How do you start to write a film that fans already know the end to? How do you make that story interesting and bring something completely new to the table? These are some of the issues that Gareth Edwards faced when making Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Some fans and critics cite that by making a film where movie-goers already know the events before and after, you paint yourself into a box. This essentially becomes a safe story, with a very predictable plot.
Amongst the rumored recuts and rewrites, Rogue One is no stranger to controversy. The trailers for the film look amazing, and show you a completely new side of the Star Wars universe. This film has an incredible color palette, and will be the first Star Wars film to venture outside of the Skywalker storyline. According to Edwards, Rogue One will take you places you won’t expect. In a recent interview with USA Today, the director tells us why this film is important:
“Events take place that just shatter her [Jyn Erso] life and send her off to basically be raised as a soldier in the midst of a war. She ends up not the person she was supposed to be… Even though we’re not telling the story of Luke Skywalker, it was important to me that we capture the same themes and emotion. But the film doesn’t unfold how you think. It’s not the same path as Star Wars.”
In another interview with EW, Edwards talks about how the film was basically reverse engineered:
“The thing every [filmmaker] typically struggles with is ‘How does it end?’. But we knew how our film was going to end. Our problem became ‘How do we reverse engineer from that and know where to start?’ You’ve got a finite number of options and you go through them all like a puzzle to find the one that’s going to lead to the strongest result.”
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters mid-December.
[display-posts posts_per_page=”5″ orderby=”title”]
