Rogue One: Every Star Wars Connection

By Andrew Dyce

Potential spoilers may follow below...

Telling the tale of the brave Rebels who stole the plans to the first Death Star out from under the Empire’s nose, the film had the challenge of filling in a blank in the Star Wars timeline, while also delivering enough nostalgia – and enough innovation – to entertain fans both old and new.

For the devoted followers of the galaxy far, far away, that means a TON of cameos, impossibly small details, and substantial connections to A New Hope and the films that preceded it.

Saw Gerrera
The legacy of ‘Saw Gerrera’ preceded him thanks to an appearance in the fifth season of the animated Clone Wars, in which Saw’s already-extreme methods established him as something of a loose cannon. That was decades earlier in his freedom-fighting career, long before his organs or limbs had been replaced, or he had anchored himself as a figure of legend on Jedha.

Jedha
Edwards doubles down on the new setting of “Jedha” by littering the horizon with what is clearly a massive, crumbled statue of a Jedi, lightsaber extended. Shockingly, no mention is ever made of the feature, or why such a monument once stood on what appears to be a backwater world. Thankfully, the answers were made available in other releases tied to the film. Established as one of the very first worlds on which the nature of The Force was explored, Jedha became a site of great spiritual significance for Force Users. That millenia-old tradition drew pilgrimages from any who sought the wisdom of The Church of The Force – but it was the moon’s abundance of lightsaber-powering kyber crystals that made it important to the Empire.

General Syndulla
Despite being set in the same period of Star Wars history, the links between Rogue One and Star Wars Rebels aren’t too numerous. During one of the many exchanges between the Rebel leadership, radio chatter can clearly be heard making mention of “General Syndulla.” That gives the fans two distinct possibilities to debate: the namedrop could be a reference to Cham Syndulla, a leading Twi’lek resistance fighter whose path crossed that of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Clone Wars. But even better is the chance that it’s a nod to his daughter, Hera Syndulla, star of Rebels – who has apparently worked her way up to the top of the Rebel Alliance’s leadership.

Tarkin
In Rogue One, one of the biggest twists is the presence of Grand Moff Tarkin – considering that Peter Cushing, the actor who first played him passed away in 1994. The same trick had been pulled off in Revenge of the Sith, though limited to a single shot of actor Wayne Pygram in heavy prosthesis.
This time around it’s CG (and voice overs) to thank, grafting Cushing’s facial features onto the body of actor Guy Henry, longtime veteran of the stage and screen who may be best known to wide audiences for his performance as ‘Pius Thicknesse,’ the Death Eater/Minister of Magic in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Ponda Baba and Dr. Cornelius Evazan
the pair of troublemaking patrons in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Even die-hard fans won’t know that the two are actually named Ponda Baba and Dr. Cornelius Evazan, but Rogue One shows they had an even crazier month than fans ever realized. Jyn bumps into the two on Jedha as she and Cassian are picking their way through the crowd. Barking out what is apparently his catchphrase, Evazan (here played by Michael Smiley) and his pal go on their way, avoiding the destruction of Jedha City by a matter of hours…

Guardians of the Whills
the enigmatic duo of Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus. The two are given a bit of backstory by Cassian, observing Jyn’s interaction with the apparent Force-sensitive Chirrut and explaining that the two men as ‘Guardians of the Whills’ – protectors sworn to safeguard the ancient Temple on Jedha. That name is actually much more important than fans will recognize, since the true history of ‘the Whills’ goes back to the very first concept George Lucas ever had about the story that would become Star Wars. In the beginning, he imagined the entire Skywalker story being told to the audience from a ‘Journal of the Whills,’ recorded a century later by the mysterious beings (hence “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”). It’s a deep reference to the earliest days of Lucas’ creation – and it’s not the only one delivered in the same scene…

