Mads Mikkelsen plays Galen Erso in Rogue One. (Getty)
How could the Empire possibly overlook an exposed exhaust port on its greatest weapon, the Death Star? It’s a question that’s puzzled Star Wars fans for decades and was finally answered in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
SPOILER WARNING – Don’t read beyond this point if you haven’t seen the movie.
It turns out that the Empire simply didn’t know it was something that needed protecting. The exhaust port was a trap laid by Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), the Imperial science officer who helped make the battle station work. He told his daughter Jyn (Felicity Jones) about it in a hologram Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed) carried with him to Jedha. Galen planned it so that if someone fired proton torpedoes into the exhaust port, it would go directly to the main reactor, destroying the Death Star.
Jyn didn’t grab the hologram from Saw Gerrera’s (Forest Whitaker) hideout during the destruction of Jedha City by the Death Star. Jyn told Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) about this, but none of them survived the Battle of Scarif. That’s why the Rebel Alliance had to examine the plans after R2-D2 delivered it in A New Hope. At the end of A New Hope, during the Battle of Yavin, the Rebels spring Galen’s trap. Luke Skywalker fires two proton torpedoes, destroying the station.
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In Rogue One, the original mission for Cassian was to kill Galen, under the assumption that he was a regular Imperial officer. While on Eadu, Cassian couldn’t bring himself to kill Galen. However, Galen died anyway when the Rebel Alliance fighters attacked.
Galen is a character who shows how it’s possible to play both the good and the bad side in Star Wars. In the past, the franchise had been filled with characters who are only good or bad. Although at the heart of the franchise is Anakin Skywalker, who was consumed by the Dark Side but still had some good in him.
“It’s been very easy in the past to label it as we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys,” director Gareth Edwards told IndieWire in December. “And I’m sure like they feel they’re the good guys and we’re the bad guys. And the goal of a lot of films used to be: If we just eliminate the bad guys, we win. But I think a more modern, realistic viewpoint is that no one’s good, no one’s evil and the only real way we’re going to stop wars is to understand each other better, come together and empathize with them. And this film tried to take away the black and white and make it more gray. You even see the point of view of the bad guys and you start to understand what [the Empire] tried to do.”
‘Rogue One’: The Top ‘Star Wars’ Easter Eggs in the New Movie
Gareth Edwards, a student of Star Wars, jammed Rogue One with as many Easter Eggs as possible for the die-hard fan.
Read more about Rogue One in Spanish at AhoraMismo.com:
Rogue One Spoilers: ¿Quién murió en la nueva película de Star Wars?
Ya salió Rogue One: A Star Wars Story en teatros. ¿Quieres saber que pasó en la película y quién murió?…
Daniel S. Levine is entertainment and news contributor to Heavy, and former editor at TheCelebrityCafe.com. Graduate of Hofstra University, plus classic movie and Star Wars geek. Follow him on Twitter at @dsl89 and contact him at daniel.levine@heavy.com.December 16, 2016 12:16 am
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