Rogue One Reshoots Changed Beginning of the Movie More Than The End

There was much ado about the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story summer reshoots last year, as fans unfamiliar with the process behind blockbuster movies were surprised to hear of something so extensive. Much of the rumor and speculation was that they were making significant changes to the final act of the movie, but a new interview with film editors John Gilroy and Colin Goudie at Yahoo reveals exactly the opposite: the reshoots were more to add to the first act of the movie than drastically change the last.

But first, they addressed the reshoots – or “pickups” as they more specifically call them, and exactly how they were put in the schedule.

“Everyone knew, from the offset, everything was always scheduled from day one for there to be pickups, like on every film,” Goudie revealed. “We did exactly the same thing on [Director Gareth Edwards‘] Monsters, we always knew we were going to go back and do pickups, and it was the same thing with Rogue One, it was just something that was on the schedule.”

A lot of the shots that made it into the trailers but not the final film, then, were from alternate takes that Edwards shot on the fly, rather than necessarily from the pickups shot over the summer after the close of principal photography.

“They gave you the film that you see today. I think they were incredibly helpful. The story was reconceptualised to some degree, there were scenes that were added at the beginning and fleshed out,” Gilroy said. Specifically, they went into fleshing out the early moments of several characters.

“The scene with Cassian’s (Diego Luna) introduction with the spy, Bodhi (Riz Ahmed) traipsing through Jedha on his way to see Saw, these are things that were added. Also Jyn (Felicity Jones), how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better,” he revealed.

That did, however, set off “a ripple effect” through the movie, requiring tweaks in the edit bay to the second and third acts.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in theaters now. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it’s the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core “Skywalker Saga” of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue One tells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: “Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.”