Gareth Edwards

This Rogue One movie has more intrigue than a secret rebellion against a galactic empire.

The good news: Lucasfilm is finally rolling out the TV spots for Rogue One. The bad news: there’s not much new here.

We already met ‘Rogue One’s newest creature, Space Monkey, aka Bistan, at Star Wars Celebration Europe, and now Lucasfilm has unveiled another new character from the spinoff.

There was a major awakening this past weekend at Star Wars Celebration Europe, which brought fans a handful of new details about ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.’

We all love the human heroes and villains of the ‘Star Wars’ universe, but the creatures that pop in throughout the films are some of the most imaginative characters the big screen has seen. From fuzzy creatures to bubble-eyed aliens to adorable blinking droids, the galaxy far, far away is full of diverse species, many of which were brought to life by hand.

When the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story panel opened at Star Wars Celebration last weekend, it did so with this video, in which the classic opening crawl from Star Wars began to glitch and sputter and then shifted in space. The words flew toward the camera and revealed the full Rogue One logo title treatment, as seen below:

Darth Vader is one of the most iconic villains in movie history. We haven’t seen him since Anakin Skywalker first donned the famous black suit at the end of Revenge of the Sith, but in Gareth Edwards‘ ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,’ Vader is back.

That clip above is the great sizzle reel for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story that just debuted at Star Wars Celebration. But if you were watching the live-feed from the convention, you know that right before the panel wrapped up, Kathleen Kennedy introduced a brand-new Rogue One trailer, that wasn’t streamed live on YouTube. If you weren’t in the room, you were out of luck.

You may recall that J.J. Abrams debuted a sizzle reel for The Force Awakens at last year’s Comic-Con, which featured new footage and some great behind-the-scenes material — this sizzle reel for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is pretty similar. Instead of debuting a new trailer for the upcoming standalone / prequel story, director Gareth Edwards offered this fantastic sneak peek at the film during the Rogue One panel at Star Wars Celebration.

One of the biggest panels at this year’s Star Wars Celebration kicks off at 11AM today: the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story panel. Plenty of special guests are expected included director Gareth Edwards and plenty of members of the film’s cast. You can watch the panel streaming live above, and we’ll be updating this post with news and notes as they come in! The film’s plot synopsis: