Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is now out on digital HD and hitting Blu-ray on April 4th, so director Gareth Edwards and co-writer Gary Whitta have been giving interviews about the film, revealing new details about the original ending, changes to the third act, the memorable Darth Vader scene, the weird way Scarif got its name, and how there was almost an actual damn Jedi in the movie. Now two details that may have slipped your notice have been pointed out by Edwards and Whitta in two separate interviews.
Gareth Edwards pointed out something we didn’t notice about Jedha, which helps explain how the planet became so rich with the kyber crystals used in lightsabers and the Death Star. He told Collider:
“If you look at the establishing shot of Jedha from above, the layout of it is this giant, circular rock formation around where Jedha is — the idea was that there was a meteor impact that hit Jedha and it came at such a force that it was what created the Kyber Crystals at the center of that crater of impact. So Jedha is like this very unique place in the galaxy in that it’s got a very high density of Kyber Crystals, which is what the Jedi need for lightsabers. So it became this holy city as a result of that meteor impact. But that must’ve happened maybe millions of years ago. We tried to tell that story in the establishing shot, you see the circular formation and at the heart of it is Jedha city.”
Gary Whitta, who co-wrote the Rogue One story, recently spoke to Coming Soon about future Star Wars movies without legacy characters. Now the entirety of that interview has been released, in which Whitta tells a backstory about a Darth Vader scene.
If you hadn’t noticed, Darth Vader is seen living on Mustafar, the same volcanic planet where Obi-Wan cut off Anakin’s limbs and left him to die. Yes, Vader was living on the planet where Obi-Wan left him. God, he’s so dramatic. That’s where Kylo gets it.
Whitta told Coming Soon:
“I pitched the idea and I was like, ‘I want to go see where Vader is. I want to see where he lives when he’s not working for the Empire. He’s somewhere.’ And I loved this whole castle on Mustafar, that he had chosen to build his house in the place where Skywalker dies and Darth Vader was born. And he doesn’t ever talk about it. It doesn’t show. And it’s something I think, Star Wars fans really responded to. They loved the idea that it shows this really dark, almost kind of masochistic side to the character, because it shows he goes back to almost his gravesite to build his house. And there is something kind of really tragic about that. And maybe a hint in a very, very slight way, maybe it hints at the idea that you mentioned that the Jedi in Anakin is still alive in him.”
Everything that happened on Mustafar could have been avoided if only Anakin had listened to Obi-Wan…
(Via Collider and Coming Soon)
