https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/rogue-one-ending-changed-what-was-alternate-ending-958057/

‘Rogue One’: What Was the Original Ending of the Movie?

The trailers might hold the key to what came before the reshoots.

BY GRAEME MCMILLAN

DECEMBER 20, 2016 2:09PM

By this point, the reshoots for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story have reached a near-mythical status, prompting much speculation about what the movie was like before Tony Gilroy got onboard to reshape the movie — speculation only helped by the fact that trailers and promotional material referred to scenes not in the finished product. What originally happened at the climax of the movie? Was there, many people have wondered, an ending where the crew lived? Well … yes and no.

In the latest episode of the Empire podcast, director Gareth Edwards admits that, yes, there was a version of the screenplay where Jyn et al. made it out alive — but that it was never actually shot.

“I think there was an early version [of the screenplay] — the very first version they didn’t [die] in,” he explained. “It was just assumed by us that we couldn’t [kill the cast] and they’re not gonna let us do that. So we’re trying to figure out how this ends where that doesn’t happen. And then everyone read that [first screenplay], and there was just this feeling of like, ‘They gotta die, right?’ And everyone was like, ‘Yeah, can we?’ And we thought we weren’t gonna be allowed to, but Kathy [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] and everyone at Disney were like, ‘Yeah, makes sense.'”

So, now we know: Those shots in promotional material where Jyn and Cassian are seen running across the battlefield in Scarif with the Death Star plans in hand (skip to 1:21 in the video below) weren’t leading to a happy ending. But … what were they leading to, in that case?

It’s worth looking back at the original teaser trailer for the movie, released in April, for another shot that’s missing from the final version of Rogue One, for another clue. At the 1:17 mark, there’s a visually arresting glimpse at Orson Krennic seemingly walking on water towards scenes of destruction with dead Stormtroopers and smoldering ruins ahead of him, with it appearing to be twilight.

On the face of it, this makes little sense; the rest of the battle had taken place during the day, in bright sunlight. Would Krennic wait until some time after the skirmish to wander outside and see what had happened? … Actually, sure, that seems suitably cowardly and would be in keeping with his character. But what if it’s not actually twilight as such? What if it just looks like that because the Death Star is — as it does with Jedda — eclipsing the sun as it prepares to fire on the planet?

As I’ve already speculated, it seems likely that there was an entirely different showdown between Jyn and Krennic in earlier versions of Rogue One — perhaps one that didn’t see her needing to be saved by Cassian for no immediately obvious reason. Could there have been a version of their meeting that happens on the beaches of Scarif, with both knowing for sure that the Death Star is about to destroy the planet, meaning that neither side has any reason to hold back, emotionally or otherwise…?

(The idea of those two being obliterated by the Death Star mid-deeply emotional argument is perhaps just a little too bleakly comedic, however.)

In the same Empire interview, Edwards talked about the fact that the movie trailers featured so much material that wasn’t in the actual finished version. “There was a bit of a process to refining the third act in terms of specific shots and moments, and certain things just fell away,” he explained. “What happened was marketing loved those shots and said, ‘Oh, we’ve got to use that.’ And you say, ‘Well, it’s not in the movie,’ and they said ‘It’s okay. It’s what marketing does — we just use the best of whatever you’ve done.'”

As a marketing plan, it worked — although, it’s Star Wars; almost anything would work, I suspect, up to and including simply saying, “It’s the new Star Wars movie” and leaving all the details out — but in the process, it created a phantom Rogue One that will perpetually tease fans with what could have been … at least until the alternate cut released for an anniversary years from now. Maybe then we’ll find out what really happened on Scarif.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/how-darth-vader-got-his-groove-back-in-rogue-one-thanks-to-last-minute-tweak-123552848.html 

How Darth Vader Got His Groove Back in 'Rogue One' Thanks to Last-Minute Tweak

From the moment he burst onto the blockade runner in 1977’s Star Wars: New Hope, Darth Vader has reigned as one of the biggest, baddest, most iconic antagonists in cinema. But let’s face facts: The Sith lord has largely been coasting on reputation these past 40 years. After all, most of his big-screen career has seen the erstwhile Anakin Skywalker being alternately redeemed in third-act Return of the Jedi heroics or humanized via the prequels’ backstory, which saw him develop from whiny kid to angsty adolescent to disaffected young adult, all too easily manipulated by Palpatine along the way.

But, thanks to Rogue One, Darth Vader is back at his malevolent best, annihilating rebels with a mere flick of his wrist and flash of his lightsaber in the film’s waning moments. However, that climactic scene, which reestablishes Vader’s dark side bona fides and has quickly become a fan favorite, almost didn’t exist. According to editor John Gilroy, the badass action scene was one of the key late tweaks arising from the film’s infamous reshoots. “What was added — and it was a fantastic add — was the Vader action scene, with him boarding the ship and dispatching all those rebel soldiers,” he tells Yahoo Movies. “That was something conceptualized a little later.”

With the Star Wars standalone providing the connective tissue between Revenge of the Sith (which ends with our first glimpse of Anakin-as-Vader) and A New Hope, director Gareth Edwards always intended to bring back the dark lord. As initially conceived, though, Vader was more threat than death agent in his brief appearances — an ominous warning here, a nonlethal Force choke there.

