As the first true standalone story in the Star Wars saga, there was a whole lot riding
on Rogue One.
But the story surrounding the film is almost as interesting as the one we watched on the
big screen.
From axed cameos to the film's humble beginnings, there's a whole lot more to Rogue One than
just Jyn's quest to snag the Death Star plans.
So let's dig into the untold truth of Rogue One.
Unexpected origins
The entire concept for Rogue One came from two sentences in A New Hope's opening crawl.
But it was a visual effects supervisor for the special editions who had the bright idea
to turn those lines into a full-fledged movie.
FX guru John Knoll came up with the pitch when Lucasfilm wanted to do a live action
Star Wars series, but the idea was shelved.
When Disney bought the franchise and announced new plans to do standalone stories, Knoll
ran the idea past his colleagues, and a blockbuster was born.
So at least something good came of those special editions.
(Blaster fire)
And despite the fact that the entire movie is based on an opening crawl, it doesn't have
one itself, leaping right into the action.
But it turns out the first draft of the film actually did have a crawl — until director
Gareth Edwards decided to remove it.
That's because Rogue One delves into the battle referenced in the introduction to A New Hope.
The creative team worried it would be a bit redundant to have an opening crawl for events
already recapped in another one.
A collage of other movies
The film's editors revealed that the film was sketched out with an unusual approach.
Instead of working off a script, they cut footage from hundreds of other movies to follow
the scene-by-scene story breakdown in order to figure out exactly how much dialogue the
film would actually need.
This approach also helped them figure out how long different sequences would take so
they could hash out a more detailed script.
On the surface, it feels like a backwards way to make a movie, but it worked out pretty
well.
Now we'd just like to get our hands on that mock-up reel…
Trailer tribulations
Rogue One's reshoots have been reported exhaustively, with scene-by-scene breakdowns of everything
that was left out of the final cut of the film, and it's now obvious entire subplots
would end up on the cutting room floor.
Why did all those early scenes remain in the trailers in the weeks and months leading up
to release, long after it was obvious they'd never be in the final cut?
According to Edwards, it was a decision made on the marketing side, because the folks cutting
those commercials and trailers felt they did a good job of selling the "spirit" of the
film, regardless of the final film's story.
Now we'll never know if Baze and Chirrut were supposed to kiss.
Oh baby.
Alan Tudyk, and his cut cameo
This one gets a little meta, so just bear with us.
Alan Tudyk played the fan favorite droid K-2SO, and wore a motion capture rig to bring him
to life.
But he also popped up as a pilot in a scene that didn't make it into the final film.
The weird part?
Tudyk played the cameo role as Wray Nerely, from his hit web series Con Man, where he
plays a self-deprecating sci-fi actor bouncing between fan conventions.
Wray never has much luck keeping big roles, and it seems even his real-life Rogue One
cameo couldn't survive that fictional streak of bad breaks.
"Did you know that wasn't me?"
"Heh."
In terms of the performance Tudyk was actually hired to portray, the snarky droid is around
seven feet tall, and even though K-2SO was created with motion capture and CGI, they
still needed Tudyk to be around the droid's approximate height while acting with the rest
of the cast.
The solution was to put Tudyk on stilts, which he wore for much of the production.
It might sound like a hassle, but it sure beats having to wear an entire C-3PO costume,
like Anthony Daniels did.
When the two actors met, Daniels had some choice words for Tudyk.
"He said 'Wait a minute, are you wearing an actual robot costume or are they doing it
motion capture?'
And I said 'Motion capture.'
And he said 'You ----!'"
Everything old is new again
Edwards raided the vaults at Skywalker Ranch and Lucasfilm and discovered unused footage
from the first Star Wars film.
Keen-eyed fans noticed some familiar faces during Rogue One's final battle.
That's because Edwards painstakingly restored some unused alternate shots of the pilots
during the Rebels' attack on the Death Star in A New Hope.
It's a nod for fans, but it's also one more subtle way that Rogue One enriches the far-away
galaxy we know and love.
That wasn't the only genuinely vintage thing about the film, either.
To get the film to sync up with the look of A New Hope, Edwards used the vintage Ultra
Panavision 70mm lenses Quentin Tarantino unearthed at Panavision for the filming of The Hateful
Eight, and attached them to an ultra high-tech 6k large format camera.
It proved the perfect combination of lo-fi and high tech, and allowed Edwards to strike
the same balance that made the original trilogy look so memorable.
A new composer
Along with being the first standalone Star Wars film, Rogue One also marked the end of
an era for franchise composer John Williams, who has scored every film in the series over
the decades.
This time around, Edwards opted to bring in Michael Giacchino — who's scored films like
The Incredibles, the new Star Trek franchise, and Doctor Strange — to provide the soundtrack
to Jyn's adventure.
Giacchino adds enough musical tributes that it still "feels" like Star Wars, while also
setting a different tone.
Meanwhile, Williams is set to return for Episodes 8 and 9, so we'll get more old-school Star
Wars themes pretty soon.
Peter Jackson was there
He might be the mind behind one of the biggest genre franchises in history, but even Peter
Jackson has to tip his hat when Darth Vader's around.
The man behind the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies happened to be in town when Edwards
was directing that epic closing scene when Darth Vader goes berserk on escaping Rebel
agents, so Edwards gave him a heads up for when he was filming.
Jackson ran over immediately to geek out over Vader mowing through a hallway of soldiers.
Famous director or not, no one can blame Jackson for going full-on fanboy and basking in Vader's
glory.
"That's awesome!"
"Ugh."
"That sounds so cool!"
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