Go Behind-the-Scenes of Rogue One in New Featurette

Folks, this new Rogue One: A Star Wars Story featurette is as hot off the presses as you can get. Lucasfilm and Disney just released it, and we wanted to share it with you as quick as can be.

"If I'd known since I was four that I was going to be shooting a Star Wars film, I would have planned it all my life," says director Gareth Edwards as the behind-the-scenes featurette opens. We see Edwards on a dolly moving towards an X-Wing, cutting to his genuinely happy face as he speaks to the camera about this dream come true. The giddiness on set is essentially a mirror image of the way John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac were acting while filming The Force Awakens. The director is the general of the production, and yet look at Edwards face when he interacts with a character in full alien makeup (later, he talks about how being on set is like being "on the world's largest toy set." Or take co-star Diego Luna, smiling as he talks about how he grew up with the Star Wars stories, and now, here he was.

"It's a whole world I've been thinking about for quite a long time," Luna says.

While we've known for a long time that the events in Rogue One take place just before Star Wars: A New Hope, it's interesting to hear Edwards explain that the scrolling text that starts the very first Star Wars film is essentially the movie he's made. It's the journey of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and her compatriots that auger the beginning of the true Rebel Alliance, the one that will carry forward through The Return of the Jedi. 

If this featurette doesn't get you excited for Rogue One, you must not be a Star Wars fan at all. 

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters on December 16.