Gilroy, who came aboard the production late in the game to help incorporate the reshoots overseen by his brother, Tony, alongside Edwards, explains how that final scene changed over the course of the summer. Reverse-engineering the opening of A New Hope, Edwards and the Rogue One screenwriters had plotted out the ending almost precisely as it was rendered onscreen: Jyn and Cassian steal the Death Star plans from the Imperial archives on the tropical planet Scarif, and, with the help of their crew, manage to beam the data to the Alliance fleet orbiting above. From there, a hard copy is passed along until it winds up in the hands of Princess Leia, with Vader in hot pursuit. “As far as I know that was always the plan… the main structure was there,” explains Gilroy.

But then the Rogue brain trust decided to up the dark-side-of-the-Force factor and allow Vader to reclaim his Sith cred, storming the Alliance flagship, wiping out the crew, and nearly preventing the plans from getting to Leia. “It was a really great punch in the arm and something I think fans wanted to see,” the editor continues, again using “fantastic” to describe the inspired addition.

As the Rogue One story was reshaped during reshoots, Vader’s earlier scenes were likewise retooled. Most notably, a segment featured in the first full trailer (below), was cut from the film.

Because of the timing of the reshoots, a different actor was needed to don the ebony armor. Daniel Naprous wielded the lightsaber for the climactic scene, while Spencer Wilding did the chores for initial meeting between Vader and Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic. (James Earl Jones, of course, provided the Sith lord’s pipes throughout.)

As Gilroy notes, fan service was important for the filmmakers. Aside from showcasing Vader at the height of his villainous powers, the film also revealed his home base, a lair on Mustafar. The castle was based in part on unused designs legendary concept artist Ralph McQuarrie dreamed up for The Empire Strikes Back.

Mustafar, meanwhile, was the site of the fateful lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) in Revenge of Sith, where the Jedi master leaves his dismembered pupil near death on the lava-choked planet — one of the most memorable settings of the prequel trilogy.

While every other location in Rogue One is identified on screen by a chyron, Mustafar conspicuously isn’t. Gilroy explains that was an intentional Easter egg.

“We had one on for a little while, but what we realized was Star Wars fans — true Star Wars fans — if they saw the name, would know exactly what they were going to see. And we wanted it to be a bit of a surprise, so we decided to not put the title on so Star Wars fans could be surprised along with people who were not initiated to where Mustafar was.”

https://screenrant.com/rogue-one-darth-vader-tarkin-deleted-scene-image/ 

Rogue One's Deleted Darth Vader Death Star Scene Image Revealed

An image of Darth Vader's deleted scene from Rogue One has been revealed with the filmmakers sharing context about what it was supposed to be about.

BY ANA DUMARAOGPUBLISHED FEB 02, 2021

A newly-released Rogue One: A Star Wars Story image reveals Darth Vader's deleted scene from the movie. Lucasfilm's first Star Wars spin-off released in 2016 debuting a ragtag band of Freedom Fighters who sacrificed their lives to steal the plans for the Death Star. This was instrumental in the Rebellion's disarming of the galactic weapon in A New Hope.

Rogue One directly led into the beginning of the original Star Wars movie, so while it's technically about new characters like Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, and Orson Krennic, the film also featured some familiar faces. Peter Cushing was recreated through CGI to include Grand Moff Tarkin; meanwhile, a different actress was used as Princess Leia, but VFX made her look a little bit more like young Carrie Fisher. Finally, Darth Vader was in the movie as well. While sparingly used, Rogue One had one of his most iconic scenes in Star Wars thus far — the terrifying hallway scene. But aside from this and a couple of other appearances throughout the movie, there was supposed to be another sequence where he was involved.

A still from that said scene was recently released by ILM Animation Director Hal Hickel. In the comments section, he added that Vader was supposed to have a conversation with Tarkin at this point; unfortunately, he couldn't remember what the dialog was going to be. Check out the image below:

Last Rogue memory for today: pic.twitter.com/iJd5GDu1fQ

— Hal Hickel (@halhickel) February 2, 2021

It's no secret that Rogue One went through some significant changes with script rewrites and reshoots that ultimately altered the film's memorable ending. This particular shot of Vader was featured in the trailers for the film but never made it on the theatrical cut of the movie. Hickel didn't get into specifics about why it was cut, but he said that it didn't fit the final form of the project, so they decided to scrap it. Understandably, fans in the comments section are asking for more information. Some of them floated the idea that Lucasfilm add this particular moment and all the other unused shots for a special edition version of Rogue One. Hickel responded that if there's enough interest, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Depending on what Vader and Tarkin were talking about in the aforementioned scene, it might have been for the best that it was ultimately taken out. The enduring appeal of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is that it never lost sight of what it was actually supposed to be about, with the focus on its main players. But, it peppered enough references and cameos from the lore that effectively established its place in the franchise. Vader was used perfectly so as not to overshadow its primary characters.

Rogue One almost had a bonus Vader scene — killing a major character

https://ew.com/movies/2017/03/21/rogue-almost-got-more-vader-killing-a-major-character/

Rogue One almost had a bonus Vader scene — killing a major character

Darth Vader was always going to be used sparingly in 'Rogue One,' but 'spare' isn't exactly in the Dark Lord's personal lexicon.

By Anthony Breznican
March 21, 2017 at 12:00 PM EDT

Which paths through the galaxy weren’t taken? That’s a question Star Wars fans still have about Rogue One, and EW will be providing answers this week leading up to the movie’s digital debut on Friday. (It’s out on Blu-ray April 4.) Next up in our Rogue One Revelations series:

A bonus Vader scene – and his murder of a major character …

On Monday, we talked about a “happier ending” that was considered during the early stages of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Tuesday’s subject is the much grimmer ending that almost faced another important character.