“May the Force of others be with you.”
Before Jyn is actually called to by Chirrut directly, he can be overheard giving well-wishes to the people passing by – uttering a modified version of the famous blessing: “May the Force of others be with you.” It might sound like a small tweak, or be missed entirely, but the “The Force of others” goes back to the first drafts of Lucas’s original Star Wars screenplay. It originated as a saying or expression of good luck in the first versions of the story, when the Jedi were simply noble warriors, not superpowered monks. At that time, the idea was simply that “the force of others” recognized a larger, unifying bond between living things. That would eventually be expanded into a literal “Force” that could be manipulated by a select few,

Dejarik
Colloquially known as “space chess” – The game appears in Rogue One to illustrate just how much rougher some parts of the galaxy were hit by the rise of the Empire. When Jyn and Cassian are brought into Saw’s fortress, a group of his soldiers can be seen playing a version of Dejarik with actual carved figures. Hard evidence that Han Solo was a seriously devoted fan of the game.

Vader’s Palace
the burning lava of  Mustafar cooking his skin… yikes. Apparently, it’s a trauma that Vader has internalized, as Rogue One includes a sequence set in the fallen Jedi’s own palace. The idea of Vader having a castle-like stronghold of his own was tossed around in the original plans for the original trilogy films, but the location is the key: Anakin Skywalker built his home on the very site he was dismembered, burned, and left for dead.

Rian Johnson Cameo
Rogue One‘s firing of the Death Star sticks painfully close to the procedures, camera shots, and sounds of the original film – right down to the flipping of switches and pressed buttons that lead to the super weapon’s discharge. The strangest moment of all is when a pair of Death Star technicians must lean away from the green laser, covering their eyes in lieu of protective goggles (or a railing, for that matter). Rogue One includes that very same shot for both firings of the weapon, giving fans two chances to see Star Wars Episode VIII director Rian Johnson and producer Ram Bergman in a cameo role. A cameo that, due to the connected timelines, cements the two filmmakers as certified supporting characters in the original Star Wars.

General Jan Dodonna
Audiences will see Mon Mothma debating the strategies of the Rebel Alliance alongside a bearded, white-haired man and simply think that… it feels right. But the character in question isn’t just anyone, and it isn’t a new character, either.
The Rebel leader is General Jan Dodonna, portrayed in the original movie by Alex McCrindle (he’s the one who aids Leia in placing the medals on our heroes at the movie’s close).
He’s brought to life not through CG, like some other returning faces, but by actor Ian McElhinney. McElhinney will be best known to fantasy fans for his role as ‘Barristan Selmy’ in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Bail Organa
Mentioned in A New Hope, we never got to meet him because he died when Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star. Smiths debuted as the character in Attack of the Clones.
Despite retaining his position as a Senator in the Empire, Bail helped found the Alliance to Restore the Republic, a.k.a. the Rebel Alliance. Rogue One takes place directly before A New Hope, so that means he's been spending almost 20 years secretly fighting the Empire.

“I Have a Bad Feeling About This”
it turns out in the galaxy far, far away, people have been having “bad feelings about this” even before Luke, Leia and Han joined forces. The catchphrase has been uttered in every film as a means of practically inviting misfortune – a detail that the cast of Rogue One seems to know all too well.
This time, it’s K-2SO who voices the concern as he, Jyn, and Cassian begin to make their way into the archives tower on Scarif. Before he can say it, however, both Jyn and Cassian silence the droid. It’s a knowing wink to the films that came before, while managing to make a meta joke of its own.

Returning Squadron Leaders
As the Rebel Fleet arrives at Scarif to offer support to Jyn’s team, fans are treated to a roll-out of fighter squadrons just days away from the biggest battle of their lives (and for some of them, their last). Aside from using radio chatter lifted from the first movie to bring this film’s Red and Gold Squadrons to life, the filmmakers restored footage of the squadron leaders themselves, most notably actors Drewe Henley (Red Leader Garven Dreis) and Angus MacInnes (Gold Leader Jon Vander). The shots aren’t difficult to spot, and help complete the sensation that for these veteran pilots, Scarif and Yavin were just another day at the office.

Rebels’ Ghost & Tantive IV
there’s the obligatory shot of a Rebel Blockade Runner/Tantiv IV, the same design of ship that Princess Leia first entered the Star Wars universe aboard (the very first one seen, period). But the presence of said ship actually makes sense, given that it’s present at the end of the battle – the other easter egg is a bit more intentional. Keep an eye out for the signature alignment of rear lights, and you’ll be able to make out the Ghost – the home of the Star Wars Rebels cast.

