The photos show off poses from Felicity Jones’ heroic spy, Jyn Erso, as well as detailing her character’s motivation for joining the Rebellion. (It involves her dad, played by Mads Mikkelsen, who’s some sort of highly sought-after scientist.) We also get some insight into Ben Mendelsohn’s hot-tempered cape-wearer Orson Krennic, who’s apparently an Imperial middle-manager, desperate to avoid the Empire’s standard “Darth Vader uses magic to choke you” severance package. Plus, we get closer looks at most of Erso’s motley crew of soldiers and battle station blueprint thieves, including Donnie Yen’s Force-worshiping blind warrior monk, Forest Whitaker’s grizzled soldier, and the brusquely comedic new droid being played by Firefly’s Alan Tudyk.
As previously alluded, there are also a number of shots of a new, as-yet unnamed planet, located deep within the Jimmy Buffet sector of a galaxy far, far away. According to director Gareth Edwards, the sun-soaked setting—complete with gun-toting Imperial soldiers splashing around in the surf— is meant to evoke images of the Pacific theater of World War II, where heated battles sometimes ocurred in idyllic tropical locales. It’s not the first time Edwards and Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy have called Rogue One a war film, either. They made similar assertions earlier this week, when they challenged the idea that the film’s recent slate of reshoots were intended to lighten its dark and military tone.
You can see all 16 new pictures—along with descriptions of the characters played by Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, and Jiang Wen—over at Entertainment Weekly’s site.