Darth Vader was always going to be used sparingly in Rogue One, but “spare” isn’t exactly in the Dark Lord’s personal lexicon.

In early drafts of the story, his merciless nature would have been highlighted not in a brutal lightsaber melee against a corridor full of Rebel soldiers, but in the cruel and unusual execution of a member of the Imperial high command.

“Vader is in the movie as much as he always was. He only had two things in the film. He was on Mustafar and then in the battle at the end,” says Gary Whitta, who wrote a version of the script that was then redrafted by Chris Weitz and later Tony Gilroy.

“The rampage where [Vader] murdered everybody wasn’t me. That got added later,” said Whitta, although he had considered a different battlefield confrontation between a large group of opponents and the Sith Lord. “I had pictured early on Vader murdering all these Rebel soldiers but I never wrote it into the script. It was an idea that stuck around after I left and they ended up finding a cool way to use it. It’s actually my favorite thing in the film.”

He did have a bonus Vader scene near the end that ended up being dropped from the storyline.

At the top of this post, you’ll see an exclusive featurette from the new in-home release of Rogue One, where Vader is literally and figuratively dusted off and brought back to life in the Star Wars universe.

But here’s how he would have ended a major character in an abandoned sequence considered for the film’s finale.

Picture this: the Death Star shows up on the horizon of Scarif and does the same partial blast that we see in the finished movie — scorching the surface of the tropical world and demolishing the Rebel uprising along with the Empire’s weapons facility.

Back in this version of the story, Jyn Erso and the character we came to know as Cassian Andor escaped with both the data tapes and their lives. The villain of the story, Director Krennic (played by Ben Mendelsohn) also survived the battle, although barely.

Instead of lying wounded on a transmission platform while the green beam of the Death Star literally incinerates him on its trajectory into the planet, Krennic found shelter from the blast. In what sounds like a type of epilogue to the story, we would have seen his rescue by Imperial forces.

“They tore him out of the rubble and they brought him back,” Whitta says. “When they’re going over the ruins, he somehow survived.”

If this seems unlikely … yeah. It really was. The writer had to concoct a reason that Krennic was able to find safety from the planet-punching laser and explain in reasonable terms how he could survive even the blistering aftermath. “It’s a bit of a reach,” Whitta says, “which is why it isn’t in the finished film.”

Had the filmmakers continued pursuing this storyline, Krennic would have been recovered along with presumably other valuable artifacts belonging to the Empire’s special weapons division.

“He survived the blast and they pulled him up and brought him to the Star Destroyer to report to Vader,” Whitta says. “He’s all beat up, his cape’s all torn up and stuff, and he thinks he has survived.”

Except this time, Vader isn’t just wielding deadly puns.

Krennic thinks he has endured. He thinks he has served valiantly for the Emperor. He thinks he has done everything right, everything within his power … right up until an unseen force squeezes off the air in his throat.

“Vader kills him for his failure,” Whitta says.

https://ew.com/movies/2017/03/23/rogue-one-riz-ahmed-bokan-bodhi-rook/ 

In Rogue One, Riz Ahmed almost played a madman engineer named Bokan

Ahmed took the 'Star Wars' job thinking he would play someone else

By Anthony Breznican
March 23, 2017 at 01:18 PM EDT

Which paths through the galaxy weren’t taken? That’s a question Star Wars fans still have about Rogue One, and EW will be providing answers this week leading up to the movie’s digital debut on Friday. (It’s out on Blu-ray April 4.) Today in our Rogue One Revelations series:

Before he was Bodhi Rook, Riz Ahmed was playing a crazed, imprisoned engineer named Bokan …

Who am I?

That’s the soul-searching question of Bodhi Rook, the defecting Imperial pilot Riz Ahmed played in Rogue One, and throughout the Star Wars standalone film he answered that question with bravery and sacrifice. But in the original drafts of the story he didn’t even exist.

Ahmed took the job thinking he would play someone else.

“His name was Bokan, and he was actually Saw Gerrera’s engineer, living on a planet with a strong electromagnetic field, which meant that electronics were never working,” Ahmed says. “He was actually an Imperial engineer who had been kidnapped and kind of had Stockholm Syndrome. He had been living there for so long, he kind of lost it, like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now.”

Bokan was still a key to unlocking the Death Star’s weakness, so he was sought by both heroes and villains alike. The moon Gerrera was using as a hideout protected their little crew of insurgents from all search parties, and the Rebel team led by Jyn Erso originally wrecked its U-wing trying to track them down.

“We knew we needed to ditch the U-Wing and get them on that Imperial shuttle that they used at the end. In the finished film, you see that scene happen on Eadu,” says Gary Whitta, who worked on the early screenplays.

Before that evolution in the story, the Rebels crash-landed amid the electrical storms of Gerrera’s moon. “When they try to land, there’s a ship graveyard, and that’s part of the reason the Empire’s never found [Gerrera],” says Gary Whitta, who worked on the early screenplays. “Saw has modified his ships to survive in that environment but nothing else can land.”

As everyone knows who saw the film, Bokan became Bodhi Rook, the pilot from Jedha who led Jyn Erso to her captured scientist father. The name change was symbolic, Ahmed says.

“Bodhi means awakening,” Ahmed says. “He’s a character who goes through kind of an enlightenment.”

Director Gareth Edwards says they kept the same actor, even though the character changed so much, because Ahmed is good at playing conflicted decency.

