‘Rogue One’: Critical admiration is far from universal

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” hit theaters Thursday with the weight of enormous expectations. The film, a standalone story set in the “Star Wars” universe, garnered mostly positive reviews from the nation’s film critics, but the word was not universally rosy.

On Rotten Tomatoes, “Rogue One” earned an “85 percent fresh” rating – a solid B. At Metacritic, it has a 66 – a rating clearly dragged down by “meh” reviews from Michael Roffman at Consequence of Sound and Ty Burr of the Boston Globe.

(For comparison, “Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens” earned an 81 on Metacritic and a 92 on Rotten Tomatoes.)

Roffman opined, “Whereas last year’s ‘The Force Awakens’ felt refreshing for finally looking forward after years of meandering, uninspiring prequels, ‘Rogue One’ feels like a step back … and that’s not good.” Burr’s take: “The one missing piece is a truly memorable villain; I can think of at least five films in which Ben Mendelsohn has been scarier.”

Then there was Mick LaSalle’s scathing review in the San Francisco Chronicle – good for a mere 25 points in Metacritic’s scoring system: “It’s a downer. It’s morally tangled. The characters are as depressed as the scenario, and Michael Giacchino’s music can’t make it better.”

And as A.O. Scott wrote in the New York Times, “Millions of people will sit through this thoroughly mediocre movie (directed with basic competence by Gareth Edwards from a surprisingly hackish script by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy) and convince themselves that it’s perfectly delightful. It’s so much easier to obey than to resist.”

Yikes.

Still, not everyone was so down on “Rogue One.” Katie Walsh, writing for the Tribune News Service (read her full review on page C5) called “Rogue One” “an enjoyable installment in the ‘Star Wars’ canon. However, it’s not much more than that.”

More enthusiastic is Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, who writes, “with the smashing (Felicity) Jones giving us a female warrior to rank with the great ones and a cast that knows how to keep it real even in a sci-fi fantasy, ‘Rogue One’ proves itself a ‘Star Wars’ story worth telling.”

Chris Klimek, writing for National Public Radio, found it to be a “tense, well-made spacefaring war movie about a desperate and demoralized band of insurgents standing up against a rising authoritarian regime.” And Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times summarized his view this way: “ ‘Rogue One’ is a bright light in the ‘Star Wars’ canon.”

So it’s not “The Empire Strikes Back,” but it’s better than “The Phantom Menace.”

Sounds like a win for “Star Wars” fans.