Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

My reaction to the new trailer for Rogue One is a mixed one.
First off, as always with movies nowadays, I was extremely impressed by the special effects that I saw within the trailer. The video of the Death Star being pieced together was extremely exciting to me, and the Imperial AT-AT's that were fighting the rebellion was actually frightening looking for the first time is a Star Wars movie.
On top of that, the casting of Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma almost had me wondering if they used CG to recreate the face of the original actress. That is how close of a match she was to the original. Overall from the visual standpoint, I am extremely impressed.

Some great actors are listed as being in the movie as well. Alan Tudyk, who is one of my favorite actors in Firefly is in the roster, but with no label as to whom he is playing. Donnie Yen, IP Man himself, is also playing in this movie. Forest Whitaker has some screen time in the trailer, and whatever his character is looks really good; he looks sort of battle-worn and knowledgeable. Overall, the cast looks solid. The main character is named Jyn Erso, played by Felicity Jones, and I don't know what her story is whatsoever.

Based on just the trailer, I am a little worried that the story is going to be too centered on Jyn's character. They show her as starting out as a badass, which is cool and all, but we really don't need another Hunger Games, Divergent, or Maze Runner type of movie that makes one character so special that the story is pointless without them. I want the rest of casting to be just as important in this since the rebellion is made up of so much more than just a few select characters that get developed. They need to take a page out of the Star Trek playbook and make each individual person have their backstory that you see unfold throughout the movie, and where they have as much importance as the rest. In The Force Awakens, we already have the one special lead who may change the universe, but they also have Luke, Han Solo, Finn, POE DAMERON (He made the movie for me) and all of the others, which all were all 100% necessary for plot development. On top of that, they all had their respective skillsets that made it so much more interesting. I want to see that in this Star Wars movie as well. The casting says nothing about James Earl Jones, so I'm really worried that we will have no Darth Vader in the movie at all, but if that is the case, I can handle it if they still have a good story going.

For the last scene in the trailer, they made it sound like she has the possibility of joining the Empire, but I feel like that was badly placed. They show in the rest of the trailer what I can only describe as acts of hate towards the Empire, so I can only assume that when she is in one of their uniforms, she is undercover gathering intel on the Death Star. The ambiguity towards her allegiance at the end was not needed, because I feel like it's intentionally there to mislead you into thinking we might have a good-character-gone-bad type of story that we won't actually see in any of the movie.

That's all I got from the first couple plays I made through the trailer, but I am excited to see more for sure. I will, as always, be there waiting in anticipation when the movie releases, but my hopes are set a little lower than they were for The Force Awakens for this movie.

Here is the trailer for anyone who has not seen it: