William N. Law Blog: Rogue One Bits: Another New Stormtrooper, T-47 Airspeeders, ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Connections, and Force Friday

Monday, April 4, 2016

Rogue One Bits: Another New Stormtrooper, T-47 Airspeeders, ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Connections, and Force Friday

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens about to hit Blu-ray and DVD, surely that means the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story marketing deluge is set to begin, right? In the meantime, here’s the latest edition of Rogue One Bits:

Are T-47 Airspeeders in Rogue One?
An in-depth description of a new Stormtrooper design.
Details of this year’s Force Friday continue to trickle out.
Debate the possible connections between Star Wars Rebels and Rogue One.
A cool fan-made Rogue One poster has popped up online.

Last year, Rogue One star and certified badass Donnie Yen posted some behind-the-scenes images from the set of the top secret film on his Instagram account, only for the pictures to quickly vanish. But since the internet is forever, the pictures (which depicted a variety of different Stormtrooper helmets) lived on, offering a hint of what we can expect in from the Empire’s henchmen in the final film. Now, Yen’s wife may have accidentally unleashed a little tidbit of her own about the movie.

As you can see in the Instagram photo screen-capped below (via Making Star Wars), she visited a Time’s Square LEGO exhibit and posed next to a T-47 Airpseeder, writing “Looks exactly like the real thing when visiting hubby on the set!” So here’s the question: does she mean “Hey, this is just like other big spaceships that I saw on set!” or does she mean “Hey, I saw T-47 Airspeeders on set!” The latter would be cool news for Star Wars fans, as these ships haven’t been seen on the big screen since the first act of The Empire Strikes Back.

speeder

Speaking of scoops from Making Star Wars, the site recently managed to get a look at the “Hover Tank Trooper,” which will be one of many types of Stormtroopers featured in the film. They don’t know if this trooper is intended to pilot tanks or accompany them on patrols, but they did provide this written description:

The visor of the new trooper really reminds me of the clones from Attack of the Clones, but the visor doesn’t go down in a complete “T” like the Fett-inspired helmet would. It has two really large aerators that kind of remind me of hand-held vacuums (however this design does not suck). The armor itself is really very much in the spirit of the Scout Trooper but not identical or as close as the Scarab Trooper’s armor in that respect (not to mention this trooper is white and that one is yellow). The cranium of the helmet reminded me of the classic A New Hope Stormtrooper in shape.

For more details, including a rough sketch of what the design looks like, hit the link above.

Thanks to artist DazTibbles, we can finally post about Rogue One news without resorting to that standard cast picture that has topped countless articles since last year! This fan-made poster made its debut on his DeviantArt page and it’s very cool, depicting the characters played by Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, and Wen Jiang alongside Slave 1, a few X-Wings and the Death Star. The odd thing about this situation is that DazTibbles used the same resources that most fans have to create this piece – we still don’t know any character names or the details of their personalities or how they all ultimately relate to one another. But hey, since Lucasfilm is deliberately taking their sweet time ramping this movie up, the fans have to step in and fill the void. You can hit the link above to check out more of DazTibbles’ work.