Much like the Prequel Trilogy, we all know how Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set to end, as the Rebellion snatches the plans to the Death Star, paving the way for Luke Skywalker to blow the thing and go home in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be a few surprises along the way, with director Gareth Edwards telling USA Today that the movie won’t follow the same path as a typical Star Wars movie.
“Events take place that just shatter [Jyn Erso’s] life and send her off to basically be raised as a soldier in the midst of a war,” said Edwards. “She ends up not the person she was supposed to be. Even though we’re not telling the story of Luke Skywalker, it was important to me that we capture the same themes and emotion. But the film doesn’t unfold how you think. It’s not the same path as Star Wars.”
Edwards also spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the process of constructing the story, given that we already know the ending: “The thing every [filmmaker] typically struggles with is ‘How does it end?’. But we knew how our film was going to end. Our problem became ‘How do we reverse engineer from that and know where to start?’ You’ve got a finite number of options and you go through them all like a puzzle to find the one that’s going to lead to the strongest result.”
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 is set for release on December 15th in the UK and December 16th in the States, with 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) and Jonathan Aris (Sherlock).
Originally published October 31, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
