This post contains spoilers for the film and is generally just me rambling about Rogue One.

Making Star Wars reported yesterday that the filming for Star Wars: Anthology – Rogue One had officially started at Pinewood Studios. Apparently Felicity Jones has already filmed her first scene as well. Making Star Wars has another few tidbits of news which aren’t extremely spoilerific or dramatic, but it’s still exciting to know that work on another Star Wars film has started. I’m sure that over the next few months of filming there will be set photos or “leaked” concept art and we’ll get a better clue on how Rogue One will come together.

But what has me really excited about the fact that Rogue One is now under way is that it ushers in an era of “different Star Wars“. Rogue One is very decidedly not a Saga-film, in the sense that it actively does not focus on the Skywalker-clan and friends. Gareth Edwards’ film will focus on a band of resistance fighters who steal the plans for the Death Star. When this plot summary was announced I was initially sceptic since it is a fact that the plans were indeed stolen and that, hence, the mission would have to be a success. Aside from this, it is something that happens before A New Hope without the involvement of any of the established characters.

I then realized, however, that this means that Edwards, Whitta and Weitz have an incredibly amount of freedom in how they want to make their film. While their film has to play into A New Hope and advance the general story-line of Star Wars, they have more space for creativity than, say, J.J. Abrams in how they want their characters to act and interact. The lack of Jedi will also be fascinating because it shifts the power balance within the galaxy. The only other example we have for this is Star Wars: Rebels which is set in a time where the Jedi are very clearly not established anymore. And yet, they’re still there, able to save the day with their special powers. Rogue One won’t have that and it will be a fundamentally different movie without the Jedi or the Sith. Imagine a The Lord of the Rings without the Eagles, a Marvel film without people with superpowers. Suddenly you have to come up with a different solution to your problems and it will make Rogue One into something completely different. It will be great anticipating a Star Wars film that is bound to be completely different then what you’ve seen so far. We think it is much more likely that Rogue One will be a war-film than an Ocean’s Eleven-style film based on the shot trailer,even if that’s not much to go on.

Asides from this, I’m extremely excited about the cast so far. Felicity Jones seems to be the lead character at the moment and with Diego Luna already confirmed and Forest Whitaker rumored, there are high hopes that this film will follow along the same path as The Force Awakens in making modern cinema more diverse!

What are your thoughts on Rogue One? Excited about these new ventures or hesitant?