Ingvild Deila as Princess Leia
Rogue One is brought completely to a close when the final sequences of the film see the Death Star plans escape the clutches of Vader by a matter of inches, and be hand delivered to Princess Leia on the bridge of the Tantive IV. More CG is used to portray a young Carrie Fisher, but even though the shot is just one word and a few seconds long, an actress was used to ground the performance.
Audiences may not know actress Ingvild Deila by name, but this is technically her second blockbuster role for Disney, having appeared alongside Robert Downey, Jr. as an internet “Hub” tech in The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

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Senator Leia's 'Force Awakens' Backstory: Resistance Origins in 'Star Wars: Bloodline'

The story, set just six years before the events of The Force Awakens, focuses on Princess Leia Organa in her role as senator in the New Republic.

Leia, who eschewed becoming a Jedi like Luke, is fed up with the squabbling politicians, split into the intractable factions of Populists and Centrists following Mon Mothma’s departure as chancellor.
Leia would rather leave behind the government pettiness on Hosnian Prime and go travel the universe with hubby Han Solo. Since the event of Jedi, Han helped out Chewbacca with a sticky situation on the latter’s home world of Kashyyyk.
Chewie has remained on his planet with his family, while Mr. Kessel Run has formed his own championship racing team.

Although theirs is a long-distance relationship, Han and Leia are still very much in love, and he plays a big part in Bloodline.

Joining Leia on Hosnian Prime is her chief of staff, Greer Sonnel, one of Han’s former racing protégées; teen intern Korr Sella (who appears briefly in The Force Awakens as Hosnian Prime later gets vaporized); ace X-wing pilot escort Joph Seastriker; savvy political rival Ransolm Casterfo; and the scheming Lady Carise Sindian. Bloodline also name checks several classic characters (including Lando).

The book’s title is a direct reference to Leia’s parentage. Luke and Leia have learned that
their mother was Padmé Amidala. But much of the novel focuses on Leia’s two very different
dads.

Leia receives a lovely holocron message recorded to her by Bail Organa, her adopted father but the man she really considers her paterfamilias. However, the message also reveals the secret of Leia’s true father — something she has kept hidden from everyone but Han and Luke.
Even her son, Ben, doesn’t know. Then, her adversaries in the Senate find the holocron and play it to devastating results.

As the political intrigue plays out on Hosnian Prime, Leia also tries to piece together the provenance of a shadowy outfit operating on the fringes of the galaxy and to make sure it isn’t a threat to the hard-fought peace.

Star Wars Spectacular Vanity Fair: The Ultimate Photoshoot

Opening May 19, Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith (Twentieth Century Fox) is set on eight different planets, with an entire army of Wookiees, more than 2,300 special effects, and what promises to be the ultimate lightsaber duel. As the final installment in this six-film, 33-year epic heads to theaters, Annie Leibovitz shoots the movie’s on-screen and behind-the-scenes heroes.

Lucas had no way of knowing that the idea he was beginning to scratch out in his cramped handwriting would eventually make him the multi-billionaire head of his own little empire, or that it would occupy him, on and off, for the next 33 years.

With the May 19 release of Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, he will finally be free of his grand task. This is the sixth—and, he says, final—Star Wars film, the one in which Anakin Skywalker, played by Hayden Christensen, completes his transformation from a wayward Jedi knight to an evil Sith named Darth Vader. As such, he suits up in the famous black armor and helmet, a revised version of which was made for Christensen out of leather and fiberglass. Revenge of the Sith is the movie that will connect the effervescent original Star Wars trilogy of the late 1970s and early 80s to the latter, denser installments.

“It’s the missing link,” Lucas says. “Once it’s there, it’s a complete work, and I’m proud of that. I do see it, tonality-wise, as two trilogies. But they do, together, form one epic of fathers and sons.”

