After viewing the teaser trailer for ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars story’ and viewing the movie upon release, some eagle-eyed fans had questions relating to discrepancies between what was promised in the trailer, and what was delivered on the big screen.
In response to this, Director Gareth Edwards addressed some issues with refining shots and scenes, saying, ‘’There was a bit of a process to refining the third act in terms of the specific shots and moments, and so certain things just fell away. But then what happens is marketing love those shots, and go, ‘oh, we’ve got to use that.’ And you say, ‘Well, it’s not in the movie.’ And they say, ‘It’s okay, it’s what marketing does, we just use the best of whatever you’ve done.’ And so there’s lots of little things, but towards the end you go, ‘I know that’s not in the film, but the spirit of it’s in the film.’’
Fans of the movies are notoriously perceptive and one, Vashi Nedomansky, spotted no less than 46 differences between the trailer scenes and the finished product.
‘Rogue One’ editors also weighed in, in an interview with Yahoo! UK, John Gilroy and Colin Goudie explained the thinking behind the re-shoots. “The story was re-conceptualized 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 [Andor]’s character, and Bodhi [Rook]’s character,” Gilroy explained. “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 [Erso], how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better.”
Unfortunately, there is no way to see the film entirely with the ‘missing’ scenes. ‘’There’s no mythical four hour cut, it doesn’t exist.’’ Said Goudie when asked about an extended edition.
Released on December 14, 2016, ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ was an overall success, grossing over 700 million USD, and garnering praise from the critics. It is the 8th movie in the ‘Star Wars’ story arc so far, with events taking place between Episode III, ‘Revenge of the Sith’ and Episode IV, ‘A New Hope.’