“With Riz, we needed a person that was stuck in this life with the bad guys. He had gotten there by accident and the only way he could survive was to play along. Deep down he had guilt. He was going to be one of those characters that was going to help turn this around,” the filmmaker says. “He wasn’t brave at the start but found bravery in the end. Even though we changed the literal character, that underlining concept stayed intact. We thought it would be stronger if he wasn’t Saw Gerrera’s guy, but instead he knew Galen. Those sorts of things changed, but the desire for them feels similar.”

RESHOOT CHANGES

Ahmed also shed some light on the reshoots, revealing a different version of Bodhi Rook’s final scene. [Obviously, this is a major spoiler …]

“Actually he died slightly differently before, in that whole sequence of him running around with the plug,” Ahmed says. “There was actually this one shot that was about a minute long, and it was basically Bodhi ducking and diving from Stormtroopers to try and like get the plug to where he wanted it to go while Donnie and Jyn, when Chirrut and Baze were kind of flanking him.”

Think of it as hockey, with Bodhi speeding forward with the puck while Chirrut and Baze skate into to defend him on either side.

“Every time he’d get sprung by a Stormtrooper, Donnie would come out and Bang! then they would go down, and then Bodhi would have to crawl and jump over somebody, just to be caught again.Then Chirrut would pop up. It was almost, kind of an extended slapstick comedy sequence.”

Things got dark fast, however. “When he was running into the ship, he was shot and badly injured,” Ahmed said. “He has to crawl his way back onto the ship, and it was quite extended.”

It still ended with the same moment of triumph, followed by his demise in an explosion, but Ahmed says he’s glad they reshot that sequence.

“It’s right that it was truncated because it makes his death more unexpected,” he says. “It also allows some of the time that was taken up by telling that story [to focus on] the emotional story: what Jyn is going through there, and Kaytoo’s sacrifice. They opted to make it a more emotional film instead of just the bells and whistles kind of thing.”

BODHI’S UNTOLD FAMILY STORY

Ahmed also revealed some pieces of Bodhi Rook’s history that never made it onscreen. “Bodhi grew up on Jedha. It’s been a troubled planet for a long time. It’s occupied by Imperial forces, and I was thinking, ‘What makes you want to be a cargo pilot and just fly long distances for the Empire?’ I always imagined he was supporting maybe a single mother.”

In his mind, Bodhi was the only child from a poor family who agreed to work with the Empire because his mother was sick and had no one else to support her. “He’s taking a job, which a lot of people wouldn’t take. They’d think he was a collaborator with the evil forces,” Ahmed says. “He’s in a position of necessity rather than privilege, and I also think the desire to kind of fly and escape is a strong one. He’s someone who’s always kind of dreamed of escaping and leaving his home world behind, which also speaks to his ability to turn away from the political reality of Jedha.”

Then something happens that changes his mind and makes him turn against the Empire and try to help the Rebellion.

“In my mind, I think he would have lost his mother not too long ago, before we meet him, and that, in a weird way, makes him reassess,” Ahmed says. “It liberates him more. What he’s doing with his life, given that we’re only here for a short period of time?”

With his mother gone, there would be no one left in his life for the Empire to punish for his resistance.

Bodhi Rook went from the man who wasn’t there to the man with nothing to lose.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/star-wars-rogue-one-writer-tony-gilroy-opens-up-reshoots-1100060/

Tony Gilroy on ‘Rogue One’ Reshoots: They Were in “Terrible Trouble”

The screenwriter, who salvaged the 'Star Wars' project, says the situation was so dire, "all you could do was improve their position."

BY AARON COUCH

APRIL 5, 2018 9:49AM

Tony Gilroy is getting candid for the first time about his emergency trip to the Star Wars galaxy.

In June 2016, Lucasfilm hired the Oscar-nominated writer to rework Rogue One: A Star Wars Story after the studio was unsatisfied by the state of director Gareth Edwards’ movie. By August, he was taking a leading role in postproduction and oversaw reshoots to fix a few issues, including the film’s ending. Gilroy ultimately was paid millions for his work, and many consider him the film’s ghost director. 

Gilroy had not spoken publicly about Rogue One until Monday’s appearance on The Moment With Brian Koppelman podcast, where he noted that he immediately saw ways to improve the movie when he came on the scene in London.

“If you look at Rogue, all the difficulty with Rogue, all the confusion of it … and all the mess, and in the end when you get in there, it’s actually very, very simple to solve,” Gilroy said of the film. “Because you sort of go, ‘This is a movie where, folks, just look. Everyone is going to die.’ So it’s a movie about sacrifice.”

He saw the opportunity to explore why the film’s characters — played by stars Felicity Jones, Diego Luna and Donnie Yen — would ultimately sacrifice themselves at the end of the film in order to allow the Rebels to gain the plans to the Death Star.

Choosing his words carefully, Gilroy signaled how much of the project  was changed after he boarded. (Star Ben Mendelsohn has said “an enormously different” version of the film exists.)

“I came in after the director’s cut. I have a screenplay credit in the arbitration that was easily won,” said Gilroy.

Unlike lifelong fans like Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s Rian Johnson, Gilroy was not a fan of the franchise before boarding and therefore had no trepidation about potentially messing it up.

“I’ve never been interested in Star Wars, ever. So I had no reverence for it whatsoever. I was unafraid about that,” said Gilroy. “And they were in such a swamp … they were in so much terrible, terrible trouble that all you could do was improve their position.”

Rogue One debuted to strong reviews (85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and earned more than $1 billion at the global box office, but Gilroy doesn’t have plans to return to a galaxy far, far away.

