Rogue One, A Star Wars Story, is a film portraying the story of a group of rebels trying to steal the plans for the Death Star. It starts a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, and ends just moments before A New Hope.

Although I cannot keep myself from thinking “could they not find a better story than the weapons designer and his daughter who watches her mother be killed”, it is still a very powerful story on its own and an awesome one for die-hard Star Wars fans. We never had much hope seeing the main storyline continue on film let alone subplots like Rogue One. Thanks to Disney buying Lucas Film, it looks like we will be able to dive into the Star Wars universe once a year for some time to come. Before Rouge One came out, after one of the trailers, a friend of mine asked what it was about and I told her “remember the part where Mon Mothma mentions the sacrifices made for the Death Star plans, this is about those sacrifices” and she replied back “Is there going to be a new Star Wars film about every line on the original movies?” I didn’t answer but was clearly thinking “why not”, and no, Rogue One is not about those sacrifices, hopefully, that is another film sometime in the future.

A lot of people remembered the Mon Mothma quote and wondered if we might see the Bothans in Rouge One, who sacrificed themselves to get the Death Star plans, but that quote is not in A New Hope, it is in Return of the Jedi, the last movie of the original trilogy, during the briefing before Battle of Endor. In fact, Mon Mothma was never in A New Hope and I am now wondering where she might have been given she has a lot of time during Rogue One.

The fallen Jedi statue on Jedha is a powerful image reminding us the destruction of the Jedi rule by no other than Darth Wader / Anakin Skywalker. Perhaps the blind warrior Chirrut Îmwe, a resident of Jedha, could have been a great Jedi had he been able to receive training. As always, the Anakin Skywalker story makes me think about the line that separates good and evil, the familiar Yoda quote; “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering” and how accurate of a description this is of our world.

Princess Leia appears at the end of Rogue One, just moments before she loads Death Star plans to R2D2 along with a message to Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is so precious and so powerful because it is the moment just before when it all started, the moment just before the whole Star Wars universe entered into our lives so many years ago. Carrie Fisher, whose younger image is brought alive by CGI at the final moments of the film as Princess Leia, died on December 26th, 12 days after the release of Rogue One. May she rest in peace.