Watch Walt Disney World's Spaceship Earth Become the Death Star

ComicBook.com Staff

12/06/2016 12:35 am EST

The cast and crew of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story were in San Francisco, California this weekend, working the press junket and talking about stealing the Death Star plans. But it seems they should've been in Orlando, Florida instead, where a special event run by the Disney Parks Blog made the Death Star come to life.

Thanks to the magic of an advanced projection, the Spaceship Earth globe at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World became the Death Star tonight. The "dimple" of the advanced planet-destroying laser array and the destructive beam itself took over the big metal golfball in a most impressive display of the Empire's might.

"On orders from Darth Vader, the Advanced Weapons Research division battle station is fully operational!" Disney Parks tweeted out with the image.

The corporate synergy comes with just a week and change left until Rogue One is in theaters, bringing back the Original Trilogy era in full force. In the film, we'll see the original Death Star firing its first test shot, as we learn about the people in charge of creating it, including Director of Special Weapons Orson Krennic, played by Ben Mendelsohn, and the scientist Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), whose study of Kyber crystals as an energy source fuels the weapon's devastating power. Click below for the full-size image of the Epcot Death Star!

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits US theaters December 16, 2016. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it's the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core "Skywalker Saga" of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue One tells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: "Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet."

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(Photo: Disney Parks)