The long countdown to the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on December 16 has at last hit the ten-day mark, and with buzz now at a nearly deafening roar, each day has demanded fresh preview material to keep the hordes of fans docile. It’s like an advent calendar, but instead of delicious chocolates and trinkets symbolizing holiday cheer, we get fragmented, context-free snippets symbolizing the insatiable will of America’s pop-culture mavens. It’s the reason for the season, and by “it,” I mean “the inability to allow one’s self to be pleasantly surprised by a blockbuster.”

All grouchy griping aside: today brings a new look at Gareth Edwards’ forthcoming Star Wars spinoff from China, where a region-specific trailer has just surfaced. The new two-and-a-half-minute clip runs through the beats of the movie’s plot with a bit more clarity than the clips that have come before: a young Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) watches her father (Mads Mikkelsen) dragged away by imperial forces and strongarmed into building their super-weapon the Death Star. The Resistance gets wind of Vader’s planet-incinerating plans and drafts Jyn to use her knowledge of her father and his work to lead the charge against the Empire. The rest of the cast — freedom fighters played by Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, and Jiang Wen, among others — gets their moment to shine as well.

But the most exciting moment may just be the brief glimpse at a controlled explosion staged by our heroes. A flurry of edits show them clamping charges onto a large structure and then bringing it down with one coordinated strike; it’s proof that Edwards knows how to assemble a mighty action set piece, and a heartening sign for things to come. Check back tomorrow, when some other thing inevitably puts Rogue One back in the headlines!

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