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To understand 'Rogue One' takes exactly one minute. 

I'm not being metaphorical; all you really need to do to get what this film is about is watch (or, more likely, rewatch) the first minute of the most popular space movie in history. 

Ready? Let's do it, 1977 style.

To save time, skip the Princess Leia paragraph. Focus on the first two: there's a great civil war underway, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It's The Rebels vs. The Galactic Empire -- which, in case there were any doubt, is "evil."

The scrappy little Rebels win a battle for the first time. Evidently this battle's main objective was to help a heroic team of spies steal the plans to a scary "ultimate" weapon called the Death Star, which is the same size as a moon but isn't one. The Death Star can destroy worlds.

That's it! Take these sentences, spin every question you can think of out of them -- where was that battle and what was it like? Who were the spies? How did they get away with the plans? How in the heck does it make sense that a freaking space station, even an "armored" one, can blow up entire goddamn multi-trillion-ton planets? -- and you have the purpose of Rogue One.

SEE ALSO:Last 'Rogue One' trailer offers a timely shot of new hope

The crawl connection is no coincidence. It's exactly how John Knoll, special effects genius at Industrial Light & Magic and creator of Photoshop, first pitched the movie back in 2013, to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy.

Lucasfilm had been sold to Disney the year before; new Star Wars spin-off movies were expected, the first probably between Episode VIIin 2015 and Episode VIIIin 2017. Kennedy was taking pitches. Knoll walked into her office bearing the second paragraph of the crawl, and the rest is Rebel Alliance history.

The idea started its journey through many hands -- because movies require even more teamwork than secret plan-stealing spy operations. Screenwriter Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli, After Earth) took first crack at it; Chris Weitz (About a Boy) and Tony Gilroy (all the Bournemovies) polished it off. Young special effects auteur Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) signed up to direct.

What did they come up with? Well, if you're the kind who just likes to see a trailer then wait for the movie, here's the 7-minute supercut of all the Rogue Onetrailers. Below that we'll do a quick primer on the Death Star's not-so-secret story, plus the characters and the flow of the movie itself.

Before the Death Star: the end of the Jedi

There's no reason you really need to see Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones(2002), generally regarded as the weakest of George Lucas' three Star Wars prequels. However, it does contain one scene that is key to the background of Rogue One, so here's a summary.

Back when the Empire was still a Republic, there was a long and disastrous fake war. The Republic's leader, Chancellor Palpatine, was in cahoots with a former Jedi named Count Dooku. (Both were secretly evil Sith Lords -- long story). Though his name was eminently dumb, Dooku managed to persuade a whole bunch of planets to leave the Republic; these were the Separatists.

Palpatine got the Galactic Senate to give him dictatorial emergency war powers. He raised a Clone Army and asked the Jedi Council to lead it -- all part of his evil scheme to wipe those lightsaber-wielding do-gooders out once and for all. The Jedi were too busy fighting the Separatists, in what became known as the Clone Wars, to figure out they were being played like a galactic-sized violin.

(During those Clone Wars, according to a Lucasfilm animated series of the same name, young Jedi hero Anakin Skywalker met and trained a young anti-Separatist fighter called Saw Gererra. But we'll get to him.)

Anyway, back in Episode II, on a Separatist planet called Geonosis, home to a bunch of bug-like engineers, Dooku picked up a detailed hologram of plans for a nifty-looking battle station.

This prototype station was supposed to help the Separatists, but of course Dooku promptly took it back to his boss, Palpatine.

In Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine becomes Emperor. He has the Clones massacre nearly all the Jedi, and turns Anakin Skywalker into his new apprentice, Darth Vader, who does plenty of his own Jedi massacring, beginning his career with the wholesale slaughter of Jedi trainee kids. (SoDisney, right?)

At the very end of Sith,we see the Emperor, Vader and a young Governor Tarkin (played by Peter Cushing in the original Star Wars)admiring the skeleton of the first Death Star, now secretly under construction above Geonosis.

