by Anthony Breznican
Once there was a way to get back home — at least for Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story filmmakers have said they always intended to kill off the entire Rebel team during their heist of the Death Star plans on the tropical world of Scarif. But in the very earliest script – before getting the go-ahead for that sacrificial ending – they came up with an escape plan.
“The original instinct was that they should all die,” screenwriter Gary Whitta tells EW. “It’s worth it. If you’re going to give your life for anything, give your life for this, to destroy a weapon that going to kill you all anyway. That’s what we always wanted to do. But we never explored it because we were afraid that Disney might not let us do it, that Disney might think it’s too dark for a Star Wars movie or for their brand.”
So in the original treatment by John Knoll, and in the first script by Whitta, a few of the key heroes survived the final battle. But the creative team still wanted their noble sacrifice.
In that early “happy ending” version, there was no Bodhi Rook, Chirrut Imwe, or Baze Malbus. Jyn was an enlisted Rebel soldier instead of a street criminal recruited on a spy mission.
“In fact, some of the toys that are sold still say Sgt. Jyn Erso,” Whitta says. “That’s who she was, she was a sergeant in the Rebel Alliance. By the time we changed that, some of the toys were already in production. I have a Sgt. Jyn Erso on my desk, even though she’s not a sergeant in the film.”
She still commanded a strike force with a Cassian Andor-type character (“He was called something different back then,” Whitta notes) and the security droid K-2SO was always a part of the team.
Here’s how the survivor ending to Rogue One would have went down:
The Death Star emerges from hyperspace to lay waste to Scarif and protect the Empire’s secrets by destroying the special weapons facility along with the Rebel incursion.
But this time there was no last-second broadcast of the plans from a satellite tower. Jyn and Cassian were to escape the surface of the beach world carrying the data tapes.
“A rebel ship came down and got them off the surface,” Whitta says. “The transfer of the plans happened later. They jumped away and later [Leia’s] ship came in from Alderaan to help them. The ship-to-ship data transfer happened off Scarif.”
Darth Vader was still in pursuit and began attacking Jyn’s shuttle as the Rebels tried desperately to transfer the information from the data tapes to Leia’s vessel. Finally, Vader was successful in breaching their shields and destroying the craft.
THE LOST WORLD
It turns out no one wanted to spend millions to explore the galactic version of the boonies.
The only time we’ve laid eyes on Dantooine was the animated Rebels episode Secret Cargo, which saw the heroes of that series piloting Mon Mothma to the remote agrarian world.
“We did a few things to save money and one of them was they go to a Rebel base in the first half of the film, then go off on their adventure, and the second half of the film they return to a Rebel base,” says Edwards. “It used to be that the first half of the movie was not on Yavin it was Dantooine.”
Budget constraints were also the reason Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera was moved to the sacred world of Jedha instead of his original hideout – a moon with an electrically charged atmosphere.
“Trying to make it more efficient and make the story not get too large, we decided the obvious thing to do was to put Gerrera on Jedha to keep it all the same place,” Edwards says.
CAMEOS JETTISONED
“The number one mandate we got from Lucas was to show things we have not seen before. Don’t show us the stuff we’ve seen already. Show us some new stuff,” Whitta says.
He disagrees with the decision to insert two characters from the cantina brawl in A New Hope – Ponda Baba (a.k.a. Walrus Man) and Dr. Evazan – in the streets of Rogue One’s Jedha city.
“I thought having Evazan and Walrus Man was a little too much,” Whitta says. “You have to reign in that instinct to go back and put things in just because you loved them when you were a kid.”
The original script also featured Admiral Ackbar, the crustacean-like fleet commander from Return of the Jedi, leading the Rebel strike on Scarif. “I always loved Admiral Ackbar. I wanted to have him in there, but J.J. Abrams got to him first,” Whitta says. “We didn’t want to use him again after The Force Awakens. So Ackbar became Admiral Raddus. You will see those little evolutions.”
FIXING A PLOT HOLE
“The first thing we did on day one was watch the original film and make notes of every line of dialogue,” Edwards says. “The problem is that in A New Hope, they contradict themselves. At one point, they say, ‘conjure up the stolen data tapes’ and at another point they say, ‘several transmissions were beamed aboard the ship.’ Did they steal data tapes or was it transmissions?”
The only option was to try to do both, and trying to reverse that decision is what led to several weeks of reshoots last summer when the climax proved to be meandering.
“The original version was that they stole the plans, tried to get back to the ship and on their way, it all went wrong,” Edwards says. “They were forced to go to the transmission tower and send them to the Rebels. It was too long. We tried to compress things. One of the obvious solutions to compress the time was to put the transmission tower at the base [where they steal the data tapes.]”
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