Perhaps more than any modern blockbuster (except maybe Suicide Squad) the speculation about what and how much was different in the initial cut of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has been rampant and omnipresent. Just watching the final film versus the trailers will show you that things changed significantly, but nobody really knew how or why. The recently released Blu-ray (which I reviewed here) offers nothing in the way of deleted scenes, so the curiosity of Star Wars viewers seemed destined to remain unquenched, but a recent video by the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained opened my eyes to several things.
Using various bits of evidence including cumulative interviews with director Gareth Edwards and on-set photos, Star Wars Explained has posited much of what we wondered about Jyn Erso and her friends in Rogue One‘s third act. We saw several things in the initial trailers that got us excited, including the famous action shot of the heroes running on the beach and avoiding blasts from the gargantuan walkers. Why would they cut out such a cool and iconic shot? Well, it turns out, as with most things in movies, the reason had to do with making the plot more streamlined.
Initially, when the Rogue One group leads their assault on Scarif, Jyn and company had to break into two separate buildings: the citadel where the Death Star plans were kept, and the radio tower where they could broadcast it. The journey from the first building to the second is where the running-on-the-beach scenes would have happened, but for pacing purposes, this was changed to be all happening in the same building. Because of this, new death scenes for K-2SO and Cassian Andor had to be written and filmed, since they were at one point going to be killed by Director Krennic himself while defending the entrance to the tower. This, by the way, was the same building Chirrut and Baze are fighting near during their still-intact death scenes.
Krennic also at one point had a different death scene, in which he managed to escape Scarif only to be caught and murdered by Vader for his cowardice and failure. Instead, he confronts Jyn and is wounded by Cassian only to die in the Death Star blast, watching his life’s work kill him. But, as cool as Vader Force-choking Krennic to death would have been as the end of the movie, this change led to the now-infamous Vader hallway scene which has become a favorite among fans.
There are other changes listed in the video as well, but these were the main ones to me. And ultimately, I think these were good and positive changes. No reason to over-complicate the end of your movie just for the sake of some cool shots.
Do you agree? Do you think Rogue One would have been better the other way? Let us know in the comments below!
Images: Lucasfilm
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
