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There has been a lot of speculation surrounding the Star Wars spin off films that will fill the gaps between the releases of the new trilogy. Gareth Edwards is helming the first called Rogue One and Josh Trank of Fantastic Four and Chronicle is directing another. There still isn’t much to gnaw on about the latter, but Rogue One provided plenty of concrete details today via the Star Wars Celebration.
A panel at the event in Anaheim, California revealed that Rogue One will follow the story of the efforts to steal the original Death Star plans, making it a prequel to the original trilogy and a bit of stop gap film between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.
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At the event, Trank was meant to attend but ended up sick, leaving Edwards some time to shine and reveal a little bit of test footage they threw together when pitching the intial idea behind Rogue One. From Entertainment Weekly:
The footage rolls, and we hear Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi: “For more than a thousand generations, the Jedi knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the Empire.”
The visual is a lush, rocky planet, with bird-like creatures flying over a valley, as the point of view lifts to see a TIE Fighter scream overhead. There’s the crescent of a dim moon in the blue sky above. Except …
That’s no moon.
As the camera rises above the treeline we see the laser disc of the original Death Star looming over the planet.
The footage cuts to black over the sound of panicking pilot voices, screaming at each other over their intercoms.
Now the folks at EW incorrectly label this as Bothan Spies, but that would be the second Death Star. The first had a story based in the Dark Forces game series, where Kyle Katarn stole the plans and then launched himself into a popular series of games as a Jedi Knight. Who knows if they will go back to him for this, but I doubt it. It is that storyline, though, and that means we have plenty of good stuff to look forward till until it released next year.
This is what the Rogue One logo looks like, giving you an idea of how the stand alone movies will be presented pic.twitter.com/JW5wl5qixZ
— /Film (@slashfilm) April 19, 2015
Rogue One won’t be a film about people with The Force or the Jedi in general, Edwards said. Instead “it comes down to a group of individuals who don’t have magical powers that have to somehow bring hope to the galaxy.” (via)
It isn’t Boba Fett and it isn’t necessarily Han Solo, but I’m damn excited for this new round of films.
(Via Entertainment Weekly / The Verge)