One day, son, all this will be yours.Credit: lucasfilm

The secret of the ultimate weapon basically holds for the next 19 years, which is how much time elapses between Revenge of the Sithand Rogue One.

In two decades, the whole idea of the Jedi completely vanishes from the galaxy, and most people believe the official line that those dudes in the weird brown robes were traitors who tried to kill the Emperor. The Force is all but forgotten. The Empire is ready to crush all potential opposition, forever, with the help of its secret weapon.

Enter the Erso family -- and groovy crystals!

The recently-released novel Catalyst, written as a prequel to Rogue One, picks up the story. During the Clone Wars, Galen Erso is a peaceful scientist imprisoned on a Separatist world along with his wife, Lyra, and their baby girl Jyn -- who will grow up to be the hero of Rogue One, played by Felicity Jones.

She also gets a badass Imperial spy uniform.Credit: lucasfilm

Galen's old school friend Orson Krennic, an ambitious military officer and the big bad villain of Rogue One, comes to get the family out of jail. He starts nudging Galen towards using his scientific brilliance on the Death Star project, then code-named Project Celestial Power.

Why? Because at this point, nobody has figured out how to make the Death Star protect itself or shoot lasers powerful enough to kill planets. And because Galen is freaking obsessedwith kyber crystals and the amount of energy they can store: enough, he thinks, to provide clean energy to everyone in the galaxy.

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SEE ALSO:7 'Rogue One' clues revealed by the prequel novel

Kyber crystals are these mysterious rare shiny things that the Jedi used to power their lightsabers; Galen hated the pompous robed asses for hoarding the crystals and not letting scientists have a good look. Krennic knows what Galen likes.

Orson Krennic, ambitious Imperial son of a bitch.Credit: lucasfilm

All of a sudden, there seems to be a surplus of the things. In one of the book's most chilling scenes, a bag of kyber crystals is dumped into Galen's hands like gold teeth after a holocaust.

Kyber crystals, by the way, are an homage to George Lucas' 1975 drafts of what he then called "The Star Wars." That early version was much more New Age-y than the final movie, because Lucas was in his North California hippie phase.

In one draft, Ben Kenobi had a whole horrible subplot where he went to Alderaan to retrieve his "kiber" crystal so he could channel his essence and fight Darth Vader with it. Seriously.

Now I am become Death Star, destroyer of worlds

Producer Gary Kurtz helped talk George out of his crystal obsession in 1975, thankfully.

But still, there's something nice about crystals sneaking their way back into the story of Star Wars after all these years, this time as the ultimate source of power for the Death Star.

That's because they're now part of Galen Erso's tragic story, which is also the story of every scientist who became part of a military project only to regret it later. Galen still thinks he's working on an energy project, even as Orson Krennic tells him it will also power a weapon that will mop up some phantom Separatists, somewhere, and bring peace to the galaxy.

In Catalyst, it turns out Galen really doesn't get what Kyber crystals are, even as he unlocks their potential as a military weapon. He starts to lose sleep, which he doesn't realize is a side effect of working with these objects. Galen's wife knows better, being a devotee of the Force; the crystals seem to have a mind of their own.

Eventually, Galen clues into how little he understands them. "The Jedi were right" to hide them away, he concludes. He proceeds to hide himself and his family far away from the Empire -- with the help of a hard-bitten rebel called Saw Gererra.

But it is already way too late. The Death Star train has left the station.

Rogue Onewill tell us whether Galen Erso lives to see the Death Star become powerful enough to destroy Alderaan in Star Wars. If he does, he could legitimately use the words of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, on seeing the first ever atomic explosion: "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

Too late for regret, Galen Erso.Credit: Lucasfilm

A metaphor for modern machine technology and a historical reference mixed with some good old-fashioned mysticism and stuff blowing up: This, my friends, is the very soul of Star Wars.