“It doesn’t appeal to me,” he said of making another Star Wars film. “But I don’t think Rogue really is a Star Wars movie in many ways. To me, it’s a Battle of Britain movie.”

Listen to the full podcast of The Moment With Brian Koppelman here. His remarks on Rogue One begin just before the 46:00 mark.

New 'Rogue One' Photos Reveal New Scenes That Didn't Make The Cut & More

New 'Rogue One' Photos Reveal New Scenes That Didn't Make The Cut & More

BY ETHAN ANDERTON/JAN. 4, 2017 1:30 PM EDT

 

In the 18 days that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was in theaters in 2016, the movie rounded up enough box office dollars to be the second highest grossing movie of the year. That's most impressive, even if it's not entirely unexpected from a Star Wars movie, and with more money pouring in everyday, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we're still learning new things about the movie whose production has been under a microscope ever since extensive reshoots were done last summer.

Following recent details on which scenes were reshoots, and how a unique pre-production process created a cut of Rogue One composed of footage from other movies, a whole slew of new photos from the set have been revealed, showing off more of the deleted scenes that fans like us are so desperate to know about. There's one shot in particular that makes me wonder just what the scene in question would have entailed.

But then there are these shots, showing more of the deleted scenes from the beach:

As you can see, these shots from the beach continue to show Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) involved in the action on the beach instead of staying inside the Imperial citadel where the Death Star plans were retrieved. You can even see the plans in Jyn's left hand, and that's Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) standing over her shoulder. The other photo features Gareth Edwards directing on the beach, with a kick-ass shirt that I want right now, and there's Alan Tudyk standing beside him, further showing K-2SO was involved in the fighting on the shores as well.

There is also this shot of a reflective moment with Jyn Erso in the Rebel base on Yavin IV:

Was this a moment where Jyn had to consider the mission she was about to take on? She appears to be holding the kyber crystal necklace that her mother gave her just before sending her off to hide in the opening moments of the movie. Was there meant to be another flashback during this scene as she remembered the family she used to have?

However, by far the coolest new shot from a scene we didn't see in Rogue One is this one:

That's Ben Mendelsohn as Director Orson Krennic, and he has his blaster drawn and pointed at someone off-screen as Imperial officers look on. This appears to be the room in which the Imperial officers view the destruction of Jedha after the Death Star's primary weapon is tested on the planet that was mined for its kyber crystals. You may remember this scene featured a stand-off between Krennic and Grand Moff Tarkin as to who was going to be in charge of the Death Star from here on out, prompting Krennic to go whine to Darth Vader. Could this scene have featured Krennic drawing his blaster on Tarkin and threatening him at one point? We've heard that there are several different versions of some scenes, so maybe this is one of them.

 

https://www.slashfilm.com/548527/rogue-one-deleted-scene-images/

Rogue One's editors reveal the scenes added in the Star Wars standalone reshoots

 

Rogue One's editors reveal the scenes added in the Star Wars standalone reshoots (exclusive)

Tom Butler

·Editor, Yahoo Entertainment UK

3 January 2017

 

Whatever way you look at it ‘Rogue One’, the first of Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ standalone movies directed by Gareth Edwards, has been a roaring success.

The fans love it, the critics love it (it’s at 85% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer), and it’s been a big hit at the box office too, but since its release it’s emerged that the film could have been very different if Disney hadn’t reshaped the movie between its principal shoot that ended in February 2016 and the much-discussed reshoots that happened in June last year.

You only have to watch the film’s trailers to see huge scenes that were initially shot but didn’t make it into the finished film.

 

Two of the film’s editors John Gilroy (editor of ‘Suicide Squad’/’Nightcrawler’/’Pacific Rim’ and brother of Tony Gilroy, the ‘Michael Clayton’ and ‘Bourne Legacy’ director brought in to oversee the reshoots) and Colin Goudie (editor of Edwards’ 2010 breakout ‘Monsters’) chatted with Yahoo Movies UK to discuss their roles on the movie, explain how the reshoots reshaped the movie, and share how some classic footage from ‘A New Hope’ made it into ‘Rogue One’ with help from the original actor who played Gold Leader.

WARNING: PLOT SPOILERS COMING UP

 

Yahoo Movies: There were three editors on ‘Rogue One’ – John Gilroy, Colin Goudie, Jabez Olssen – can you explain how the work was divided up?

John Gilroy: I got involved a little bit later. Jabez and Colin were on from the beginning. I was finishing up a movie and I got a call from Lucasfilm at the beginning of the summer. They were reconceptualising some of the story and there was some additional photography and they wanted a fresh pair of eyes in the room, so I went off and joined Colin and Jabez.

They’d been carrying the water for a long time.

Colin Goudie: I’d worked with Gareth [Edwards] previously. I cut his movie ‘Monsters’ so we’d already got a relationship and I’d actually done a couple of projects with him before that as well. So he got me on board in September of 2014 and asked me to do a story reel for ‘Rogue One’.

There was no screenplay, there was just a story breakdown at that point, scene by scene. He got me to rip hundreds of movies and basically make ‘Rogue One’ using other films so that they could work out how much dialogue they actually needed in the film.

It’s very simple to have a line [in the script] that reads “Krennic’s shuttle descends to the planet”, now that takes maybe 2-3 seconds in other films, but if you look at any other ‘Star Wars’ film you realise that takes 45 seconds or a minute of screen time. So by making the whole film that way – I used a lot of the ‘Star Wars’ films – but also hundreds of other films too, it gave us a good idea of the timing.

