There’s a new Rogue One: A Star Wars Story trailer, and it’s awesome

Things are looking good for the first Star Wars spinoff movie.
Are you getting excited about December? We are—and not because of the presents. Disney just dropped the official trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which hits theaters December 16th. The film is the studio's first foray outside the adventures of the characters we've grown up with, taking place shortly before the events depicted in Episode IV. The Empire is completing work on the Death Star, and the Rebellion needs to find its weakness; it recruits Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones) to do so.

This isn't our first look at Rogue One. Disney released a trailer early in April replete with visuals of AT-ATs storming tropical beaches set to a melancholy piano riff of John Williams' "Force theme" punctuated by a wailing siren riff guaranteed to light up anyone's secondary somatosensory cortex. But this new trailer takes a slightly different tone, perhaps the result of studio displeasure which led to several weeks of reshoots earlier this summer.

https://youtu.be/frdj1zb9sMY

It does give us a better look at several characters, though. There's Chirrut Imwe (played by Donnie Yen), a blind warrior living on Jedha—a planet that's the source of those little crystals that make lightsabers work. And Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a captain in the Rebellion working with Erso to steal the plans to the Death Star, accompanied by a laconic droid, K2SO (Alan Tudyk). Oh, and we also get another peek at Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) looking a lot like a pirate in power armor.

Otherwise, the trailer is packed full of visuals that Star Wars fans will recognize and love—Imperial Star Destroyers orbiting the almost-built Death Star or hovering in the atmosphere above a rocky mesa, cockpit shots of ships entering hyperspace—you know the drill. Two minutes isn't very much to go on, but it does seem enough to know that the first live-action departure from Luke Skywalker and his chums since Ewoks: The Battle for Endor won't suffer the same fate as that film or the also-execrable Caravan of Courage.