Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has continued to
dominate at the box office, and now that the film has been in theatres for a few weeks, Empire has released a preview of their Spoiler Special Podcast with director
Gareth Edwards, who got to reveal some interesting tidbits from his time making the prequel story.
Edwards admitted that he was jealous of moments in the original trilogy where audiences got to have glimpses of
Darth Vader beneath his jet black armor, and so he decided to create his own moment in
Rogue One when we witness the crippled and burnt Sith Lord in a bacta tank.
"I'm jealous of moments like in Empire Strikes Back where you see the back of [Vader’s] head and you just go, 'oh my God, that is so cool,' and wanted to try and find something like that in our film...He’s really a burns victim, and it’s not going to be fun for him when he’s not in the suit – he’s going to be uncomfortable. I love the idea of showing that he’s vulnerable as well. Vader’s very, very bad, and so you try and just glimpse something of him that gives him some humanity, or it makes you empathise with him. Just seeing those scars and realising that he’s, you know, an amputee, and just reminding you of that before he does all his stuff, it makes you torn, I think."
Fans were torn about the famous opening crawl not being present at the start of the film; some insisted it was part of what made
Star Wars so special, others felt it didn't matter with
Rogue One being an anthology film, and not a part of the main saga. Edwards revealed that the first screenplay actually did have the opening crawl inserted, and initially, he was in favour of keeping it.
"The first screenplay that Gary Whitta wrote had a crawl in it...and then at some point, probably like six months before we were filming, we were in a meeting, and they talked about not having an opening crawl, because these are standalone films, not part of the sagas. And if I'm honest, there was an initial kind of like, 'whaaaa? I want the crawl!'
Edwards elaborated that he did change his mind as time went on, opting instead to create the film's prologue as a different kind of setup.
"The opening sequence is kind of the crawl of our movie. It's like the setup. And our film is also born out of a crawl – the reason we exist is because of a previous crawl, so it feels like this infinite loop that will never end."
The famous reshoots for the ending of the film have been discussed to death by now, but several audience members have been quick to point out how the marketing for the movie used (and continues to use) many awesome shots that never made the final cut. According to Edwards, this is just the nature of the movie business, with the marketing department choosing to channel the "spirit of the film" over accuracy to the final cut.
"There was a bit of a process to refining the third act in terms of the specific shots and moments, and so certain things just fell away. But then what happens is marketing love those shots, and go, 'oh, we've got to use that.' And you say, 'well, it's not in the movie'. And they say, 'it's okay, it's what marketing does, we just use the best of whatever you've done.' And so there's lots of little things, but towards the end you go, 'I know that's not in the film, but the spirit of it's in the film'."