Rogue One Cast and Crew Talk About Just What “The Darth Vader Effect” Means to Them

Today, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comes out on Blu-ray, and along with that are a few neat featurettes that take you behind the scenes of what went into the making of the ambitious standalone project. Of course, I use “standalone” lightly as this was a Star Wars movie, and for whatever reason, it couldn’t resist dropping references to some original trilogy stuff every 15 minutes or so. That’s fine.

One of the biggest references, of course, was the presence of none other than the masked dark daddy himself, Darth hecking Vader. For many of the actors who got to interact with the character, it must have been one hell of a moment. We know for a fact that it was, because this neat featurette explains exactly that.

Here, director Gareth Edwards and director of photography Greig Fraser explain how implementing a heavy hitter like Vader was viewed as a strategic move. As Edwards explains, “As soon as you put him in a scene, that’s all you want to see. It’s really hard to come back from that. You have to be really careful how you use him, because if you bring him in too early in the film, you sort of just want Vader for the rest of the movie.”

Of that downright legendary closing scene with Vader attacking the Rebel troopers, Fraser said, “Suddenly your brain is exploding, not only with our film, but with the other film, which is about to come to life.”

But actor Ben Mendelsohn summed it up best in one word: “Goosebumps.”

Damn straight.

(image: Lucasfilm/Disney)

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