TRAILER: ROGUE ONE: A Star Wars Story

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Rogue One is apparently the beautiful, beautiful love child of Star Wars roleplaying games, video games like Battlefront and Dark Forces, and those novels and comics that focus on background characters.

It's basically everything you've ever wanted in a Star Wars movie that didn't feature the Skywalkers.

• Criminals given a second chance to become heroes? CHECK!
• Swordplay and martial arts without Jedi powers? CHECK!
• Secret interstellar spy missions? CHECK!
• Black armor shadow troopers? CHECK! OMG, CHECK!
• MAN VS. AT-AT? Wait, WHAT? HOLY $#!% CHECK!

Where's Wedge?

So far it looks like they're sticking to their original premise of "Oceans Eleven steals the Death Star plans". I'd say there's even more of a Dirty Dozen influence. My guess is that they're going to do more character-focused trailers as the release date approaches.

And I SWEAR they time traveled back to 1983 to get the actress who played Mon Mothma--she's a ringer for sure! And Felicity Jones appears to have the double dose of Solo-style cockiness, plus the combat skills to back it up.

One thing I'm hoping for is some sort of space battle. After all, Rogue Squadron is the codename for the greatest starfighter team of the Rebellion! And if the opening crawl of A New Hope is any indication, there's, uh, hope that could actually be in store for R1. Here it is, with a little highlighting of the relevant part:

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....

Certainly sounds like we're going to see some sort of space chase--maybe leading right into Episode IV! What do you think? Sound off in the comments!

This all makes me want to get another look at the Star Wars WEG adventure we ran for Saturday Night Space Opera last year and give i t a fresh coat of bantha hair.


Without further adieu:

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story debuts December 16, 2016 in the US.

More info:
IMDB listing