The saga continues

Warning: We're going to talk a little about the movie itself now, so look away if you want to remain completely unspoiled.

Here's why it's worth wading through the backstory and all that stuff about crystals -- why it's even worth reading Catalyst, if you have enough spare time before the movie opens.

As Lucasfilm confirmed this weekend, when I and dozens of other fans and journalists got to see the first 18 minutes of Rogue One, this is the point where the movie opens. Galen, Lyra and Jyn -- still a child -- have built a home on the tundra planet of Lah'mu.

This is where Orson Krennic finally chases them down (not a spoiler; it's in the trailers.) He's come to take Galen back to the Death Star project. Krennic doesn't take young Jyn, but she does end up in an Imperial cell years later, guarded by Stormtroopers. (Again, not a spoiler; this exact jump cut is in the trailers too.)

SEE ALSO:'Rogue One' revelations: Everything we just learned about the new Star Wars movie

This is where the Rogue Oneadventure really gets going, spinning us through a surprising number of planets in a short space of time.

To gloss over plenty of spoiler-y details and confirm what you can pretty much discern from the trailers: Jyn gets busted out of jail by the rebels. We meet Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a veteran Rebel spy, and K2-SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk), a 7-foot Imperial droid reprogrammed to work for the good guys.

Jyn is brought to Rebel headquarters on Yavin IV -- yep, the same Rebel base with the temples at the end of the original Star Wars. She meets Mon Mothma (the redheaded, white-robed Rebel leader you might remember from Return of the Jedi) and is told they have received some kind of warning from her father, and signs up to find out more.

The warning is about a "major weapons test;" at some point, the Rebels discover the major weapon is the technological terror known as the Death Star, and the mission shifts to finding intelligence on its weaknesses.

Next, on the planet of Jedha, which is about the only place in the galaxy that still worships The Force, our trio of spies become five. They meet Chirrut Imwe (Martial arts legend Donnie Yen), a blind warrior monk who can kick ass with a stick, and his blaster-wielding friend Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen).

Rounding out the Rogue One crew is Jedha native Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed); a Rebel pilot described as the everyman of the group, he's the one who comes up with the crew's call sign.

And of course we'll get plenty of glimpses of Jyn's old friend Saw Gererra. Played in the movie by Forest Whittaker, Saw is shunned by Mon Mothma and the other Rebels for his extremist methods.

SEE ALSO:Forget Darth Vader. This is the 'Rogue One' character that has Star Wars fans buzzing

We also know from the trailers that a city on Jedha is going to fall victim to the Death Star — which, even if it's not capable of wiping out worlds just yet, is still able to seriously mess up very large chunks of them. 

The crucial battle that the Rebels win is on (and above) the tropical planet of Scarif. That's why you may have seen all those pictures of Stormtroopers in crystal blue waters.

It's also where the Rogue One crew will have to do battle with AT-ATs, only in this movie they're called AT-ACTs, a larger version with a cargo bed, because Lucasfilm always likes to sell new toys.

Credit: lucasfilm

Somewhere in here, Orson Krennic will tussle with Darth Vader. We may see Governor Tarkin, though the filmmakers are staying mum on that question.

We don't know if the movie will explain exactly how the Death Star plans end up in Princess Leia's hands at the beginning of Star Wars. However, we don't doubt a story that has taken so many interesting turns on the road to being born has one or two more unseen twists ahead.

And there's one more thing you should know about Rogue One: it isn't likely to end well. Think about it: we know the spies are successful. But they're also never heard of again, in any Star Wars movie set further down the line.

At best, our heroes simply slip into quiet retirement, shunning that flashy throne room medal ceremony. At worst -- well, as Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said in a press conference Sunday, it is "doubtful" these characters will ever show up in any other movie again.

"There are a lot of tears," Kennedy warned. "A lot of tears."

The Rogue Onepremiere is on December 10, and we'll have our review here on Mashableshortly after. The film goes into wide release in the U.S. on December 16.

TopicsStar Wars

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