With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story telling a completely separate tale from the rest of the Star Wars universe, we're always interested in more details about what we're going to get. Sometimes, that information comes from the strangest places. A new commercial for Gillette razors is giving us as much information about the new film as anything in a trailer.
The commercial follows a soldier in the Rebel Alliance as he and his team face off against a set of Stormtroopers. Then, it rewinds time to take us back to the beginning of his day, because how well you shaved this morning is really important when you're about to get murdered by the Empire. However, in between the beginning and end of the commercial, we get as good a look at the environments that will make up Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as anything Lucasfilm themselves has put out.
While the shots involving the actor are clearly created specifically for the commercial, it's possible that the some of the footage, the Stormtroopers, the spacecrafts flying through space, and taking off/landing at the rebel base, are actual footage from the film, rather than simply part of the commercial. We're sure that the licensing deal with Gillette probably gives them the right to use some footage, and that surely would have been cheaper than producing it themselves.
Even the content that is clearly meant to sell you a razor still gives us a decent look at the beach planet where the majority of the film's action appears to take place, as well as the rebel base where Jyn Erso will start her mission to recover the Death Star plans.
At this point, it's become common for licensing deals to give us as much information about a film, if not more, than the official marketing plan. We've received as many leaks from the release of a new toy as we have from the set. While this certainly doesn't give anything away, it does give us a bit of new footage, and who's to say there isn't something in this commercial that doesn't reveal some significant details about the movie.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time than an innocuous commercial accidently spilled the beans. Last year, in the run-up to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a battery commercial showed a young girl dressed as Rey exhibiting Force powers, something that no trailer had yet revealed. Maybe there's a detail here that's important to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, we just don't know it because of the context.
We're looking forward to the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story this December, where we'll see Rebels, both clean shaven and bearded, fighting to take the Death Star plans from the Empire.
