Rogue One Editors Open Up About Just What the Reshoots Changed
Most big blockbuster movie productions use reshoots to some degree to improve or polish the film, but Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in particular received a lot of attention for reshoots that were rumored to rework the movie in more significant ways—not to mention unusually large differences between the trailers and the finished product.
While we’ll never know what the movie’s original cut was really like, we now have specific information from editors John Gilroy and Colin Goudie on some of the changes that were made, thanks to an interview with Yahoo UK. In it, Gilroy and Goudie discuss “reconceptualizing some of the story,” and Gilroy joining the project later on as “a fresh pair of eyes in the room.”
Apparently, the choppy beginning of the movie, where several of the characters are introduced (Cassian, Jyn, and Bodhi), was added after the first cut of the film in order to set up the characters better. While the pacing felt a little odd, that was probably a good idea, as I’m a big fan of “show, don’t tell” when it comes movies, and seeing, say, Jyn fighting off her “rescuers” as well as her captors was a lot better than hearing Mon Mothma tell us about Jyn’s personality.
That’s how things were in the initial cut, as Goudie tells it: “When you see [Jyn] as an adult what you saw initially was her in a meeting. That’s not a nice introduction.”
But what of the changes to the bigger set pieces, especially in the climactic battle? They were, predictably, a bit more tight-lipped on that, but Gilroy did admit that the movie’s third act “changed quite a bit.” Unfortunately for our curiosity, we’ll probably never know the full details about that (though the whole interview is a fascinating read), but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about changes to the movie that were probably for the better, and we’re pretty happy with how Rogue One came out.
Probably best to learn the lessons of Special Editions past and leave well enough alone.
(via /Film, image via Disney/Lucasfilm)
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