Cancelled cameos, deleted droids, and headless humanoids are just some of the things that
didn't make the final cut of Rogue One.
In this video, I'm going to break down the movie's deleted scenes and characters and
examine the reshoots and rumours and what they meant for the film.
There are also some really interesting rejected concepts which I'll be looking at too.
Of course, there are spoilers ahead for Rogue One and anything Star Wars related, so be
aware of that, and if you're not ready then make sure you see the movie first or check
out my spoiler-free video by tapping up here.
When Industrial Light & Magic's chief creative officer John Knoll pitched his original Rogue
One concept, he put forward a line-up of characters that was vastly different to the final team
we see in the movie.
The original title was going to be "Destroyer of Worlds" and, as well as humans, the rebel
crew included two alien characters called Lunak and Senna.
Lunak and Senna went through multiple versions of design during development, with Senna initially
depicted as a Chewbacca-style alien and Lunak as a kind of side-kick who "could skitter
into an air duct, almost like a little thief".
The aliens were later replaced with the Jedha duo Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus, although
later designs of Senna appear to be the basis for the mercenary Moroff who fights with Saw
Gerrera's Partisans.
The other original Rogue One team members were Jyn Erso, K-2SO, Dray Nevis, Ria Talla
and Jerris Kestal.
Also during this early concept period, Krennic was actually an imperial spy who had infiltrated
the team, sending back his intelligence to an imperial officer called Willix Cree.
As well as changing the original characters, the concept for Rogue One changed from an
ensemble action movie to one with more emphasis on Jyn as the central character.
However, it seems by the final cut of the movie, Jyn's role and screentime were pared
back somewhat.
The trailers point to these cuts with various exchanges between Jyn, General Draven and
Mon Mothma deleted from the final movie.
Including Mon Mothma's line "On your own from the age of fifteen, reckless, aggressive and
undisciplined."
And there are also some snippets of snarky dialogue from the trailers that were cut from
the final film, one of which was Jyn's line "I rebel."
The words proved unpopular with some fans who felt the dialogue was a bit too on the
nose, and it's been rumoured that one objective of the reshoots was to make Jyn's character
less antagonistic.
Key to Jyn's partially missing backstory is what appear to be some significant deleted
scenes with Saw Gerrera.
In the Celebration sizzle reel, there's a deleted scene where Jyn and Saw are outside.
Notice that Saw is bald at this point like he is at the start of the movie when he rescues
the young Jyn, rather than grey haired as he is when Jyn meets him in his cave in the
final movie, which suggests the cut scene is a few years before the main timeline of
Rogue One.
We know that Saw abandoned Jyn when she was 16 as he feared for her safety among his fellow
Partisans, so could this shot be showing that very moment he left her which they talk about
in the movie?
The first trailer also shows a deleted scene with a bald Saw Gerrera and also features
a speech he gives to Jyn.
[Saw Gerrera] "What will you do when they catch you?
What will you do if they break you?
If you continue to fight, what will you become?"
And it seems like these words that we never hear in the final movie, and which seem to
imply she was fighting alongside Saw, may have given further background to why Saw abandoned
Jyn when she was a teenager.
Remember, Saw Gerrera was considered an extremist, with the Rebel Alliance cutting ties with
him, so perhaps the idea for cutting out this part of Jyn's backstory was to make her a
more sympathetic character.
Rumours have also surfaced of a deleted scene between Saw Gerrera and Darth Vader.
The rumour claims there's a scene where Darth Vader attacks Saw Gerrera, badly injuring
the Rebel fighter.
And it's also claimed that there is another cut scene where Vader smashes a Jedi temple.
Both these claims are currently unsubstantiated, but if true, they hint towards an even darker
and more violent Vader than we already saw in Rogue One.
There are some Darth Vader scenes from the trailers though that were definitely cut from
the final movie.
There's a cool shot of Vader looking on at a red schematic of possibly the Death Star
plans, another foreboding reflection of his image set against a fiery red planet or star,
and there's a cut scene where Krennic tells Vader "the power we are dealing with here
is immeasurable".
What we see in the background of these scenes, as well as an officially released promo still,
suggests that before the reshoots, Vader might also have appeared on the Death Star in addition
to Mustafar.
By the way, there were also rumours of a deleted scene where Darth Vader hunted down three
of the main characters and killed them, and I wonder whether this shot of a TIE fighter
appearing at the top of the antenna tower could have been Vader arriving to take out
Jyn, Cassian and Krennic personally?
The scenes on Scarif are certainly a part of the movie were we can see numerous scenes
that were cut from the trailers, which suggests there was some significant reworking of the
story in the third act.
The transmission of the data tapes to the Rebel Alliance appears to have been reworked
substantially.
The first trailer has Jyn and her crew running through the Citadel carrying the data tapes
and in another shot they are dodging enemy fire from Stormtroopers and AT-ACTs on the
beach while carrying the tapes.