Pre-production work began just a few days after the May 16, 2002, release of the last installment, the melancholy and ambitious Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones. The new movie will have scenes set on eight different planets—including the Skywalker home of Tatooine; the urban, Blade Runner—esque Coruscant, seat of the Jedi; and the lush Naboo, native world of the lovely princess turned senator Padmé Amidala (played by Natalie Portman) as well as the senator turned evil emperor Palpatine (played, with perfectly elocuted gusto, by Ian McDiarmid). There will also be never-before-seen worlds, including grassy Alderaan, the peaceful home of Princess Leia.

Digital cameras started rolling, in blue-screen-lined studios in Australia, on June 30, 2003. Rick McCallum, the film’s producer, took a second unit around the world—China, Thailand, Switzerland, England, Tunisia—to shoot backgrounds that have been digitally tweaked by Lucas’s special-effects craftsmen at Industrial Light & Magic. As early as 2001, when Sicily’s Mount Etna erupted, McCallum and his crew made a special trip to capture the lava-drenched environment necessary for key scenes having to do with Anakin’s fall.

When completed, the new film will comprise some 2,300 separate shots, each of which has at least one special effect—a record number that surpassed the 2,000 effects shots in The Phantom Menace and dwarfs the 1,400 in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

He came up with his first hit, American Graffiti (1973), on a dare from his mentor Francis Ford Coppola to do something funny and conventional.

“It led me on a path 180 degrees from where I was going,” Lucas says. “Somehow, I became really successful at it. But I’m destined to go back the other way.” He laughs. “I’ve earned the right to fail. That’s basically what I’m going to do. I’ve got enough of a fund set aside for my old age. From now on, I’m going to make movies like THX that nobody wants to see, that aren’t successful, and everybody will say I’ve lost my touch. I mean, I love doing Star Wars, and it’s a fun adventure for me, but I’m ready to explore some of the things I was interested in exploring when I was in my late 20s.”

He merely “understood what people liked to go see.” Further, in talking up his planned return to experimental film, he strikes the tone of a man ready to do penance for years spent in the wild. But in a more defiant mood later on during our interview, he sounds convinced that what he has put up on screen isn’t merely kid stuff, and suggests that it should be classified as enduring popular art. In the same breath that has him mentioning Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci as pop artists of their day, he says, “The interesting thing about Star Wars—and I didn’t ever really push this very far, because it’s not really that important—but there’s a lot going on there that most people haven’t come to grips with yet. But when they do, they will find it’s a much more intricately made clock than most people would imagine.”

Lucas expanded on the notion of Anakin’s divine origin. (Warning: The following may or may not be helpful to the uninitiated.) “It was a virgin birth in an ecosystem of symbiotic relationships. It means that between the Force, which is sort of a life force, and reality, the connectors between these two things are what we call mitichlorians. They’re kind of based on mitochondria, which are a completely different species, a different animal, that live inside every single cell and allow it to live, allow it to reproduce, allow life to exist. They also, in their own way, communicate with the Force itself. The more you have, the more your cells are able to speak intuitively to the Force itself and use the powers of the Force. Ultimately, I would say the Force itself created Anakin. I don’t want to get into specific terms of labeling things to make it one religion or another, but, basically, that’s one of the foundations of the hero’s journey.”

Lucas has scattered a lot of his own autobiography throughout the series.
Anakin Skywalker, a slave boy on Tatooine played by child actor Jake Lloyd in The Phantom Menace, builds his own Podracer in his spare time—just as the mechanically inclined Lucas himself, in his teenage years, souped up his own two-cylinder Fiat Bianchina.
In Attack of the Clones, Anakin’s sweet and accommodating mother is taken hostage and abused by the vicious, nomadic, desert-dwelling Tusken Raiders. Anakin reaches her when she’s on the verge of death—perhaps an echo of Lucas’s childhood, during which his mother, Dorothy, was often bedridden with a mysterious illness (probably pancreatitis, reports Lucas biographer Dale Pollock).
In the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker is ordered by his foster father, Uncle Owen Lars, to stay home and work in the family business (moisture farming), just as Lucas’s own father, George Lucas Sr., a strict small-town businessman who called Hollywood “Sin City,” scoffed at his son’s desire to attend film school and wanted young George to join him so that together they could rule Modesto’s office-supplies business. Both Luke and Anakin suffer horrible injuries, as Lucas himself did in 1962, when he was nearly killed in a car crash that flipped his Fiat “four or five times” and ended his dream of becoming a professional racecar driver, writes Pollock in Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas.
“I put parts of myself in all of it, same as I did in American Graffiti, whether it’s Anakin Skywalker or Luke Skywalker,” Lucas says. “I kind of want to be Han Solo, but that’s not as much me as the Skywalkers are.”

