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‘Rogue One’: What Was the Original Ending of the Movie?
‘Rogue One’: What Was the Original Ending of the Movie?
The trailers might hold the key to what came before the reshoots.
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.
How Darth Vader Got His Groove Back in 'Rogue One' Thanks to Last-Minute Tweak
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.”
Rogue One's Deleted Darth Vader Death Star Scene Image Revealed
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
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
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.
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.
In Rogue One, Riz Ahmed almost played a madman engineer named Bokan
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
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.
Tony Gilroy on ‘Rogue One’ Reshoots: They Were in “Terrible Trouble”
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.
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