Star Wars: Rogue One's Plot Sounds Better Than The Force Awakens

Up until now we've only really known Star Wars: Rogue One as Opening Crawl: The Movie; the first Star Wars Anthology (a fancy term for spin-off), Gareth Edwards' film will be dealing with the Rebels getting ahold of the Death Star schematics, the conflict that was first mentioned in A New Hope's text flying through space. And that, aside from some casting info, is pretty much all we've known. But now, thanks to Bloody Disgusting, we have a bit more information of the plot, specifically in reference to the film's baddies:

Ben Mendelsohn€™s new Moff character is indeed the big baddie of Rogue One. The other main villains of the piece are bounty hunters hired by the Moff to quietly retrieve the stolen Death Star plans at all costs. Vader factors in once he realizes that the plans have been stolen, so he joins the hunt in a supporting role and is none too pleased. These bounty hunters include Boba Fett, Bossk, Dengar, Zuckuss & 4LOM, IG-88, and Cad Bane, who is from €˜Clone Wars€™ and is making his live action debut. There might some new ones as well, but that€™s the core group. So Fett will absolutely appear on screen again in a semi-main role before his solo film.

Wow. Rogue One has always been an exciting prospect, bringing one of the key events in the Star Wars canon to life, but with a mixture of Imperial politics, Rebel guerrilla warfare and bounty hunter double-crossing (surely) it now it sounds incredible. In fact, given the strong rooting in the world of the Original Trilogy and the various characters of complex allegiance at play, this almost sounds like a more exciting story than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Not a better one mind, but this plot offers up so much potential, despite us knowing how it ends. Aside from the obvious here (Mendelsohn finally has a big role in a major film and further confirmation that Vader will cameo), this Imperial-sided description suggests the film won't just be focusing on the Rebel's heist to acquire the plans; it will also look at the Empire's attempts to get them back before they acquire a fleeing Princess Leia above Tatooine. Nothing like showing a bit of both sides of the conflict. What's really interesting is the introduction of a team of bounty hunters. This was one of the earlier rumours about the film, which was actually dismissed once the title suggested a Rebellion focus. If it's all balanced well, it's hard to complain; everyone loves the gang from the Super Star Destroyer bridge (and those who can stand The Clone Wars appreciate Cad Bane), so seeing them defined outside of "Lizard Man" and "Bug Robot" would be cool. There is one potential point of contention here. With Boba the main name in the description and a likely combatant against Han Solo in the smuggler's own recently announced Anthology film, does that mean he's going to be in every spin-off possible? His escape from the Sarlacc is now non-canon, so the galaxy's most famed bounty hunter/worst blind-man beater is unable to appear in any of the post-Jedi films, meaning his only on-screen hope is these prequel Anthologies. But putting him in all of them (odds are the next movie after Rogue One and Solo will be his own film) reduces any impact. I love Boba as much as than the next person (actually probably more), but a key part of his allure is the restraint. It's paradoxical to say someone's cool by not doing anything, but that's the case with Fett. Putting too much of a spotlight on him risks reducing that somewhat, although his appearance here may provide a cool throwback moment - this could be the origins of Vader's "No disintegrations" line from The Empire Strikes Back. There's no doubt going to be much more Star Wars info coming from this weekend's Comic-Con, but Lucasfilm is going to have its work cut out to announce something more exciting than this unrelated leak. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is out on 18th December 2015. Star Wars: Rogue One is released almost a year later on 16th December 2016.