Gillette’s new commercial for their “Every hero has a face” campaign tied to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is fun enough on its own, but it also has a lot of significance. The video, produced with Lucasfilm, gives us our best looks yet at two new vehicles in the film, the U-wing and the AT-ACT.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The AT-ACT is a variant on the AT-AT (pronounced, officially, either @-@ or Ay-Tee-Ay-Tee, so don’t start a flame war over it), meant specifically for cargo transport in battlefield situations. The slow moving AT-ATs might not seem like the most efficient way to get anything transported from point A to point B, but their heavy armor helps the situation considerably.
While the AT-ACT is just in the background of the video for a second, a good portion is given to the new U-wing, the combination starfighter and troop transport in use by the Rebel Alliance in the film, due to them launching more land campaigns than just dogfights. We see the door of the transport slide shut, and see it flying (in reverse) into battle. While we don’t get to see it fire or click its wings back, seeing it fly, and seeing several fly in formation, is a neat moment.
Officially, the U-wing Fighter is described as:
“A sturdy troop transport and gunship used by the Rebel Alliance, the U-wing Starfighter is a well-armed, swing-wing vessel that must penetrate heavy fire zones to deposit soldiers onto battlefields, and then fly air support during dangerous missions against the empire.”
The cockpit of the U-wing is similar to the A-wing fighter, and the quad engines are similar to the X-wing; it’s easy to see, in other words, how this fits right in with the rest of the vehicles in the Rebel Alliance.
The U-wing will debut in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story when it hits theaters December 16, 2016. The film, directed by Gareth Edwards, stars Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, leading a ragtag band of Rebels on the mission to steal the plans for the first Death Star from the Empire. The movie spins out of the original opening crawl from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, which described the events as the Rebel Alliance’s first major victory in the war against the Empire. Take a look through the gallery below for stills from the new commercial.