OK, I finally saw it. [Movies always come late here.]
I unfortunately knew that everyone died because when trying to click off this Rogue One update from the main page, it brought me into the thread. However, I can't say I was surprised. It is a war movie.
I also wasn't surprised by lack of scroll or the lack of the traditional Star Wars theme at the start. These one-offs are likely to continue departing from the standard Star Wars series and I think that's all for the better. Leave the scrolls for the main series and let the side movies have a little breathing room. And we all know how picky I can be about the small details. (For example, don't get me started on the wrong font used for the opening scroll in TFA.)
Wasn't a huge fan of Felicity Jones - especially the supposedly "inspiring speech" but I wonder how much of that is due to the director. Krennic similarly left me unimpressed but in his case, it was the entirety of the performance.
I liked the cameos for Red Leader, Gold Leader, Dr. Cornelius Evazan, and Ponda Baba.
The CGI for Tarkin was really distracting. I don't think they had the shape of face right and I think they let the model have too much movement. I was expecting the opposite to happen. Young Princess Leia also seemed off - especially around the eyes. I imagine it'll be something I'll have to look closer at on home video.
I think that expecting every little thing to be explained makes a movie suffer. We'll probably never get a full accounting of those "Guardians of the Whills" - nice reference BTW - and I like that.
I am curious how the music score would've been if they didn't have the reshoots. (Alexandre Desplat was originally scheduled to do it, not Michael Giacchino. I'm also curious about those reshoots. As I've been doing by best to avoid the coverage of Rogue One, did they go into any detail about why the reshoots were necessary?
I thought that ship seemed to nail the Star Destroyer OK. [cue rimshot]