 

For example the sequence of them breaking into the vault I was ripping the big door closing in ‘Wargames’ to work out how long does a vault door take to close.

So that’s what I did and that was three months work to do that and that had captions at the bottom which explained the action that was going to be taking place, and two thirds of the screen was filled with the concept art that had already been done and one quarter, the bottom corner, was the little movie clip to give you how long that scene would actually take.

Then I used dialogue from other movies to give you a sense of how long it would take in other films for someone to be interrogated. So for instance, when Jyn gets interrogated at the beginning of the film by the Rebel council, I used the scene where Ripley gets interrogated in ‘Aliens’.

So you get an idea of what movies usually do.

John Gilroy: I never thanked you for doing all that!

Colin Goudie: [Laughs] So that was our starting point, and then six months after that I spent working with The Third Floor, the pre-viz team editing all the pre-viz big action scenes, so that was the Eadu platform where Jyn rescues her dad, the going through the shield gate and all of the battle on Scarif, and a little bit on Jedha where they flee the planet as it explodes.

So then it’s down to shot by shot basis and then that feeds through and informs the production department for building sets, working out what shots can be done by stunt persons and what shots will be done by a digital double, a CGI character, something like that.

 

Then when we actually started shooting was when Jabez came on board and then we just divvied up the rushes. For instance the Eadu scene, on the mountain in the rain, he just gave me that entire reel because there I’d already cut about 20 minutes of pre-viz and then I could just do that, and he would be off cutting another scene, so we would work it that way.

It was such a team effort, it had to be. There was so much material that was filmed for the big scenes like the battle in Jedha market place, and I would just wade through that material, and knowing what it was like working with Gareth, I knew what things would catch his eye, what things he liked and then I would sub that down, feed that through to Jabez and then he would go and do his cut of that scene, and then maybe a couple of weeks later I would go back and do a cut of that scene as well.

There were all those different versions for you to look at so you’re kind of seeing the woods for the trees.

Yahoo Movies: Was it clear from those first assemblies what parts required reshoots?

Colin Goudie: I think everyone knew, from the offset, everything was always scheduled from day one for there to be pickups like on every film. We did exactly the same thing on ‘Monsters’, we always knew we were going to go back and do pickups, and it was the same thing with ‘Rogue One’, it was just something that was on the schedule.

We were always going to be there and it was a case of working out, as the story went on, which pieces need a bit more clarification, which places needed a bit more character.

Yahoo Movies: How long were the first assemblies running at?

Colin Goudie: It was not much longer than the finished film. I think the first assembly was not far off actual release length. Maybe 10 minutes longer? I genuinely can’t remember because that was nearly a year ago now. There’s no mythical four hour cut, it doesn’t exist.

Yahoo Movies: You’ve said Gareth likes to film lots of takes, and he also shot scenes on 360 sets – does that cause you difficulties in the edit suite?

Colin Goudie: I usually factor it in on a Gareth film. He likes to operate himself, Greig [Fraser, cinematographer] did a lot of operating actually, Gareth by no means operated everything, but when he does operate in those sorts of battle scenes – he likes to do that – what he likes to do is to try lots of different compositions on shots.

He would move around in the set and run the line again and again. As he’s doing it, he’s trying those out, he’s slightly to the left, or slightly to the right, he’s always moving.

 

Of course, what that means is that generally the latter takes are the ones that we prefer because he’s blocking it out the performance. You just get used to that when you work with him. It’s a lengthier process.

John Gilroy: The 360 sets are mainly just Jedha city [the planet where Jyn and Cassian travel to to find Saw Gerrera], it wasn’t always like that. You definitely pick your moments for when you use that. Jedha was built so you could go 360, but everything wasn’t like that.

 

Colin Goudie: When you walked on the Imperial sets they weren’t like that at all. They were simply a corridor on a set and if you turned around it was the Pinewood lot.

Yahoo Movies: How did the reshoots change the film?

John Gilroy: They gave you the film that you see today. I think they were incredibly helpful. The story was reconceptualised to some degree, there were scenes that were added at the beginning and fleshed out. We wanted to make more of the other characters, like Cassian’s character [Cassian Andor, the Rebel spy played by Diego Luna], and Bodhi’s character [Bodhi Rook, the defected Imperial pilot played by Riz Ahmed].

 

The scene with Cassian’s introduction with the spy, Bodhi traipsing through Jedha on his way to see Saw, these are things that were added. Also Jyn [Jyn Erso, the reluctant leader of the film, played by Felicity Jones], how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better.

Of course, things like that have a ripple effect all through the movie so there was a lot of work to do, and as Colin said, there were three of us, we rolled up our sleeves and we got to work and made the movie you see.

Colin Goudie: It was like life imitating art. Let’s get a band of people and put them together on this secret mission and that’s what’s happening in the film but that’s also what was happening editorially.

We were all jumping in and taking part in the mission and pulling that master switch. It was a bit like that really.

John Gilroy: I don’t know who’s Jyn or who’s Cassian, but it’s a good analogy, I like that analogy.

Colin Goudie: All we need is the blind monk and I think we’re good to go. A blind editor doesn’t sound so good though.

The point with the opening scenes that John was just describing was that the introductions in the opening scene, in the prologue, was always the same. Jyn’s just a little girl, so when you see her as an adult what you saw initially was her in a meeting. That’s not a nice introduction.

 

So having her in prison and then a prison break out, with Cassian on a mission… everybody was a bit more ballsy, or a bit more exciting, and a bit more interesting.

