Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Director On Why Blu-Ray Won’t Feature Deleted Scenes

While Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a huge hit amongst fans, it left some wanting more – mainly […]

September 5, 2017, 7:24pm

While Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a huge hit amongst fans, it left some wanting more – mainly in regards to deleted scenes. With a series of shots from the film’s initial trailers missing from the final film, in part due to a major change of the film’s ending, many have speculated which scenes would see the light of day thanks to the film’s home releases.

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But according to the film’s director, Gareth Edwards, that might not be the case. In a recent interview with Fandango, Edwards explained that the scenes ultimately cut from the film were done so deliberately, and wouldn’t function in the traditional deleted scene format.

“There’s not an individual scene that you can drag and drop and put on a Blu-ray,” Edwards reassured. “There are little things that would come and go during the process of post-production, but they’re not scenes. They’re more moments within the scenes, or a single shot. So it’s impossible to be able to do that, and that’s why the decision was made.”

These moments were certainly prevalent in Rogue One‘s initial trailers, with shots such as Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) undercover in the Imperial Silo making quite a splash amongst fans. While this led fans to believe there were two alternate versions of the film’s ending, Edwards said that it wasn’t so cut and dry.

“The stuff people talk about, like what they saw in the trailer, they’re not scenes you can just put on a DVD. They’re moments within scenes and threads, and you pull a thread and it all changes. It was changing the whole time. It’s not like there was one version and then there was this other version — it was like this thing that incrementally evolved constantly through all of post-production and didn’t stop until there was a gun at our heads and we were forced to release the movie.”

Another shot from the trailer that had sparked fans’ interests was the shot of Jyn going up against a TIE Fighter while on top of the antenna of the Scarif base. Although many have wondered what full scene resulted from that match-up, Edwards reassured that it will remain a “myth.”

“It’s sort of the thing where you’re trying ideas out to find the right version of the movie,” Edwards explained. “And at the same time, marketing is getting excited about certain shots and moments. Eventually you’ll see something presented to you and you’ll be like, wait a minute, this shot is no longer in the film.”

Alternate endings are actually a pretty common occurrence with films, and in certain cases, they are cut together into a full alternate ending for the home release. But according to Edwards, the full alternate version of the Battle of Scarif is currently in an entirely different state.

“The visual effects were never finished on it. It’s not like there’s something sitting somewhere. I feel like making a film is like a sport where someone blows a whistle and that’s it — the score is what it is. And the goal is to win. If I could go back and do the film knowing what I know now, the final film would be completely different. I’d probably be willing to make Star Wars for the next ten years and never let go of it — constantly trying to finesse and find new ideas. But at some point it stops, and it is the movie. The film that got released, I feel like that is the film, and everything else is just the process of making it.”