Originally published March 21, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
The Dark Lord of the Sith made his return to the big screen this past December in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and while he only appeared in two scenes, the final sequence where he massacred a bunch of Rebel Troopers is arguably Darth Vader’s finest moment from the entire saga.
As we’ve already heard, that was a late addition to the film created during reshoots, but original screenwriter Gary Whitta has revealed that Vader did have another scene in the first draft of the script, which would have resulted in the death of a major character at the Dark Lord’s hand.
“Vader is in the movie as much as he always was. He only had two things in the film. He was on Mustafar and then in the battle at the end,” said Gary Whitta in an interview with EW. “The rampage where [Vader] murdered everybody wasn’t me. That got added later. I had pictured early on Vader murdering all these Rebel soldiers but I never wrote it into the script. It was an idea that stuck around after I left and they ended up finding a cool way to use it. It’s actually my favorite thing in the film.”
SEE ALSO: Gareth Edwards explains why the original ending of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was changed
Whitta went on to reveal that his final Vader scene would have taken place aboard a Star Destroyer following the Battle of Scarif. Both Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor would have escaped the planet alive [read more on that here], as would Director Krennic, who someone managed to avoid being incinerated by the Death Star’s superlaser, and is taken to the Sith Lord.
“[Krennic] survived the blast and they pulled him up and brought him to the Star Destroyer to report to Vader,” Whitta explained. “He’s all beat up, his cape’s all torn up and stuff, and he thinks he has survived…. Vader kills him for his failure.”
Would you have liked to see Vader force choking the life from Krennic? Or did it make more sense for him to die on Scarif? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below…
From Lucasfilm comes the first of the Star Wars standalone films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an all-new epic adventure. In a time of conflict, a group of unlikely heroes band together on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction. This key event in the Star Wars timeline brings together ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story sees Gareth Edwards (Monsters) directing a cast that includes Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Diego Luna (Milk), Ben Mendelsohn (The Dark Knight Rises), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jiang Wen (Let the Bullets Fly), Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Alan Tudyk (Con Man), Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler), Genevieve O’Reilly (Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith), Jimmy Smits (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), James Earl Jones (Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope), Valene Kane (The Fall), Alistair Petrie (The Night Manager), Warwick Davis (Star Wars: Episode IV – Return of the Jedi), Ian McElhinney (Game of Thrones) and Jonathan Aris (Sherlock).
