Michael Giacchino had to pull off a pretty impressive feat when he signed on for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story -- the Oscar-winning composer only had four and a half weeks to pen the entire score. Giacchino took over back in September after Rogue One's intensive reshoots shifted the production schedule and original composer Alexandre Desplat had to move on to other commitments, leaving Giacchino on a tight turnaround schedule to make the film's December release.

On top of that, Rogue One is a particularly tricky project. Rooted in the Star Wars mythology, the film acts as a prequel to the original trilogy but it's also Lucasfilm's first-ever standalone film. Which left Giacchino with a challenge very similar to that which faced director Gareth Edwards -- Rogue One needs to feel like Star Wars, but it also needs to be its own thing. Fortunately, it's looking (and sounding) like they pulled it off.

EW premiered a first-listen video, revealing snippets from two Rogue One tracks: “Her Path Is Clear,” which the outlet notes is most likely aJynErso theme, and “Approach toEadu,” which references a planet the Rebel spies visit in the film.

Check out the first snippets of the Rogue One score in the video below. The film stars Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, Ben Mendelsohn, Diego Luna, Donnie Yen, Forest Whitaker, Alan Tudyk, Wen Jiang, and Riz Ahmed.

Speaking with EW, Giacchino talked about the influence of John Williams' iconic score on what he describes as a "95 percent" original score:

As a kid who grew up with John’s music and who was catapulted in this direction because of what he did, I had a very specific idea of what I wanted to use and how I wanted to use it. That being said, I’d say the score is 95 percent original but with little moments [of Williams’ classic score] here or there to accent. If I were sitting in that seat and I heard that, it would totally raise the hairs on my neck.

We know that Rogue One won't have an opening crawl, and likewise, Giacchino teased a "slightly different" music cue for the film's opening theme,

It’s done slightly differently here because it’s not one of the saga films, it’s not one of the trilogies. It’s sort of its own thing and the whole idea from the very beginning was these should be standalone movies. So it’s going to be a slightly different way to get things kicked off.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story arrives in theaters December 16th.