrible CGI Dewbacks in A New Hope – we’ve read dozens of novels, played dozens of games, and both of us have respectable collections of starships from the X-Wing Miniatures Game (He plays Empire, I play Rebels, it’s a lot of fun). Star Wars is a big deal for us, and I can’t hide that I was a little apprehensive about the series after Disney’s acquisition and the recent Episode VII.

Rogue One was a brilliant angel sent from the now-dead Extended Universe to let me know that everything was going to be okay. Gareth Edwards directs Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, Diego Luna and several others in a film detailing the plight of the rebellion to obtain the Death Star plans that ignite the plot of A New Hope and the original trilogy. Jones plays the role of Jyn Erso, the daughter of Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), the chief engineer and designer of the Death Star.

What follows is a heart-pounding race between the Rebels and the Empire to track down Galen Erso, in the hopes that he might know of a weakness to the Death Star superweapon. The rebels recruit and form a desperate team for the end-of-movie showdown, which is a similar theme to classic war movies like Saving Private Ryan or Platoon: you know that not everybody is going to survive in the end. Indeed, this is the darkest Star Wars movie yet. That’s exactly how Rogue One was advertised though, and I’m glad that Edwards had the gusto to direct such a brutal, hard-hitting film.

Well-written and memorable characters make Rogue One lots of fun to watch as well – although like most recent sci-fi movies, a certain robot sidekick steals the show with its dry humor. There are also several brilliantly done cameos of familiar characters from the original trilogy (some of them portraying actors who are now deceased). Almost all of these are done very well, and I especially commend the production design’s creative way to include Drewe Henley’s Garvin Dreis (Red Leader) in a later scene of the film. I may have jumped in my seat with excitement when I saw that. But this is also where I must admit the movie has fault: one particular character’s initial cameo is not done very well. It ends with a rather corny pun, but the same character is redeemed with an ending scene that is more than fitting for their character. The cameos are by-and-large excellent, but Rogue One just barely toed the line in using them excessively.

Despite this, Rogue One is packed full of little winks to the original trilogy – it’s an undeniable love story to older Star Wars fans. Yet it does this without bogging down its own plot or perspective: the film fits itself cozily right in the original universe Star Wars in a well-planned way, while offering its own flavor of Rebellion drama. I was immensely impressed with this film and really excited to see this first opportunity for a Star Wars side-story. Edwards has certainly demonstrated that the Star Wars universe is rich and ready to be mined with incredible stories inspired by the originals – which leaves me excited to see the coming Han Solo and rumored Ben Kenobi features.