‘Rogue One’ takes a spy-game spin
A sneak peek at newest ‘Star Wars,’ out next week
Spoilers! Some plot points are discussed, so if you want to go into ‘Rogue One’ as fresh as possible, read no further.
There’s no signature opening crawl. But from the very start, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story makes a strong statement about embracing its place in the sci-fi universe while also pushing the status quo of the massively popular franchise.
Journalists got a sneak peek this week at 25 minutes from the first standalone Star Wars movie (in theaters Dec. 16), which introduces the backstory of new heroine Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), a key member of the Rebel Alliance group tasked to steal the plans for the Empire’s Death Star (famously blown up in 1977’s Star Wars). From the looks of things, the new film is taking audiences to new worlds and adding some spygame spin rather than sticking to George Lucas’ old formula.
Here’s what we know:
DRAMA’S GOING DOWN IN THE In director Gareth EdGALAXY. wards’ Rogue One — set just before the original movie — the audience meets Jyn as a young child when she’s given a necklace with a Kyber crystal (the Forceattuned material used to power a lightsaber) by her mother Lyra (Valene Kane). At the same time, a shuttle carrying Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and his Imperial Death Trooper squad arrives at the home they share with Jyn’s dad, scientistturned-farmer Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen). Wanting to keep his family safe, Galen confronts Krennic and balks when the Imperial officer talks about the superweapon of mass destruction bringing peace to the galaxy.
LIKE REY, JYN HAS HER LIFE TORN Daisy APART AT A YOUNG AGE. Ridley’s The Force Awakens hero- ine was left on a desert planet by herself as a child, and Jones’ character has a similar life-altering incident: A tragedy occurs in the Krennic situation, Galen is taken and Jyn runs for her life, hiding in a cave and ultimately being found by Rebel extremist Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a veteran of the Clone Wars.
THE HEROES HAVE SQUAD GOALS. Years later, Jyn is a prisoner in an Imperial labor camp on Wobani, and Rebels bust her out when cargo pilot Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) tells the good guys that Galen is a major key to the Death Star project.
The team starts to take shape: Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) is shown as a Rebel secret-agent type who has informants in the underworld, assassin Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) is a trigger-happy sort, and his blind monk buddy, Force-sensitive warrior Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), beats up a battalion of Stormtroopers when the Rebels ambush Imperial forces in Jedha City. (Jyn is also aces at taking out bad guys with a baton or blaster.)
THERE’S A NEW DROID IN TOWN. While little BB-8 stole scenes in Force Awakens, the droid to watch in Rogue One is K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial robot with attitude played via performance capture by Alan Tudyk.