Alien at the Movies

This stand alone film bridges the gap between the awesome original trilogy & the less well received prequel trilogy. The premise here was already explained in the first paragraph of the "Star Wars: A New Hope" opening crawler. Rebel forces are on a mission to steal the plans to the Empire's new secret weapon, the Death Star. Even if you have never seen any of these two trilogies, you'll still can enjoy the high energy action of space vehicle dogfights & guerrilla warfare as well as the diverse characters, strange new worlds & creatures, and it's sense of humor. However, true Star Wars fans will go wild hunting for all of those terrific Easter eggs scattered all about the film. It's mostly filled with brand new faces (Felicity Jones, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Riz Ahmed) to the franchise with a nod here & there to the past & future in the Star Wars timeline, but who will die & who will survive. K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) is a reprogrammed Imperial droid, Kind of C3PO like but less politely diplomatic, sometimes sarcastic, & bluntly honest. This action thrill ride will resolve some of those unanswered issues from nearly 40 years ago.

Alien gives it 3½ "Stardust" stars out of 4.