George Lucas’ genius in creating Star Wars was not in plot or dialogue, or even his often visionary flair for effects. Lucas’ gift was imagining a place – a galaxy, far, far away, overflowing with stories. So it’s no surprise that Disney, having paid $4billion for Lucasfilm in 2012, is planning on telling as many of those stories as possible.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the first such ‘anthology’ film in the franchise not directly part of the main saga (although as a direct prequel to A New Hope, it might as well be). And again, it’s the place that stands out. Rogue One teems with life: grime-caked aliens bark in exotic tongues; angular spaceships drop out of light speed into the stratospheres of sun-baked worlds. Rogue One feels so rich and worn-in you can virtually smell the dirt.

Otherwise? It’s...fine.

Director Gareth Edwards pitched Rogue One as a war film, albeit set in the Star Wars universe, and in that it succeeds: the film owes almost as much to David Lean as to Lucas. Unaided by The Force – there are no Jedi here – the film has an earthbound weight to it; it’s beautifully shot, often using handheld shots lurching in the midst of the action, and Rogue’s space battles show a flair and inventiveness that The Force Awakens’ trench-run rehash sorely missed.

But in other ways, the film struggles. Its story is simple: how a small band of rebels secured the plans for the Death Star. Of course it wouldn’t be Star Wars without some familial angst, so our heroine Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is the daughter of the Death Star’s designer (Mads Mikkelsen). Erso is joined by a band of solidly acted but underwritten misfits, most of whose names I still couldn’t tell you without looking them up. Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang stand out as blind Force-believer Chirrut Îmwe (I Googled it) and his partner Baze Malbus (him too) – but they’re undermined by a half-cooked, often confusing script that lurches from thread to thread without ever really giving its characters time to develop. Rogue One was reportedly subject to extensive reshoots and unfortunately it shows – almost none of the footage from the first two trailers made the final cut. There are interesting threads here, about the ethics of political uprisings and resistance, but they’re frayed and tangled into a mess. Read more: Why we love Star Wars: an explainer for 'normal' people

Instead, Rogue One is held together by sheer force of nostalgia. The film is riddled with call-outs and cameos to A New Hope. Some of these choices are dazzling – visually and technically Rogue One is a marvel, and moves the needle in CGI in a ways that we’ll discuss elsewhere – while others add a richness to the Star Wars lore that fans will love. But other times the creative decisions feel utterly bizarre, even laughable. And that’s concerning for the future of the franchise.

Nostalgia was fine for The Force Awakens – it was a return to form, a film as much about love for the original trilogy as it was a statement of creative intent. But its final act was too much for many, even then. In Rogue One, the film’s endless callbacks and in-jokes become distancing. It’s the storytelling equivalent of having a fan sat next to you in full Jedi regalia, elbowing your ribs at every gag. Hey, remember this? Wasn’t this great the first time?

Yes, it was. But that’s why Rogue One will do brilliantly at the box office, just as the next one will, and the next, not under its own steam. Some nostalgia is understandable; many fans will undoubtedly be delighted. And what Rogue One does well – the third act’s action sequences are as good as anything in Star Wars – is promising. But you’re left instead with a sense of frustration; there’s some real potential here, and one can’t help but wonder if more care had been placed on developing a script that sang and characters that we’re invested in instead of crowbarring in more cameos, the film would be all the better for it.

The Star Wars extended universe has proven the potential for originality (see the superb Knights Of The Old Republic games). Marvel has proven that massive, multi-thread cinematic universes can be done well. So Disney, we ask: enough spin-offs. The Force Awakens gave us all the nostalgia we could ever need. The galaxy is full of stories – it’s time for a new one.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK