Let’s kick things off with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which has had an impressive run at the box office. After only a couple of weeks of release, the film has become the second biggest domestic release of 2016, and has moved past Doctor Strange, Suicide Squad, Deadpool and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in the worldwide box office. It’s also overtaken Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in the UK box office. So it looks like my podcast co-host will be eating crow after all…
…But even with its box office success, the re-shoots and different versions of the film are still being discussed. Following the release of the film, director Gareth Edwards spoke out about the film’s original ending [WARNING SPOILERS]. “The very first version, they didn’t [die], in the screenplay,” Edwards told Empire. “And it was just assumed by us that we couldn’t do that. ‘They’re not going to let us do that.’ So I was trying to figure out how this ends where that doesn’t happen. And then everyone read that and there was this feeling of like, ‘They’ve got to die, right?’ And everyone was like, ‘Yeah, can we?’ We thought we weren’t going to be allowed to but Kathy [Kennedy, President of Lucasfilm] and everyone at Disney were like ‘Yeah it makes sense, I guess they have to because they’re not in A New Hope.’ And so from that point on we had the license.” Read more from that interview here…
…Someone else talking about a different version of the movie was Ben Mendelsohn, who said there is a very different version of the film out there. “We did have multiple, multiple ways of going at any given scenario, we had multiple readings of it,” he said. “So should they ever decided to, there would be a wealth of ways of approaching these different things. And I know from having seen sort of the crucial kind of scenes throughout it, I know there’s vastly different readings of at least four of [Krennic’s] scenes. [There’s an alternate version] with enormous differences within I would’ve said 20 or 30 of the scenes. There really would be. There would be enormously different renderings…”
…Screenwriter Chris Weitz also revealed that Jyn Erso’s mother was a Jedi Knight in an original script, but the idea was eventually removed. “We thought that it would be more interesting to have a story without Force powers, without lightsabers,” he says in The Art of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. “We could explore a period of broken faith, a galaxy without hope. There’s despair because the Jedi are gone – and with them, for many, even the memory of the Force. That meant our story could be about normal people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps…”
…One point of contention with the movie has been the CGI recreations of Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia. Whatever your thoughts about the usage of these likenesses, you can read an interview with Industrial Light & Magic’s John Knoll on the process here…
…While it was unconfirmed, it has more or less been established that Darth Vader’s castle in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is on Mustafar, the location where he and Obi-Wan Kenobi battled in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. The idea of the castle actually dates back to The Empire Strikes Back, and Lucasfilm concept artist and production designer Doug Chiang spoke this week about using it in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. “When I knew that we were going to possibly go back to Vader’s castle, I loved that idea of, ‘Okay, let’s establish Vader’s home,'” he said. “The initial idea was, ‘Why would Vader live here?’ In our minds, we started to come up with a little bit of a backstory. That perhaps this place had special meaning for him, and that this is where he comes to meditate and to heal himself. We started with the idea that maybe it should be built around his bacta tank chamber, and he comes back here to rejuvenate himself and also to meditate. So from there, the structure itself grew out from the bacta tank, and there were certain ideas that we tried.” Read the full interview here…
…Oh, and you can watch a pretty awesome 16-bit version of that scene featuring Darth Vader here…
…While the reviews from Flickering Myth have been very positive, our resident grump Anghus Houvouras thought it was very disappointing…
…A character from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story that didn’t get the recognition some thought he should was Saw Gerrera, played by Forest Whitaker. Well fear not, as the character is set to debut in Star Wars Rebels with Whitacker reprising the role [watch the trailer for it here]…
…While “it’s all connected” over at Marvel, we’re yet to see any major crossovers between the films and Star Wars Rebels, but you can read Dave Filoni’s thoughts on references to the show in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story here…
…Here’s something that probably won’t surprise you. The chaps over at Making Star Wars are reporting that the release date for Star Wars: Han Solo has been changed from May to December 13th 2018. This would be very unsurprising seen as though both The Force Awakens and Rogue One were released in December, and Star Wars: Episode VIII was moved from May to December 2017 last year…
…In a fun bit of ‘what if’, Assassin’s Creed star Michael Fassbender revealed recently that he was up for a part in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “We talked about a role,” he said. “We had a conversation. I’m pretty sure I was busy doing something else in the summer [J.J. Abrams] was kickstarting that…”
…In a new yearly tradition here at Flickering Myth, we voted and ranked the Star Wars Universe from worst to best. Unsurprisingly the Prequel Trilogy was low and the Original Trilogy was high, but read the full results here…
…And finally, Marvel explored an early adventure of Master Yoda in Star Wars #26, and you can see a preview of that here.
Before we go, this edition of The Week in Star Wars is not just dedicated to Carrie Fisher, but to all of our Star Wars heroes who passed away in 2016: Jason Wingreen, Aletha McGrath, Gordon Henley, Erik Bauersfeld, Kenny Baker, Michael Leader, Ian Liston, and Peter Sumner. May the Force be with you all.
That’s all for this week – may the Force be with you.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the co-host of The Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @ThisisLukeOwen and read his weekly feature The Week in Star Wars.
