Here are the five most immediate things that got to me to freak out like milk was shooting out of my nose when I was watching the just-released final trailer for ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ due out on December 16th. This spin-off prequel is going to be huge, oh excuse me…um…it’s going to be YUUUGE. So let’s pile all our action figures together, feel the ‘Force’ and let’s nerd-out over this energizing teaser, shall we?

1.The reestablished excitement of seeing what leads to the story in the original Star Wars film in 1977 is just a grabbing premise. Yet we get the double-down creatively from the new Star Wars creative lords of also introducing new characters to let it become something alternative to the main stories in this world. It gives these characters credible depth for fans of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Darth Vader while also allowing younger fans jumping in now to feel like they have some fresh faces they can related to in the ‘Force’. 

2. Jyn Erso is going to be the new female heroine that inspires a lot of little girls and young women to geek out and get more into this universe. This character may even have more chances of earning love simply because she’s a leader of this team and appears to have less doubt of what she is meant to become, unlike Rey in ‘Force Awakens’ who needed to be prodded a little more into the Jedi she had to become. Now Jyn certainly has emotional connections to this mission (who is her dad? What is he doing with Death Star really?) and she is being put on this task by order of the Rebels, but she seems very full steam ahead in this trailer as compared the early teaser we first saw earlier this year. She reminds of the boss type character that alternative band Cake wrote about in the song ‘Short Skirt Long Jacket’ as we see Erso infiltrate the Death Star and pick up the slack. 

3. The stakes are high here. This very early version of the Rebels needs to find out what this super-weapon is and how to stop it and prevent the tide from turning completely against them in the war against the Empire. This is a true prequel in the sense, that it understands where the story goes after this and what the consequences of this extended prologue has on the rest of the series. ‘You never know where you are going, unless you know where you’ve been before’ applies here, but it’s challenging to know where it’s going and try to tell us where it was before all started. That challenge appears to have been met in this trailer with a story that will deliver. The line that defines what is at stake in Rogue One: “Save the Rebellion. Save the dream.” Also can Forest Whitaker always play the wise grizzled vet in everything?! You buy that gritty passion from his acting in almost every role he’s been in.

4. The cinematography, art direction, and overall feel is spot on for a modern Star Wars movie. All these big sweeping shots that take you to these far away worlds feel tangible in seconds. The costumes have enough a soft ‘70s vibe but it’s still a space opera that we expect with robots and computer-generated ships. This is Disney, they don’t mess around engineering imagined epic ideas into something we can grasp with fanboy/fangirl glee.

5. The technology behind the Death Star could be presented in an engaging way here to remind us all how destructive it can be and lead to the Empire dominating the Star Wars universe. It has gravity to it, you know what it has done in the original trilogy. RIP Alderan!  

This one is too obvious….DARTH VADER! One of the greatest villains in movie history is going to be a critical part of ‘Rogue One’ and that’s just got to be exciting for any Star Wars fan. For many, it might the complete selling point of the movie. Last year’s ‘The Force Awakens’ really made Vader this effective unseen ghost who is draped over everything in the story who motivated so much of the evil of Kylo Ren, but we never saw him on screen. Now we get to see a specific look at Vader as he grows into the mythic monster of the Empire who helped them become as powerful as possible without any of the prequel trilogy’s stigma attached to it. 

Also it looks like it could be just a little bit better than ‘Force Awakens’ which should be yet another reason to go see this new adventure the day it hits theaters.

What got YOU pumped about ‘Rogue One’ ? Let us know on our socials FB.com/101wkqx or twitter @101wkqx.