Rogue One: A Star Wars Story exceeded all opening weekend box office estimates and became the third highest-grossing movie of 2016 after only two weeks in theaters, not bad considering the laughable boycott and pessimism over the reshoots last June. Many scenes from the trailers didn’t make the final cut, which you can see in this compilation.
Now two of Rogue One‘s editors — John Gilroy and Colin Goudie — have revealed scenes added during the reshoots. In a lengthy interview with Yahoo! UK, they reiterate the reshoots were planned well in advance and they shot down the rumor about a 4-hour cut of the film existing in storage. According to Goudie, the first assembly was “maybe 10 minutes longer” than the theatrical cut.
So what was added during the reshoots anyway? Gilroy and Goudie explain:
Yahoo Movies: How did the reshoots change the film?
John Gilroy: They gave you the film that you see today. I think they were incredibly helpful. The story was reconceptualized to some degree, there were scenes that were added at the beginning and fleshed out. We wanted to make more of the other characters, like Cassian’s character [Cassian Andor, the Rebel spy played by Diego Luna], and Bodhi’s character [Bodhi Rook, the defected Imperial pilot played by Riz Ahmed]. … The scene with Cassian’s introduction with the spy, Bodhi traipsing through Jedha on his way to see Saw, these are things that were added. Also Jyn [Jyn Erso, the reluctant leader of the film, played by Felicity Jones], how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better. […]
Colin Goudie: […] The point with the opening scenes that John was just describing was that the introductions in the opening scene, in the prologue, was always the same. Jyn’s just a little girl, so when you see her as an adult what you saw initially was her in a meeting. That’s not a nice introduction. So having her in prison and then a prison break out, with Cassian on a mission… everybody was a bit more ballsy, or a bit more exciting, and a bit more interesting. They got there eventually in the film, but this way we came in on the ground running, which was better.
Among the other many topics they discussed in the interview, Gilroy revealed the reshoots significantly changed the third act of the film. Does that mean the beach party scenes got cut?
https://twitter.com/agentbizzle/status/753986601156358144
You can read the full, spoiler-filled interview over at Yahoo! UK.
