A "garbage" movie wouldn't have established the primary hero and villain characters so well. If TFA is garbage I want to see way more garbage movies. That's some mighty fine garbage.
Yea, I'm glad I'm not as ridged as a lot of people who criticize these movies are. Not that criticisms aren't founded, but they're certainly blown out of proportion and to the extent that they bother those people, they certainly don't bother me.
Bring on more "garbage" like Episode VII, then. I'll gladly accept it.
I'll list pros off the top of my head from what I can remember of Rogue One:
+Amazing cinematography. Even the most "boring" scenes were beautifully shot and a joy to look at.
+I thought the acting was pretty good, especially those who play Krennic, Gerrera, Cassian, Baze, and Galen.
+Death star finally
feeling like a devastating super weapon. Yea, I
saw how devastating it can be in the original trilogy when it blew up those planets, but the special effects weren't very good so I never appreciated them. Rogue One on the other hand made me
feel how truly awful it can be. It was really awe-inspiring (seriously, the Death Star firings were my favorite scenes, not including the Vader scene)
+Best space battle in the series thus far. Really well coordinated. Also, ships trying to beat out that force field from recovering (yaaaas)
+Explaining away the defect in the Death Star as something purposely done, which makes me feel A LOT better about it blowing up so easily in A New Hope. I always thought it was absolutely bogus that such a flaw was
approved, when in fact it wasn't.
+The final battle and attempt to retrieve the plans really felt like the entire Empire was coming crashing down on these poor bastards.
- Droids were heavily encroaching on Jyn, Cassian and K-2S0
- Krennic was under considerable pressure by his superiors to get the weapon to function and to prevent the rebels from escaping with the plans (I felt quite a bit of anxiety for this guy).
- The beach battle and the never-ending onslaught of troopers. Also the surprise grenade-death that took Bodhi. God damn
- Felt like there was Nazi symbolism with the Empire hunting down and forcing scientists to work on its super weapon
- The Empire making the decision to completely annihilate its own base with its starred military commander still on it. Tarkin's decision to do this felt like an appropriate culmination of all the heinous acts the Empire committed throughout the film, with this scene being the absolute worst. There was no difficulty on Tarkin's and the Empire's part to kill its own allies, which really sealed the deal for me in terms of feeling that the Empire was a menacing force to be reckoned with. Up until this film, I never appreciated how diabolical the Empire could be.
+And that ending Vader scene. Absolutely amazing and exactly how I imagined him to operate when he didn't move like a stick figure in the original trilogy due to constraints at the time.
I really enjoyed this movie.