By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 5, 2018 |
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | April 5, 2018 |
If you watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, it’s quite obvious that the finished product is probably not what Disney and Lucasfilm had in mind. Sure, it was well reviewed and made its money, but the story and pacing has the feeling of a film that was cobbled together in reshoots. That’s basically because it was. Much has been rumoured about the shooting of the movie and the stories of Tony Gilroy stepping in to take over reshoots and script work from Gareth Edwards. It’s not something either has gone on the record about - would you want to cross Disney? - although Ben Mendelsohn did say that an ‘enormously different’ verion of the film exists in the ether. Gilroy made his money - allegedly a few million - and got the job done. Now, in an appearance on the podcast, The Moment with Brian Koppelman, Gilroy has opened up about the job he was given to fix.
‘If you look at Rogue, all the difficulty with Rogue, all the confusion of it … and all the mess, and in the end when you get in there, it’s actually very, very simple to solve. Because you sort of go, ‘This is a movie where, folks, just look. Everyone is going to die.’ So it’s a movie about sacrifice.’
Gilroy also says he came in ‘after the director’s cut. I have a screenplay credit in the arbitration that was easily won.’ He says he wanted to explore why the film’s ensemble would make the ultimate sacrifice for the rebel cause.
‘If you look at Rogue, all the difficulty with Rogue, all the confusion of it … and all the mess, and in the end when you get in there, it’s actually very, very simple to solve. Because you sort of go, ‘This is a movie where, folks, just look. Everyone is going to die.’ So it’s a movie about sacrifice.’
Well, it sounds like either Lucasfilm and Disney really hated whatever Gareth Edwards was doing with the film, or he had no clue what to do with that budget and intellectual property. I doubt he’ll go on the record about it, or at least not any time in the foreseeable future. Given the Solo chaos, I imagine Disney would want to keep such stories reasonably under wraps. Still, this does help to explain why they made the decision to sack Lord and Miller from Solo before they could even finish filming: It’s probably easier to just nip the bud and hand over the reins to someone else rather than leave it all to reshoots.
You know what the real problem with Rogue One was? Not enough Mads Mikkelsen.