Gareth Edwards Discusses Missing 'Rogue One' Trailer Shots, Lack of Crawl, and More

By: Dominic Jones

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has been in theaters for over two weeks now and director Gareth Edwards is now able to freely discuss a film that has been shrouded in secrecy for over two years now.  Edwards spoke with Empire Magazine recently about the film, divulging details regards why some scenes were in the trailers and not the film, the lack of an opening crawl on the film, and what it was like to film scenes with Darth Vader.

On the subject of scenes appearing in trailers but not the film, specifically the TIE Fighter that confronts Jyn on Scariff, Edwards said,

"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'."

Edwards also revealed that, originally, Rogue One was going to have a crawl.  He discussed why the change was made, telling Empire,

"The first screenplay that Gary Whitta wrote had a crawl in it – and you learn doing that that 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away' has four dots in it, not three. You get extra marks for that. 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!" 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. It's a small thing to give up to get to do Star Wars."

Edwards also revealed one scene that was particularly exciting to him.  The scene where we see Darth Vader in his castle.  Edwards explained that,

"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. [The bacta tank scene] was actually a Chris Cunningham-inspired thing of the idea of being in milk [like in the Bjork music video] All Is Full Of Love. 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. He’s just such a rich character, in so many ways."

You can read the entire interview with Edwards, where he discusses his love of blue milk, bringing back Tarkin for the film, and the final scene, over at Empire.

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