The Dark Lord of the Sith returns to the big screen this December, with Darth Vader set to make his presence felt in Disney and Lucasfilm’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and director Gareth Edwards has been chatting to USA Today about the excitement everyone felt when shooting scenes with the iconic villain.

“It’s like we’re at the playground again and there’s this hero sort of standing there,” said Edwards. “You end up very respectful of him: Even though you know there’s a guy inside the outfit, you still talk to him like he’s Vader.”

The director went on to reveal that Ben Mendelsohn called him over after shooting one sequence between Vader and his character Orson Krennic: “He went, ‘It’s Darth Vader. We filmed with Darth Vader’. And I was like,‘I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ It was like no one wanted to admit that they’re having a little fanboy freak-out but everyone did. It’s impossible not to. He’s so iconic.”

SEE ALSO: Watch a supercut of all the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story trailers

From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set for release on December 15th in the UK and December 16th in the States, with a cast that includes Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Diego Luna (Milk), Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Alan Tudyk (Con Man), Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler), Genevieve O’Reilly (Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith), Jimmy Smits (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), James Earl Jones (Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Valene Kane (The Fall), Alistair Petrie (The Night Manager), Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode IV – Return of the Jedi) and Jonathan Aris (Sherlock).