To quote my good friend, Vanity Fair’s Joanna Robinson, and the hit musical Hamilton, “Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now.” In the context of Hamilton, that quote is all about being alive to see the birth of a nation. In the context of Joanna’s early morning tweet, it has a lot to do with the new trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the continued diversity that exists within this new era of Star Wars films.
The trailer opens with the story of Jyn Erso, played by Felicity Jones. She’s a resistance fighter, a troublemaker and a newly tapped talent in the war against The Empire. It’s the second film in of nü Star Wars that features a prominent, badass female lead. Yet unlike the then unknown quantity of Daisy Ridley, we already know that Felicity Jones is a fantastic, Oscar-nominated actress.
In fact, this film that takes place in a time just before Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope — we don’t dare call it a Prequel, for reasons of connotation — is filled with award-worthy talent, easily the most prestigious Star Wars movie yet.
The trailer gives us looks at much of this talent, including Forest Whitaker, who plays what appears to be some kind of spiritual guide for The Rebellion:
And Ben Mendelsohn, who plays a Grand Moff level dude with all kinds of flowing white evil robeness:
The trailer is saturated with vibrant color, the nostalgic bliss of a blend between Old Star Wars and Nü Star Wars, a testament to the work of director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla) and his cinematographer, Zero Dark Thirty‘s Greg Fraser. We’ve known for some time that Rogue One would be the ultimate Star Wars heist film — the story about the team who stole the plans for the Death Star that propel the Original Trilogy’s plot — but what we didn’t know is how much glorious visual saturation we’d get in this first trailer.
Most notably, Rogue One will be filled with daytime action. Something we’ve called for from a number of movies lately. It’s a more expensive thing to do from a visual effects standpoint, but it makes the end result so much more satisfying. Consider the criticisms leveled against Batman v Superman‘s end fight scene — it’s too dark, hard to see what’s going on, uncoordinated — then consider these three shots from the Rogue One trailer:
These are all gorgeous shots. Why? Because we can actually see what’s happening. Also, there’s Donnie Yen in what is as close to a Jedi role as we’re probably going to see in this movie, kicking the asses of a bunch of Storm Troopers.
In addition to some great hero moments, the Rogue One trailer gives us a few sensational villain moments. The first of which is the appearance of the Death Star, the plans for which are this film’s grand prize:
Ben Mendelsohn’s character, still nameless, is some kind of Grand Moff level guy who is likely the steward of the Death Star plans. We see him in a control room, with a very Original Trilogy background (in the image above), and walking through a field of dead Storm Troopers:
Who is that figure in the black hood? It is not yet known, but there are plenty of rumors about Darth Vader making an appearance. Though if we look closely, that figure doesn’t appear Vader-esque. Which brings to mind the most important part of this teaser trailer: what it isn’t showing us. There is no Darth Vader sighting, despite being rumored for an appearance. Mads Mikkelsen’s character is nowhere to be found. Neither is Alan Tudyk’s character, so far as I can see. The best teaser trailers do enough to spark the fires of anticipation without giving away the farm. This particular teaser trailer lights the damn barn on fire, at the very least.
And then it does this:
The benefit of cutting a trailer for a new Star Wars movie — especially one set within a timeline that has a lot of known elements — is that it can be saturated with iconography and cues for nostalgia. For example, all the playful riffs on classic Star Wars music throughout this teaser. But what Gareth Edwards and the Lucasfilm marketing team have done with our first look at Rogue One is to make everything that is old come alive again in a new way. There’s a lot of Original Trilogy soul in this trailer, but all kinds of vibrant, diverse, pulse-accelerating newness. It’s a fantastic lead-in for the first of Lucasfilm’s non-trilogy stories of the Nü Star Wars era.
And we don’t even know the half of it just yet.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opens on December 16, which is 252 days away from today. But who’s counting…
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