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If you’re conscious and over seventeen, you probably have pretty clear expectations for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story : a flashy, well-made and not terribly intricate action movie featuring a young hero with a tragic and/or mysterious past, a multitude of Easter eggs for die-hard fans, and — more than likely — some sort of nefarious infrastructure project. Rogue One makes good on those expectations. The surprising thing is that this, the eighth film in the franchise, might be the most politically substantive yet.

Rebels Without a Pedigree First, a disclaimer: Politics aside, as a lifelong Star Wars fan I am incapable of judging whether Rogue One is actually a good movie. A. O. Scott doesn’t seem to think so. Like most of the theater, I was just excited to be along for the ride. And as rides go, Rogue One doesn’t disappoint: Orphaned heroine Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) falls in with the Rebel Alliance, visits a few planets, discovers an Important Secret Related To Her Past, and ends up leading a scrappy band of rebels in an against-the-odds mission to steal back the plans for the Death Star — which contain the secret to destroying it. As we all know, the moon-like space station/weapon of mass destruction can blow up whole planets with a single blast. Everything is loud and melodramatic and beautiful. Rogue One ’s Evil Empire is the totalitarian state it has been throughout the series, although perhaps even more sadistic and Orwellian. As one Imperial officer states, the “planet killer” is meant to bring “peace and security to the galaxy.” Despite the Empire’s Nazi overtones, the Star Wars franchise has always been infamously light on politics. Other space operas, like Star Trek ’s more savvy installments (think Deep Space Nine and Next Generation ) and the heavy-handed saga Battlestar Galactica , dive headfirst into political allegory. Star Wars ’s signature has always been a simpler good-vs.-evil narrative, with labels like Rebel and Empire serving as helpful signifiers for the Left, but plots universal enough to please audiences from most any political background. There’s a reason it’s the fourth-biggest film franchise of all time rather than a cult classic. Rogue One is able to break from that — if only by degrees — because it’s the first installment in the series not to revolve around the superhuman Jedi or hallowed Skywalker lineage. Instead, it features a new and — in 2016 — very welcome kind of hero: the ordinary rebel. Neither Jyn nor male lead Cassian (Diego Luna) are Jedi, though both are plenty capable of cutting their way through dozens of stormtroopers. The only Jedi character, Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), has relatively little screen time. As a Sith, Darth Vader is the only force user who gets to use a lightsaber. (Mind, there’s a reason for the Jedi’s absence: they were already rare throughout the galaxy, and have at this point been hunted down and slaughtered courtesy of Palpatine, Vader, and Order 66.) Rogue One also corrects for the prequels’ strangely eugenicist idea that access to the force is based on hallowed bloodlines containing large concentrations of symbiotic intelligent microbes called “Midi-chlorians.” The film’s conception of the force is converted instead to its original form — an ancient religion that everyone can access with proper dedication, one embraced by the Rebels. Imwe is an ascetic figure, chanting “I am with the force and the force is with me” in times of peril. The planet Jedha, in fact, is a kind of holy land for force followers, albeit one under Imperial occupation, where rebel fighters are led through the streets in handcuffs. One of Rogue One ’s more fascinating characters is Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), Jyn’s father, an architect who serves the Empire under duress. He agrees to build the Death Star’s, but plants its fatal flaw. When harangued about her father’s status as an “Imperial collaborator,” Jyn explains, “He built it because he knew they would do it without him.” As Trump’s transition team appoints his own imperial stooges to various agencies, it’s hard to imagine mid-level bureaucrats — in places like the EPA or Department of Labor — won’t find themselves facing similar ethical qualms. Should they stay, and try to build their own kill switches into the regime’s plans? Prevent the worst from happening? Or resign in protest to join the resistance? The Department of Energy’s defiance this week, refusing to hand over the names of staff who work now or have ever worked on climate issues, could be a sign of dissent to come.

The Unnamed Soldier Still, if there is a real-world parallel to the battles waged in Rogue One and throughout the franchise, it’s not the anti-Trump resistance — it’s the Spanish Civil War. An autocratic strain from within the state has staged a sudden coup, rapidly claiming territory and institutions from a beleaguered and increasingly shallow democratic system through brute force. In its wake comes military rule, now being beaten back — gruelingly — by rebel forces that are vastly outgunned and outskilled. Because evil (and fascism especially) tends to rule through violence, the battles are relentlessly uphill. Unlike Spain’s Popular Front, however, the Rebel Alliance is neither united around some shared goal nor even a vaguely progressive vision. Rather, it’s formed from the vestiges of the democratic government overrun by the Sith, now radicalized (somewhat) by the threat of evil authoritarianism. Its members include everyone from street kids to senators. To the chagrin of real-life sexists and white supremacists, Rogue One ’s Rebellion is led by women and people of color. Ditching both the prequels’ diplomatic jockeying and the Skywalkers’ messianic tendencies, Rogue One is more of a war movie than any other Star Wars installment, albeit a guerrilla war movie. In that, it’s also a film about collective struggle, placing personal quests and destinies in the backseat. The kinds of heroes Rogue One showcases have been mostly nameless, both in real life and in the franchise. Rebel foot soldiers have so far been mostly lost to Galactic history, save for a few lines in A New Hope ’s opening crawl. As that tells us, the events of the prequels were just “the first victory against the evil Galactic Empire” in a war that lasted more than two decades. Even at the end of Return of the Jedi , the threat has not been stamped out entirely, and the Sith rear their head again in The Force Awakens, the latest in the chronology thus far. The credits of Rogue One offer no easy endings for its heroes — simply an arduous fight ahead. The only reason Rogue One is a hopeful blockbuster is because we already know how it ends.