Remember in the final cut of the movie, K-2SO dies inside the Citadel while Jyn and Cassian
are recovering the tape, but in this shot from the Celebration sizzle, it looks like
Alan Tudyk, who played K-2SO, is running along the beach in the background in his mo-cap
suit.
So, it could be that, originally, the snarky droid didn't die or at least not in the way
we saw in the movie.
These cut scenes could also suggest that the team was going to physically deliver the plans
intially rather than transmit them via a satellite link.
Or perhaps more likely, the transmission antenna was located in a different position to the
Citadel where they recovered the tapes the final movie, which meant the team had to run
across the beach to reach the tower.
By the way, notice how Jyn and Cassian have their normal clothes on at this point rather
than their imperial disguises which seems to add to the theory that much of the assault
on Scarif was reworked during reshoots.
Other deleted scenes from the Scarif battle include Stormtroopers marching through the
water, Krennic's badass scene where he lands and walks through the water trailing his white
cloak behind him, and Bistan the space monkey's scene where he's machine-gunning from the
inside of a Rebel ship seems to have been cut back as well.
Another victim of the reshoots was astromech imperial droid C2-B5 who served in the Citadel
vault performing maintenance tasks.
C2-B5, also dubbed as "evil R2-D2" by fans when the character was officially announced,
didn't get any significant screentime, but had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo scooting
behind some Stormtroopers in the Citadel.
I wonder if they ever planned with this character to play on how the Death Star plans are entrusted
to R2-D2, reversing it or mirroring it in some way.
Although all the characters die at the end of Rogue One, in the very first screenplay
they actually didn't.
In fact, director Gareth Edwards says he kept expecting to be asked to put in a scene where
Jyn and Cassian survive and are living on another planet.
However, Edwards added that LucasFilm and Disney understood that because the characters
weren't in A New Hope, it made sense that they shouldn't survive Rogue One.
As well as providing the motion capture and voice for K-2SO, Alan Tudyk also filmed a
small live-action cameo as an imperial pilot.
The pilot would have been credited as played by Wray Nerely who is the actor's character
in the web series Con Man, however the scene was cut, which Tudyk has joked is entirely
appropriate for his character in Con Man.
By the way, K2 also had a joke cut from the trailers where he goes up to Jyn and declares
"the captain says you are a friend, I will not kill you".
There's an intriguing deleted cameo in Rogue One by model and actress Eunice Olumide who
filmed a scene on Jedha as a rebellion leader, where she runs through a bar chased by a tank
and Stormtroopers.
In the scene, she's wearing what she described as a "really outlandish costume [and a] sort
of mushroom on [her] head."
And there's been speculation that her character might have been Ahsoka Tano, who's featured
in both the animated Star Wars TV shows The Clone Wars and Rebels.
Han Solo directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller almost made it into Rogue One with cameos
in scenes that were meant to be part of the Jedha sequence.
However, due to timing conflicts, they weren't able to attend the shoot.
Star Wars fans can't forget Leia's famous nerf herder insult to Han Solo in The Empire
Strikes Back and it looks like the original script for Rogue One planned to introduce
actual nerf herders for the first time in the Star Wars movies.
Sadly, they didn't make it to the big screen, but they were likely going to appear on Eadu.
Concept art for the movie also reveals numerous deleted characters and locations from Rogue
One.
On Jedha, there were Stormtroopers that rode these incredibly tall camel-like animals.
And Krennic even had an office set up on Jedha in early concept art.
Also there's some omitted backstory and characters that would have explained what fugitive surgeon
Cornelius Evazan was doing on Jedha.
The headless humanoid Caysin Bog was hinted at in the trailers, but we didn't get to see
the strange-looking servants called the Decraniated who Evazan created during his various operations
in Jedha.
Saw Gerrera had a medical droid called G2-1B7 which he used to help keep himself alive.
There were imperial droids scurrying around the core tower in the Scarif Citadel that
would have caused problems for Jyn trying to access the data tapes.
And there was going to be a mountain planet where the inner Death Star dish was hidden.
The dish would have risen out of a lake on the planet to attach itself to the Death Star,
but the whole concept was scrapped for being too complicated.
And there was a bunch of other stuff from the trailers that didn't make it in as well.
Take a look at some of it here and if you have any theories on what it means let me
know below!
On Jedha there are a group of Rebel pilots who've been taken prisoner and are being marched
along by Stormtroopers, and in another shot Jyn hands something to the girl who she later
saves during the Partisan attack on the Stormtroopers.
There's a scene with Jyn sitting in the front of Cassian's ship, a hologram of the Death
Star that pops up at the Rebel Base on Yavin 4, and finally we never got to see this very
cool iconic shot of Jyn in her imperial combat suit.
So guys, what do you think about the deleted scenes and reshoots?
Are there any deleted characters you'd like to have seen in the movie?
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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