In the next movie, at least, Anakin will attain true villain status, which will give Christensen the chance to turn in a more easily accepted, love-to-hate-him performance. Lucas cryptically suggests that Anakin’s grief over his mother (or perhaps over someone else close to him who ends up dead) is what will drive him into the embrace of the Jedi’s enemies, the Siths. Lucas hints strongly that the fiery, lava-spewing place guarded by spiderlike androids in the Revenge of the Sith trailer released last fall is hell itself.

Lucas says, “you basically get somebody who’s going to make a pact with the Devil, and it’s going to be a pact with the Devil that says, ‘I want the power to save somebody from death. I want to be able to stop them from going to the river Styx, and I need to go to a god for that, but the gods won’t do it, so I’m going to go down to Hades and get the Dark Lord to allow me to have this power that will allow me to save the very person I want to hang on to.’
You know, it’s Faust. So Anakin wants that power, and that is basically a bad thing. If you’re going to sell your soul to save somebody you love, that’s not a good thing. That’s, as we say in the film, unnatural. You have to accept the natural course of life. Of all things. Death is obviously the biggest of them all. Not only death for yourself but death for the things you care about.”

The Darth Vader costume is not just a black shell meant to look scary—it’s a life-support system made necessary by the near-fatal injuries Anakin has suffered. Although the duel doesn’t end in a knockout victory for Obi-Wan (who is slain by Vader in A New Hope), it has positive repercussions in the galaxy first dreamed up by Lucas three decades ago.

“Anakin, as Skywalker, as a human being, was going to be extremely powerful,” he says. “But he ended up losing his arms and a leg and became partly a robot. So a lot of his ability to use the Force, a lot of his powers, are curbed at this point, because, as a living form, there’s not that much of him left. So his ability to be twice as good as the Emperor disappeared, and now he’s maybe 20 percent less than the Emperor. So that isn’t what the Emperor had in mind. He wanted this really super guy, but that got derailed by Obi-Wan. So he finds that, with Luke, he can get a more primo version if he can turn Luke to the Dark Side. You’ll see, as this goes on, Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with."

“You learn that Darth Vader isn’t this monster,” Lucas says. “He’s a pathetic individual who made a pact with the Devil and lost. And he’s trapped. He’s a sad, pathetic character, not an evil big monster. I mean, he’s a monster in that he’s turned to the Dark Side and he’s serving a bad master and he’s into power and he’s lost a lot of his humanity. In that way, he’s a monster, but beneath that, as Luke says in Return of the Jedi, early on, ‘I know there’s still good in you. There’s good in you, I can sense it.’ Only through the love of his children and the compassion of his children, who believe in him, even though he’s a monster, does he redeem himself.”

The six Star Wars movies form the biography of Darth Vader—something Lucas claims he wasn’t consciously aware of “until 1998.” It’s strange to think that this filmmaker with a popcorn reputation has spent 33 years telling the story of a failed, pathetic monster who isn’t redeemed until his last few breaths.

 Box office statistics would seem to belie Lucas's claim of being at heart, part of the avant-garde.

The Iron Man.

Oh, my! Good heavens! It's Anthony Daniels!

Playing the droid C-3PO has been a "humbling" and sometimes "isolating" experience, according to the actor, who says that, when he's in costume, cast and crew sometimes forget there's a human being under all that metal, treatring "him" as "it."

Daniels is proud of his long association with Star Wars. I'm the only actor to be in all the films," he points out.