There are two moods that Star Wars movies -- well, most of them -- do extraordinarily well.
One is a sense of extraordinary, overwhelming evil: the power of the Dark Side; the technological terror of the Death Star; the soul-crushing weariness of being a teenager trapped on a desert planet, staring at a double sunset; the even more soul-crushing revelation that the most evil man in the galaxy is your father. (Star Wars feels your pain, Tiffany Trump.)
Then there's the uplifting heroism that happens when good beings reach out to each other -- when that teen seeks a mysterious hermit, when a smuggler stops being selfish, when droids overcome their scaredy-cat programming, when a princess leads her friends into the lair of a slobbering beast to save the man she loves.
Star Wars, the ultimate ensemble series, taught us to be "stronger together" long before that was a campaign slogan.
From everything we've seen so far, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story may be the most perfect distillation of these two moods yet. That became clear in what is likely the final theatrical trailer, released Thursday morning, which went out of its way to offer the world a timely sliver of new hope.
"Hope" is a word you'll hear twice in the trailer -- which focused more on creating moods, highlighting the cast's unprecedented diversity, and showcasing the beautiful cinematography than on leaving a trail of spoiler-ish story breadcrumbs for fans to use as possible clues.
Sure, there were still a few breadcrumbs. Did we see the back of Governor Tarkin's head in one scene? What exactly were those X-Wing pilots attacking? And what's the deal with that fallen statue of a Jedi, likely on the pilgrimage planet of Jedha, which looks vaguely Kenobi-ish?
Anyone who was paying attention to previously released breadcrumbs knew about the scene that opens the trailer. Our hero Jyn Erso is shown as a child on the day her father, Galen Erso (the excellent Mads Mikkelsen) is paid a visit by Imperial bad guy Director Orson Krennic.
This summer at Star Wars Celebration, we learned that Galen was recruited by the Empire -- who wanted to turn his energy project into something evil, i.e. the Death Star's super-laser. This is why Jyn Erso is busted out of jail by the nascent Rebellion -- because her father got in touch.
So we knew the cold details, but we didn't necessarily feel the emotional power of that scene until the trailer showed it. The shock of seeing Galen in his old clothes, then in Imperial uniform less than a minute later, brought home the oppressive evil of the Empire as much as any Star Destroyer.
Suddenly, Jyn's motivation becomes clear. She's not just a rebellious teen. Like every Star Wars hero before her -- Luke, Anakin, Rey -- she has a barely-concealed urge to find her family in this lonely galaxy. "If my father built this," she says of the Death Star, a choke in her voice, "we need to find him."
And family she finds, unexpectedly, in the form of the Rogue One unit. The scene where we see the motley crew deciding its call sign may be a little too neat, but it emphasizes that this movie promotes the ensemble aspect of Star Wars like never before.
It's a family we can get behind in the multicultural 21st century. More ethnicities are represented in one trailer than ever before in Star Wars history -- Latino, Asian, African-American, all struggling against overwhelming odds. "If the Empire has this power," says a previously unseen black woman in the Rebel briefing room, "what chance do we have?"
"We have hope," Jyn Erso responds, looking more Katniss Everdeen-like than ever -- only without the moral dilemma over whether the team she's fighting for is as bad as the one she's fighting against. "Rebellions are built on hope."
"Power" was mentioned as many times as "hope" in the trailer, making the stakes -- and the divide between the two moods of Star Wars -- refreshingly clear.
Krennic is seen trying to convince Darth Vader that "the power we are dealing with here is immeasurable" -- using exactly the same emphasis, the same fist, that Vader famously used to explain "the power of the Dark Side" in the original movie.
It's clear that neither mean the word in its neutral sense, but in the sense of "domination." This is all the Empire is: one giant crushing show of force (and the Force), meant to break the spirits of anyone who would dare resist it.
In an election season where one side seeks to dominate and seduce, and the other has often struggled to band together to resist it, there could be no more timely movie than Rogue One. Sadly it won't arrive before election day -- the movie is out December 16 -- but at least this trailer is pointing the way.
