Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has promised a lot of intrigue and a few changes of pace in giant battles against walking tanks. But we haven’t really seen the major space battle that’s been hinted at in trailers and elsewhere about the movie. This spot, a few weeks before the movie arrives, finally has a bit more of that, and it looks amazing.
Basically it appears that the Death Star trashes a planet before it takes its fateful voyage to Alderaan to end the life of Jimmy Smits, and that’s where the X-Wings swoop in to try and do some damage. Or at least ruffle Ben Mendelsohn’s luxurious cape. We only see bits and pieces, but it’s more than enough to evoke A New Hope, but with better camera tools.
It’ll be particularly interesting as more and more it’s clear Rogue One is supposed to serve as a bridge between all the prequel media Lucas turned out and the original trilogy everyone actually loves. Forest Whitaker plays a major character from the Clone Wars cartoon, for example, and it’s pretty clear that after Anakin got lightly toasted by lava, he did not have a good time of it. But we’ll find out soon enough: Rogue One arrives December 16th.
