Star Wars: Rogue One - Predicting The Entire Plot In 10 Steps

10. Jyn's Childhood

A lot's been made about the possibility of Rogue One not having an opening crawl after Kathleen Kennedy revealed they were experimenting with ways to make the Star Wars Story enterprise distinct from the main movies. However, the real reason there's not a crawl could be down to something more academic; the narrative structure won't allow it.

The Star Wars Celebration exclusive trailer opened with a young girl running from some invading Imperials on the same scorched planet we've seen Galen Erso and Shadowtroopers holding Rebellion dolls. That girl is Jyn and what we're seeing is the Empire, quite possibly Krennic himself given the presence of his personal guard, kidnapping Galen in the early days of the Empire to work on the superweapon for their moon-sized space station.

It's definitely possible this scene will be in flashback later on, but it fits the Rogue One remit better to be the opening, showing Jyn losing her father and setting that up as her overarching motivation.