Rogue One Writer On Jyn Erso And Luke Skywalker’s Similar Goals

One of the biggest story criticisms of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was how many aspects of the film felt like a rehash of the original Star Wars movie, A New Hope. Whether valid or not, there are many comparisons between plot points and themes that are easily noticeable.

But what about between the original film and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story?

Obviously the events of one film leads right into the other and they are closely related, but there are a few surprising themes that are echoed between both films.

Rogue One’s writer Gary White spoke with ComicBook.com’s own Patrick Cavanaugh about creating the story behind the film and how A New Hope’s characters and relationships influenced the themes behind the first Star Wars spinoff.

“John [Knoll] always had from the very beginning the idea that Jyn, her parents had been killed by the Empire, and that’s why she fought against the Empire, because she was kind of driven by revenge, this hatred of the Empire, and then that kind of evolved as we went on,” Whitta said.

“We came up with the idea that her father wasn’t killed, but he was kind of abducted by the Empire and forced to work on the Death Star, and that’s was kind of, I think, the big eureka moment for us when we figured out the idea that the father should be the scientist who kind of reluctantly helped the Empire build the Death Star, but was determined in someway to find a way out, to kind of undo the terrible wrong that he’d been forced to commit.”

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Based on this organic plot development they had worked out, they happily came across a parallel between Jyn Erso‘s journey compared to that of Luke Skywalker.

“So designing the flaw into the Death Star and then getting that information to his daughter, and in the same way that in the original Star Wars films, you know, Luke is trying to kind of redeem his father,” Whitta said. “I feel that in our film, in much in the same way Jyn’s trying to redeem hers, by completing the job that he started. By putting that fatal flaw in the Death Star and then trying to get the plans to the Rebellion so they can exploit it.”

It’s an apt comparison and one that isn’t as overt as, say, Starkiller Base and the Death Star. But it works just subtly enough to remind us of the past stories without being overtly on the nose.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits digital HD on March 24. The film will then be released on Blu-ray and DVD April 4.

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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.