They got there eventually in the film, but this way we came in on the ground running, which was better.

John Gilroy: It became very important to plant the seeds the right way, you’ve got to set up the movie the right way, and then things pay off in the second and third acts.

Yahoo Movies: How much of the film’s final third changed?

John Gilroy: It changed quite a bit. The third act has a lot going on. You have like seven different action venues, the mechanics of the act changed quite a bit in terms of the characters, and I don’t want to go into too much detail about what had been there before, but it was different.

We moved some of the things that our heroes did, they were different in the original then they were as it was conceived.

Because you needed to figure that out, and everything else changes. Everything was connected to everything so doing something to one venue would change all the other venues, so really we had to… we were working on that until the last minute, because we working closely with ILM, they were giving us temporary shots and we’d put them in, we’d work them, we’d reconceive again.

 

It was really like a very tight puzzle and we had to keep honing that and honing that, and I’m very proud of what we did there.

Yahoo Movies: Did you face any continuity issues blending the new stuff with the old stuff?

John Gilroy: That’s mostly a production issue. The whole thing on a ‘Star Wars’ movie you have such professionalism at every level. Everybody that’s working on the movie is just at the top of their game so that wasn’t so hard for us.

Colin Goudie: You talk about trying to make things match from the original shoot and the pickup shoot done a couple of months later: that’s nothing.

We were matching a film that had been shot 40 years earlier.

John Gilroy: That was fun. In the star battle we see Red Leader and Gold Leader. They had these dailies, and they thought it would be a really great idea if we could work it in. So we’re going through the dailies from 40 years ago, picking up pieces that were not used in the original, and then working them into scenarios in the air battle.

 

You’re grabbing a microphone making up some lines and putting them in someone’s mouth, and then you finally have this finished thing. It’s exciting!

Gold Leader, that actor [Angus MacInnes] is still alive, so we looped him [re-recorded new dialogue to dub over footage] and I think it was a really heady experience for him to be looping himself 40 years later, but that was a lot of fun.

Colin Goudie: What was interesting about that was that we had one day right at the beginning of the process back in 2014, and Gareth and I had just done a tour of the archives at Skywalker ranch, and as we were leaving we came out of the back. And out the back there were racks and racks of film and Gareth said ‘what’s that?’

And they said ‘that’s the original reels from ‘A New Hope’’, and Gareth said ‘can we see that? See what’s on it?’ And they were like ‘yeah, I guess!’

And that’s where the idea came from. We went through those cans of film and looked at them and it was like ‘oh my gosh, we can and integrate the pilots in somehow.’

Yahoo Movies: Well, it got a round of applause when we saw it, so we’re glad you figured it out.

John Gilroy: [Laughs] You know what’s really fun? I’m a fan, but not like Colin. By the way, Colin was our ‘Star Wars’ fan, any time I had to understand the authenticity of something, I would ask Colin: he is a true fan.

 

But it was so much fun to plant, and to put in all these little ‘Star Wars’ nuggets through the movie, and when we finally showed it… we didn’t have previews. But to see people respond to those things… you know, we’re not making too much of them, because if you didn’t know, it would be OK too, but when people see those little things, they’re so happy, it was touching to see.

Colin Goudie: I would also say what’s interesting there that John just alluded to – [having no previews] – was actually one of the hardest challenges on this film.

It’s certainly unlike anything I’ve ever done, and John’s got much more experience of huge movies than I have but normally with everything I’ve ever done we previewed. Even the smallest films, the smallest independent movies, we previewed them. And based on those reactions, you get this feedback in the room from an audience. Is it too slow? Is it too fast? What’s working, what isn’t?

And as John just said, because of the secrecy on a ‘Star Wars’ film, they don’t preview. And so the first time we saw that was with 2,700 other people at the world premiere.

And that means you just don’t know until you see it like that.

John Gilroy: This happens with movies that are this popular. The preview thing just becomes very problematic. We’ve done friends and family screenings in the past, but we were really busy right to the end, that’s the only way I can put it, and we had a lot to do.

We added our composer Michael Giacchino really, really late to the game and we were really running at the movie very hard right up to the very end. So it’s a combination of security and time that didn’t permit us to show this to people, which is what you would normally do because you learn a lot from preview screenings.

 

I think we thought that we had… we were all very excited. I know I was very excited by the movie even before people saw it, I could look back at it and go ‘oh yeah, I think people are going to like this.’ So many things were coming together it was really fun to watch, and to be a part of.

Colin Goudie: It’s interesting because when we used to watch it in the dubbing theatre or when making IMAX copies or things like that to review it, I was just sat there thinking ‘this is really good now’.

But it was also this thing of thinking ‘have I just become delusional after two years?’

John Gilroy: I think editors have a… you have to have a sturdier compass than most people, because you are seeing things over and over and over again. But it’s true, we’re all human, you could watch things so many times that you get a little numb.

Colin Goudie: We thought it was surprising because every time I sat and watched it, I enjoyed it. Sometimes I was watching the whole movie, particularly in that last week, reviewing those prints two or three times a day, and each time I’ve thought ‘I’m still feeling it… thankfully!’

It’s a good thing.

Yahoo Movies: Were there any particularly challenging scenes that you were tinkering with right up until the end?

John Gilroy: I think the most – and I’ve said this before in other interviews – I think sensitive dialogue scenes, you have to have a finer sort of touch and they require even more attention than the big action scenes, but that said I think what we did in the third act, because there were so many things going on, I’m very proud of that. It was really hard to do.

