10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Death Star
4. The Firing Sequence In Rogue One Is Almost Identical To A New Hope
Rogue One isn't as slavishly tied to A New Hope's plot as The Force Awakens is, but it still has its share of direct references to the first movie and not just in the form of Dr Evezan and Ponda Baba's cameo appearance. Along with about a million different fan-pleasing Easter Eggs, once sequence is almost directly lifted from A New Hope down to the shot composition and lighting.
The test firing of the Death Star against the Imperial facility on Scarif is a shot for shot remake of the same sequence in A New Hope, with the shots of officers and technicians operating the various controls and of the laser beam being focused through the Death Star's main weapon being almost identical.
It's just one element of Rogue One being almost entirely composed of references, oblique or direct, to previous Star Wars movies. The smaller-scale test firings, for the elimination of cities instead of planets, illustrating the ramping-up of the Death Star's offensive capabilities, and just as importantly, the increasing willingness of Grand Moff Tarkin to employ them.