By making the bizarre exhaust port weakness an intentional design flaw, Rogue One takes the events of A New Hope and adds new layers of complexity by showing us that people inside the infrastructure of The Empire were working to bring down the battle station.
A large number of people saw this revelation coming, as the backstory of Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) became more and more fleshed out over the course of Rogue One’s marketing campaign.
For years Star Wars fans have lamented the fact that the Death Star’s weakness seems so easy to exploit, but Rogue One effectively ties that particular narrative issue into the overarching plot of the series.
But it’s still a complete and utter slam dunk for the film.