Take the Star Wars franchise and its perpetual daddy issues and mix that in with what the Hunger Games movies should have been, and you’ve basically got the second official trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which dropped on Thursday.
The trailer for the first standalone Star Wars story, due out this December, gives us a little bit more about Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and her backstory: Her dad, like all dads in this franchise, is complicated. He had something to do with building the Death Star, but we don’t know if he’s involved because he’s trying to protect her or because he’s not a good guy, or some weird amalgam of both. We also see Erso assemble her renegade troupe (it’s nice to see The Night Of’s Riz Ahmed smiling) to steal the plans for the Death Star.
"Rebellions are built on hope," Jones’s Erso says, channeling The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen.
This new trailer also features a first real look at Mon Mothma, one of the political leaders of the rebellion. It also does well to establish the gritty texture of this Star Wars world. It’s dustier and less shiny than The Force Awakens, but still exudes the awesome world building and scale that we’ve come to associate with the franchise.
Since Rogue One is set before the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, we know how Erso’s plan ends — Jyn and her team steal the Death Star plans and deliver them to the Rebel Alliance. We just don’t know how — and this movie, and its trailer, make us want to.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will be released on December 16, 2016.