Will 'Rogue One' let the Empire win?

This would cost a lot in real life. 

Four years ago this week, a White House petition to have the U.S. government build a Death Star earned 25,000 signatures.  This was the required threshold for the petition to get an official response from the White House. You can read the actual White House response here, but all you need to know is that, according to the designated responder to the petition, "a Death isn't on the horizon." 

Well, four years later, we may not be getting a Death Star, but we are getting a movie about the Death Star: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If you somehow haven't heard about it (if so, Donald Trump won the election, FYI), Rogue One will somehow spin a whole movie out of these lines from the opening crawl of the first Star Wars movie: 

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.

If you're not well-versed in the Star Wars universe--though how could you not be, if you are a regular reader of this blog?--you might be wondering why we're getting this movie. It's not a continuation of the main Star Wars story; that continuation, Episode VIII (whose plot I projected here), comes out next December. Rogue One is actually a sort of prequel, telling how the Rebellion procured the Death Star plans that exposed the megastructure's weakness and allowed Luke Skywalker to destroy it in A New Hope. It is the first Star Wars spin-off of Disney's efforts to squeeze as much money out of their recently-purchase property as they can. Another such spin-off, slated for near-future release, will focus on the young Han Solo, though it will do so without me in the lead role I deserve (but I still have some advice for the people behind the movie on how to make sure it's good).

Major missed opportunity on your part, Disney. Audiences will never forgive you for it. 

Fans and non-fans alike might be wondering whether this movie has any justification to exist other than the profit motive (a perfectly defensible justification, might I add!). The people behind the movie, of course, say yes. Their goal with the movie, they say, is to tell a story about the dark, gritty corners of the Star Wars universe, away from Jedi, Skywalkers, and the Force, and closer to the ground of the brutal struggle between the Empire and the Rebellion. That's what they say, anyway. Last summer, when unexpected re-shoots for the movie were announced, I worried that Disney execs saw an initial cut of the movie, found it too dark for popular consumption, and demanded it be "lightened up" so that kids would watch, toys could be bought, etc.

I could be wrong. Reviews suggest I might be. I haven't seen the movie yet, obviously (I'll probably see it this Sunday, and review it here when I do). It's a prequel, and so bound to tell a story we already know (which is why I'm not taking the "AVOID ALL SPOILERS" approach I took to The Force Awakens with Rogue One). Creativity and novelty could still emerge from these limiting parameters, but I still doubt that Rogue One will do the truly bold thing: Let the Empire win.

Not as important a letting the Wookie win.

There are two ways it could do this. One is incredibly unlikely, and would be one of the most unexpected and riskiest creative moves a modern franchise could make: Literally have the Empire win, like how Inglorious Basterds unexpectedly created an alternative timeline in which Allied forces successfully assassinate Hitler and kill most of the German high command well before his real-world bunker suicide in April 1945. Having the Rebels in this movie secure the Death Star plans and then suddenly get wiped out by Vader would be a greater pop culture twist than perhaps anything before it, and represent one of the biggest risks ever taken by a franchise. It would also create an alternate Star Wars timeline, confusing the general audiences already having trouble understanding that this movie is not a sequel to The Force Awakens even more. There's no way it will happen, but if somehow it does, you heard it here first.

There's another way, though, that Rogue One could let the Empire win, and it seems much more likely. Here's how I imagine the movie going, in rough form: Along the way, a few of the motley crew die in their efforts to get the Death Star plans. But, near the end, it seems that they are about to succeed. All is merry. Then, out of nowhere, Darth Vader shows up. Since, to my knowledge, none of the characters in this movie have any kind of Force powers, Vader will be treated on-screen, essentially, as a horror villain. He will pop out of dark corners, float down from high places, block blasters with his hands, Force choke, dismember, decapitate, and utterly ruin whomever remains of Rogue Squadron by the end of the movie, and there's nothing anyone there can do about it. This, remember, is Darth Vader at his prime, when he was choking pilots and boarding enemy ships effortlessly. The main female protagonist in the movie, in classic final girl style, will barely escape Vader's grasp; as she flies away, she sees Vader staring at her, menacingly. That would be an incredible final act.

Having Vader be the sci-fi horror movie villain would let this guy take a break.

Again, I don't know if it will happen. But turning Vader into a horror movie villain would make sense. In the Original Trilogy, he was a fearsome force even for people with use of the Force. Imagine how terrifying it would be to confront him if you were just an infantryman in this war? What could you even do? Anyway, this is just idle speculation, mostly transcribed in advance just to see if I'm right about what will happen and prove it if I am. As with my predicted plot of Star Wars Episode VIII, I both hope I am (for vindication) and hope I'm not (so that I'm still surprised by what happens). Either way, though, until we get a real Death Star, Rogue One will have to suffice.