Darth Vader crashes the Olympics with the new trailer for Rogue One

Film Features Film

Sports nerds and space nerds collided tonight, when the latest trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story debuted during NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Star Wars fans worldwide—at least, those that didn’t get a peek at the footage at Star Wars Celebration last month—spent the hours before the footage aired gritting their teeth and putting up with exposure to athletes performing at their Force-free physical peaks, while lobbing the occasional pretty good burn at NBC.

But now it’s finally here, and we can all stop talking about Michael Phelps, and start talking about Jyn Erso and her motley crew. Most of the movie’s characters—including Forest Whitaker’s grizzled soldier and Donnie Yen’s mystic martial artist—get a chance to shine, with Alan Tudyk’s dryly unkind droid, K-2SO, getting off most of the trailer’s best lines. The footage also emphasizes—as we’ve heard before—that the film will be emphasizing the War part of its title more than the Stars; edit out the laser blasts and space armor, and this would fit right in with a gritty military movie set in the Pacific theater of World War II.

And, because you can’t have a big trailer like this in 2016 without at least one big reveal, we get our first glimpse of Darth Vader’s presence in the film—for exactly one second, just long enough to hear the character’s labored breathing and feel a thrill run down our spines. Presumably, we’ll get more as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story gets closer to its December 16 release date.

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