Star Wars: Felicity Jones explains why Rogue One is more like The Empire Strikes Back

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Those were the first words to ever appear in a Star Wars movie, in the opening crawl of 1977’s A New Hope. Now, almost 40 years later, we are going to see those words finally come to life with the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which will tell that story when it debuts on Dec. 16.

But while Rogue One directly leads right up to the events of Episode IV: A New Hope, it may feel closer in tone to a different Star Wars film. We found this out when we sat down with stars Felicity Jones (Jyn Erso) and Diego Luno (Captain Cassian Andor) for a SiriusXM Town Hall that will air on Entertainment Weekly Radio (Channel 105) later this month.

“The one that we always would come back to would be The Empire Strikes Back,” Jones says. “And I remember with [director Gareth Edwards], we’d keep coming back to it as kind of an inspiration and a reference…