i really liked rogue one. going in i expected to not dig it so much and was worried i would start to think of disney's star wars the way i think of disney's marvel movies. that turned out to definitely not be the case. this was a really fun movie with great characters and locations and a pretty good story. the action was grittier than i expected (well grittier for disney at least) and i was surprised to see an early bit of action go down that made me think they are moving on from all the BS that went down with the whole "han shot first" stuff. the ending was fantastic. there are 2 big things that go down at the end that i thought were really well done!
vague/general plot spoilers ahead...
somehow, even with all my posting about it here, i had no idea what the plot was going to be. now that i saw it i wonder how much of a spin off this really is. it seems to me, in a better world, this could have been episode III. i guess if the criteria for a spin off simply means the characters you know are not in the starring roles than yea it's a spin off. but i was expecting a story that was in the same star wars world but was unrelated to the plots of I-VII and that is not the case.