I’m an orginal trilogy fan who saw TESB and ROTJ in the theaters (born in 1976, so a bit too young for ANH) and I loved Rogue One. I feel like they finally made a great Star Wars film again. Interestingly enough all my buddies who are around the same age feel the same. This is easily the best SW film made since ROTJ and possibly the best since TESB (I’ll have to wait a year or so to see where it really falls in for me).
I do like TFA, but it has moved down for me on repeated watchings. I initially had TFA about equal to ROTJ (if not higher), but now it’s fallen in squarely behind the OT and Rogue One. I still think TFA is a good movie (and better than the PT… it may be derivative, but at least it’s well made, acted and entertaining).
Rogue One has only moved up for me on multiple re-watchings. I’ve always enjoyed the characters - they are different (more subtle and the characterizations are more realstic than most other Star Wars films) so I don’t really understand that critique and I actually enjoyed all the different scenes/planets in the first act from my first viewing.
Chirrut is an awesome character - better than all the Jedi in the PT put together… .in fact he’s much more like how I always imagined the Prequel era Jedi to be when you here Obi-Wan’s dialogue in the OT.
The CGI characters didn’t bother me, although I did feel there was a little something off about Leia. Tarkin I feel looks great and I never noticed anything off. Interestingly enough, I know quite a few more casual fans who saw the film (none of them knew Cushing had passed away) and they were all blown away when I explained to them that Tarkin was a CGI character from the OT. I think the fact that we all go in already knowing characters are CGI can impact how we perceive them.
The 3rd act of the film is one of the best in the entire Star Wars saga - just great action and awesome effects. The space battle is the first one I’ve seen that is even in the ballpark of being as good as ROTJ (I still give ROTJ a lot of credit since that was optically composited in the early 80s and STILL looks so good). The vader scene at the end is of course awesome.
I didn’t particularly need to see C3PO and R2D2, but thankfully silly nostalgia items like that were kept to a minimum.
I loved Rogue One and as someone who grew up playing with Kenner action figures and later playing X-wing and Tie-Fighter this is the kind of SW film I’ve always wanted to see.