New Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Images Focus on Darth Vader, Vehicles

There's only two weeks and change left until Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters and the [...]

By ComicBook.com Staff

There's only two weeks and change left until Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters and the marketing campaign is at full bore. While many of the more than ten new still shots released via EW Monday can be readily seen in the trailers (three US, as many International, plus a few behind-the-scenes featurettes) and growing number of TV spots (we're into double digits on those now), they do offer up some higher quality looks at a couple of things from the film.

The wheel-like more traditional space station in the trailers is called the Shield Gate, the central point of a force (lowercase) field that covers the entire tropical planet Scarif. That means the Rebels need to take the Shield Gate out in order to even get to the planet's surface to steal the Death Star plans, so you can expect a smaller-scale version of the X-wing trench run as they work to take it out.

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(Photo: Lucasfilm)

Two new stills of Darth Vader show him in a somewhat contemplative pose and on what appears to be the bridge of the Death Star (recognizable from the guy with the giant wok-shaped helmet on his head). When Grand Moff Tarkin tells Vader in Star Wars: Episode IV "The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion," that speaks to the larger clash of Force users and a traditional military. That will be the main focus for Darth Vader in Rogue One, where he's more of a looming background threat than a primary villain - that antagonist role belongs to Director Orson Krennic, played by Ben Mendelsohn.

"There are military men who are interested in a really effective piece of military hardware, and Darth Vader is a little bit beyond that, right?" Kiri Hart, Lucasfilm's head of story development and lead of the Story Group said. "He's tapped into something on another level, on a spiritual level. So, that's part of the fun of Vader in the context of the Imperial Military. He's got a broader perspective."

To Tarkin's point, though, the Jedi are essentially extinct in the terms of Rogue One (don't expect Kanan or Ezra from Star Wars Rebels to show up lightsaber blazing - what that means about those two Jedi's fates is up to the fans for now). There are the Force faithful like Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), who keep the religious aspects of understanding and caring about the Force alive, despite not having any Force powers.

Other planets revealed in the film include Jedha, the "Force Mecca" of sorts - a holy land to those who believe in the ways of the Force, not just manipulators like the Jedi and Sith, Eadu, a storm-ridden planet, and Lah'mu, a secluded Outer Rim peaceful and green planet that the Erso family lives upon.

As for the actual antagonist, Orson Krennic, he "doesn't understand the Force," Hart says, leading him to clash directly with Darth Vader, who "comes at everything from the perspective of understanding the Force." Krennic is the head of the special weapons project developing the Death Star, and like the other Imperials who believe superior (literal) firepower is the only way to secure the Galaxy, he isn't very impressed by Vader's tricks.

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Take a look through the full gallery below, and hit the theaters on December 16, 2016 for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

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