Terence Malick stars in Star Wars: Rogue One Scene Photo: Lucasfilm
Promotes his new film Creator «, director Gareth Edwards came out lightsabers blazing. «What is on the internet about what happened in this movie is very much inaccurate,» he said last week on the industry podcast The Business.
«This movie» is not «The Creator» ” is a nice, if somewhat empty, reflection on artificial intelligence. Edwards was referring to his previous project, Rogue One, released in December 2016, which was widely considered the best Star Wars without George Lucas (and better than several films starring George Lucas).
“Inaccuracy” is one way to put it. Another possibility is that Rogue One, which tells the story of the theft of the Death Star plans so important in the original Star Wars, spawned a dense mythology regarding the authorship of the final version. Even though Edwards is credited as director, The Bourne Identity writer Tony Gilroy is known to come in and put his stamp on the project. To this day, the question remains: Whose film is it really?Edwards acknowledges Gilroy's contributions in a new interview. But it's also clear that he doesn't want his own Star Wars story written out of his life.
“Tony came in and he certainly did a great job. There is no doubt about it. But we all worked together until the last minute of this film. … The very last thing we shot on the pickup set was the hallway scene with Darth Vader. I did it all.»
Edwards' comments were primarily directed at the hive mind of the Internet, which decided that Rogue One was a triumph for Gilroy, not Edwards. However, these remarks could also be interpreted as a shot at Gilroy, who was quick to claim credit for the film Rogue One and who claimed ownership of its characters and themes in his Disney film Rogue One. prequel, Andor.
Gilroy's version of events is that he was contacted by Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy in early 2016 when Rogue One was in chaos. “They were in such a swamp,” he said. “They were in so much terrible, terrible trouble that all that could be done was to make their situation better.” When asked if we'd ever see a director's cut of the film, his answer was unequivocal: «It was absolutely the best cut you could ever have,» Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter in March 2023. «Oh my God. No. No.»
We'll never know for sure, but it's widely believed that the final third of the film is Gilroy's work. He reworked the script and brought in stars Diego Luna (later to appear in Andor) and Felicity Jones for six weeks of reshoots. By this point, Edwards had already presented a radically different director's cut, which, according to Disney, did not hold up to integrity.
Gareth Edwards with Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy and Rogue One stars Diego Luna and Riz Ahmed Photo: Jonathan Olley
The most significant change is the tone. Gilroy, who was paid $200,000 a week by Disney and was credited as a co-writer, inserted a scene in which Luna's rebel leader, Cassian Andor, kills a spy to prevent the Empire from learning of his ruse. It's a shocking break with the franchise's integrity, signaling to audiences that we're in a galaxy far, far away from Jar Jar Binks' Star Wars and JJ Abrams' cheesy The Force Awakens. Gilroy also changed the ending, in which Andor and Jones' renegade heroine, Jyn Erso, receives the plans for the Death Star.
The script initially allowed the duo to literally fly into the sunset. Gilroy felt it was important to go darker. “If you look at Rogue, all of its difficulties, all of its confusion… and all of its confusion, and ultimately when you get there, it's actually a very, very simple problem to solve,” Gilroy said. about the film. «Because you're kind of saying, 'Guys, it's a movie, just watch it.' Everyone will die». So this is a film about sacrifice.”
Edwards never publicly contradicted Gilroy. Moreover, he never complained at all about his experience with Rogue One. In interviews with The Creator, he has toed that diplomatic line: Even being considered for a Star Wars project is an honor, he insists. He is happy to be part of this journey. If he was annoyed at Gilroy for putting himself at the center of Rogue One, he kept those feelings to himself.
“Someone who gets the opportunity to make a Star Wars movie and then starts complaining about it, I don't think a lot of people have that much empathy for people like that. I really don’t want to be them,” he said. “It was a dream. I’m proud of the film we all made,” Edwards said. “What ends up in Fight Club stays in Fight Club.” As if. I just want to express gratitude for what happened and not talk negatively about anything.”
Still, you wonder if he's being too modest. Rogue One clearly benefited from Gilroy's intervention. The final third is where the story comes together—it often gets to this point—and Rogue One fully lives up to its bleak ending. Plus, without Gilroy's work on Rogue One, he would never have had the motivation to make the fantastic Andor, by far the best of Disney's films. Star Wars spin-offs (though given the competition, that's faint praise). After all, much of our understanding of Andor's character is rooted in the scene in which he kills the spy.
Felicity Jones in Rogue One Author: Jonathan Olley
However, while Gilroy's contributions are significant, much of Rogue One's magic undoubtedly comes from Edwards. In his hit 2010 independent film Monsters and the 2014 film adaptation of Godzilla, the director demonstrated a unique talent for staging large computer-generated sets (in Monsters, he created the famous tentacled ghosts using off-the-shelf software).
The same goes for Rogue One, which is visually stunning but has a dreamy sensibility that sets it apart from the rest of the Star Wars franchise. That this is «Star Wars with a twist» is announced early on, when Imperial apparatchik Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) pays an unwanted visit to Erso's father, Death Star inventor Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), at their remote hideout on La' mu.< /p>
He descends from his spaceship onto the dark, lush grass. Raindrops flicker on his cloak. It's as if Star Wars were made by The Thin Red Line director Terence Malick or Stanley Kubrick from the Full Metal Jacket era. An equally stunning shot of a Star Destroyer over the desert planet of Jedha (it's Star Wars: there must be a desert planet). We know Star Destroyers are huge, but no one has come close to Edwards in capturing the menacing immensity of the Empire's machines of conquest and destruction.
Ben Mendelsohn as Orson Krennic Photo: Lucasfilm
It could have been more. An early trailer, released while Gilroy was still tinkering with the film's innards, depicts Erso fighting a TIE fighter. This is a tantalizing look at the alternate Rogue One we could have.
These flourishes are as important to the tone as Gilroy's third act and his decision to kill Jean and Andor. Rogue One wouldn't work without that gut-wrenching conclusion. However, it couldn't function without those epic early scenes. Moreover, it's also worth noting that the most astonishing scene of all, in which Darth Vader boards a Rebel ship with the plans for the Death Star and kills half a dozen soldiers, was not suggested by Gilroy or Edwards, but by the film's editor, Jabez Olsen. .
Rogue One, this stitched together Frankenstein film, is more than the sum of its parts. Contrary to all reasonable expectations, the contrasting feelings of the artistic Edwards and the Hollywood Gilroy brought out the best in each other. Without Gilroy, Rogue One wouldn't have had the same dark noir energy—or its stunning ending. However, if not for Edwards, Rogue One would have been just another blockbuster about his-and-hers anti-heroes, of which Hollywood has no shortage.
He filtered it through his unique sci-fi sensibility, which indebted to both seventies prog rock album covers and classical artists such as Chris Fosse and George Lucas. Nearly a decade later, it's clear that Rogue One belongs in a category of its own. This is avant-garde Star Wars, a triumph that belongs to both the humble Gareth Edwards and the spotlight regular Tony Gilroy.
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