From Making Star Wars. I think he makes some fair points.
While I am speculating about reshoots, alternate cuts, and what might have been, I might as go all the way and talk about some story flaws that I saw in the film and changes I would have liked to seen made to the film
Problem #1: Galen’s Message
Galen recorded a fairly long holographic message that talked about a flaw he placed in the Death Star that was smuggled out by Bodhi. Galen could have saved a lot of lives, Rebellion material, and his daughter’s life by simply explaining the flaw and how to exploit it in the hologram. This is the biggest problem in the film’s story. He may not have been able to include a schematic, but should have been able to explain in enough detail to at least match a wire frame diagram and allow the Rebels to follow a trench to a thermal exhaust port.
Problem #2: Rebel Communications
How is it possible that Raddus’s flagship the Profundity was the only ship to receive the broadcast of the Death Star plans? Wouldn’t he have ordered all Rebel ships to attempt to receive any message from the surface? Clearly they did this to make the Vader chase, plan relay, and Tantive IV escape make sense. But if you stop and think about it, there is little reason more than one copy of the plans shouldn’t be in Rebel hands. The only way a single copy of the plans makes sense is if it a physical copy smuggled off planet not a broadcast.
Problem #3: The Senators’ Plan
The Rebel senators’ plan seems to be two-fold. They need to capture Galen Erso so that they can learn how to stop the superweapon. But they also plan to have him testify before the Senate to take down Palpatine. The former makes sense; the latter is crazy. Even during the Old Republic the Senate was neutered in power, and during the Empire even more so until the Senate was dissolved. To think they could use Erso as a witness against Palpatine and that Palpatine would allow that to threaten his power is ludicrous. The fact that one of the highest ranking Rebel officers, Alliance Intelligence General Draven, is actively working to undermine both of these plans is also something that isn’t really addressed in the film. Is he freelancing or is Mon Mothma winking and nodding him to give Cassian the assassination order?
Problem #4: Stardust
Galen’s nickname for his daughter is Stardust; it is cute and something that the use of it again in his death scene helps humanize the character. My problem is that I don’t buy that the Empire would change the Death Star’s design plans to codename “Stardust.” Galen was a Kyber crystal and energy researcher. Even if as the film states he kept himself important to the Death Star development, he didn’t and wouldn’t have designed a large portion of the station. I can see if the superlaser had a separate file and code name that it could be called “Stardust,” but the idea that the entire project would be renamed for Galen’s daughter is beyond far-fetched.
There are other smaller issues you could pick at if you really wanted to: Why does the Empire install a fast-pass code to ships to get through the shield gate when ships are stolen like every other day in Star Wars? Why do the Rebels have better data storage tech than the Empire? Why does it take Imperials so long to scramble defensive craft and where were the turbolaser barrages when the Rebels attack?
There are two major structural changes that I think would have made for a better and more powerful film.
Change #1: Expansion of Saw and Elimination of Bodhi
We needed two scenes in this film to build the Saw and Jyn relationship more, show how extreme Saw was, and show just how much of a bad-ass Jyn is. Scene one should be an early training/mission scene and scene two should have been the scene were Saw abandons Jyn on a mission.
To make room for these additions you need to excise Bodhi from a significant role in the film. Bodhi serves as a messenger that gets the plot rolling, but he is easily replaceable by a holo-transmission as Mon Mothma explains in the Japanese trailer: “We have intercepted a coded Imperial transmission. It indicates that a major weapons test is imminent. We need to know how to destroy it.”
Rebels can discover Galen’s involvement in the message and project and then approach Jyn, who subsequently recruits Saw, who could have maintained secret contact with Galen or found out where Galen is. This makes current-day Saw more relevant to the plot and instead of allowing himself to die on Jedha he could go with the crew and be the one that later stays behind on the shuttle on Scarif because of his physical limitations. You could replace Saw in almost all of Bodhi’s scenes in the film and I think you make room for a tighter story with richer characterization.
Change #2: Jyn’s Death and Vader’s Slaughter
As awesome as Vader’s hallway slaughter is, it is entirely nameless Rebel troopers who we have no emotional attachment to. The emotions of this scene would have been amplified immeasurably if he was pursuing a character from the main cast who was accompanied by Rebel fleet troopers.
Jyn and Cassian dying in each other’s arms on the beach as the Death Star’s shockwave hits them has a certain poetry to it. But it is so impersonal.
Jyn and probably Cassian should have been killed by Vader, either as they raced to transmit the data or in an alternate take on the ending as they physically escapes the planet to the Profundity, only to have the ship disabled and boarded by Vader and to have them chased through the halls , Cassian dies trying to buy Jyn time and then Jyn dies after handing off the plans to another Rebel trooper as Vader cuts her down.
So when Vader says “there’ll be no one to stop us this time” in A New Hope, he is referring back to Cassian and Jyn.
In the end, flaws and my personal story preferences aside I really enjoyed Rogue One and I have a feeling it will be a Star Wars film that I revisit very often in the years to come.