Last year, Rogue One proved what fans have known all along: there’s a huge demand for more Star Wars stories on the big screen. Rogue One was largely well-received by fans and critics alike, but there still some who feel that the film could have been improved. But rather than attempting to add footage to the movie, a new fan edit of Rogue One cuts the entire story down to the film’s climactic battle.

Via The Verge, filmmaker Dustin Lee’s Maple Films has posted Rogue One: The Battle of Scarif, a 50-minute edit of the movie that cuts out most of the scenes with Jyn and Cassian’s team that led up to the assault on Scarif. Instead, it starts very late in the story with Director Krennic’s housecall to Darth Vader’s castle and the near dissolution of the Rebel Alliance before Jyn and company took matters into their own hands. This edit also uses the events of Rogue One up to this point as fodder for an opening crawl.

According to Lee, one of the major changes to this edit is that Michael Giacchino’s score was completely removed and replaced by musical tracks created by John Williams for the previous Star Wars films. On his website, Lee wrote that “most people have agreed that Giacchino’s score just didn’t cut it. Not that I totally blame him; apparently he had 3-4 weeks to write and conduct everything.” Lee went on to mention that he had to rebuild the sound design for several scenes to allow Williams’ classic cues to be inserted into the new edit.

Personally, I strongly disagree with the contention that Giacchino’s score “just didn’t cut it.” Giacchino was clearly inspired by Williams’ amazing body of work on the franchise, but he also added to it as well. Giacchino’s “Your Father Would Be Proud” and “Hope” are two of the best new Star Wars themes in years, and the rest of the Rogue One soundtrack was also quite good. Only John Williams is John Williams, but I really appreciate Giacchino’s contributions and would love to hear his music in another Star Wars movie in the future.

For comparison’s sake, here’s one of the videos from Lee in which he demonstrates how the new edit was created and how the Hammerhead Corvette scene plays with Williams’ music.

What did you think about the changes made to Rogue One in this edit? Become one with the Force in the comment section below!

Image: Lucasfilm

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