The movie also has some great scenes between the characters. I think one of the things about this movie that really works is that it’s very intimate. It’s really about this one woman’s journey.

 

She collects these other people that help her, and there’s some really great scenes in the movie. When she confronts Cassian after Eadu [the planet where Jyn finally catches up with her father Galen Erso, played by Mads Mikkelsen], or after Jedha. There’s some great meaty dialogue scenes and those were just a lot of fun to put together and they were done really well.

I’d say on this movie the action was probably harder than those dialogue scenes, but the dialogue, you have to have a very sensitive touch and you have to very attuned to what those people are doing to really cut a great dialogue scene.

Colin Goudie: That hologram scene [on Jedha], talking of dialogue scenes, that was an interesting one because there was so much going on. The camera moves, the hologram moves, and the Death Star moving as well. There were shots from ILM with the actors and then you’ve got to record Mads [Mikkelsen] to match the movement as well, based on which takes we used. Things like that were very technically difficult scenes.

But I think that last battle scene, it’s like an hour, once they get through the gate on to Scarif [the tropical planet that holds the Empire’s Death Star plans]. I think people are surprised that when the movie feels like it’s going to end, it carries on but not in a bad way as well.

It suddenly kicks up another notch. You’ve gone from the beach scene to suddenly another huge action scene with [Darth] Vader and stuff.

John Gilroy: That’s actually very rare that you can do that. You go from your main characters – they die – and it’s incredibly poignant, then you go from there to Vader boarding the ship and there’s this earned action sequence which is really quite mind-blowing especially for ‘Star Wars’ fans. Then finally you go to Leia and emotionally you’ve turned, you have three different emotions in the space of ten minutes, but I don’t think anyone feels manipulated. And that’s really cool. That’s a great way to end a movie.

So that people when they get up they’re like ‘yeah, OK good, I feel good. Let’s go have a drink and talk about it.’

Colin Goudie: That last piece was a real jigsaw. Because those scenes, up until that moment, most scenes followed on logically. If you look at them, you have Galen on the platform in the rain, that’s A follows B. Jyn leaves the shuttle and goes off, C follows then D.

 

The last hour of that movie, certainly once the Rebel fleet arrives, the intercuts go from the vault to the fleet above to the Rebels on the beach, there is almost an infinite number of ways you can actually choose which scene to go to next.

John Gilroy: But we were only interested in the right way. We were interested in the right way and that’s what we went for.

Colin Goudie: Yeah, that was probably the hardest nugget to find. I think. Because that always something that’s a difficult one to crack. It’s come together beautifully, but I think that’s one of the hardest pieces.

John Gilroy: It was something that had to be right. You had a lot to keep track of. There was quite a bit of expository information that was being set up and you had to pay attention to, and you had to make everything arc. You’re making all these things arc and come to meet at the end, so it was very tricky.

It was challenging. But it was fun. It’s funny when something like that, something complicated like that, you can feel when it starts to click in. We were feeling those clicks early on, but when you finally get it right you can really feel it all snap together and you go ‘aha!’

Colin Goudie: It’s kind of like a Rubik’s Cube. Whereby you have to mess it all up until you do that last piece of the puzzle. You get closer and closer and closer, then suddenly on that penultimate move you mix the entire Rubik’s Cube up and then you slot it all back in and then that’s it. And I think that was how I felt that last hour went.

John Gilroy: That’s a good analogy, I like that.

 

Yahoo Movies: Are there any deleted scenes or cut scenes that you’re really proud of that you’d like to see the light of day eventually?

Colin Goudie: Hmm.

John Gilroy: I don’t know. For me, no. I can’t think of anything.

Colin Goudie: There’s a handful that if people see them they’ll be like ‘oh that’s interesting’, but I don’t think there’s anything whereby you’d be like ‘why did they cut that out?’

John Gilroy: We were in a different position. It wasn’t like ‘the movie’s great, but we have to lose 10 minutes’ or whatever. It was a different situation.

Yahoo Movies: Did you ever discuss having transition wipes like the original films?

John Gilroy: Sure.

Colin Goudie: It was discussed very early on.

 

John Gilroy: With this movie we really wanted to do some things different. This movie has a prologue, it doesn’t have the crawl at the beginning and so on.

Wipes were experimented with but…

Colin Goudie: I think we used all those original wipes and we temped [a temporary soundtrack] it with John Williams as well, and it would feel right. Like when we did the original story reels, I was using footage from other movies, so having those wipes and having the John Williams score helped with making the hodge podge of shots I’d put together feel like what we were aiming for.

Once we actually got in everything we’d shot, we no longer needed those things and I was initially sad to see the transitions go, but then when I watch the final film, I don’t miss them, because it feels like a different beast.

It feels familiar but at the same time fresh.

John Gilroy: I think that it’s wonderfully… it’s just the right amount of different from other ‘Star Wars’ movies, but it also feels very much like a ‘Star Wars’ movie.

It’s a very tricky line to walk but I feel like we got it right. Because true ‘Star Wars’ fans can really get a lot out of it, but it’s also what it is. It’s a different movie and it kind of morphs, right at the very end with Darth Vader and Leia, it morphs into ‘A New Hope’.

You can see it in the last little while, it starts to morph into and cut more like the original movie and feel more like the original movie. I just think that’s great, that we had our own film language and then we were able to – at the end – move ourselves so that we could touch the beginning of that first movie.

‘Rogue One: A Star Wars’ story is in cinemas nationwide now.

 

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