STACK April 2017 Issue 150

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26 APRIL 2017
visit DVD&BD FEATURE
t doesn’t seem that long ago that Disney
announced its purchase of Lucasfilm and the
promise to release a new Star Wars film
every two to three years, beginning with
Episode VII in 2015. That was October 2012. The
following year, Lucasfilm revealed it was
developing a series of standalone Star Wars
films that would be released over a six-year
period concurrent with the new sequel trilogy.
Fast forward four years and we now have
the first episode of the new trilogy, The Force
Awakens, and the first standalone adventure,
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which is now
headed for home theatres on DVD and Blu-ray
on April 5.
Since the original film’s release in 1977, the
Star Wars universe has expanded through novels
and animated television series. However, the
possibility of spin-off feature films was always
something that George Lucas had considered,
according to producer and Lucasfilm president
Kathleen Kennedy.
“The Star Wars episodes (I-VII) follow the
Skywalker family and tell a continuing story. The
standalone movies, which can occur anyplace
on the timeline, will introduce new characters
and explore a wide variety of genres,” Kennedy
explains. “There’s a huge opportunity to do
smaller, slightly grittier films as well as films that
get close to the size and scale of the Saga films.
We’re trying to have a wide diversity.”
The story idea for Rogue One came from ILM
chief creative officer and senior visual effects
supervisor John Knoll, who was inspired by a
reference in Episode IV: A New Hope’s opening
crawl – “Rebel spaceships, striking from a
hidden base, have won their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel
spies managed to steal secret plans to the
Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR…”
Knoll recognised the feature potential in
extrapolating this pivotal moment in the Star
Wars chronology. “This is a time after Episode
III and the purge of the Jedi, where all the
remaining Jedi have gone into hiding,” he
explains. “It’s before Obi-Wan comes back and
Yoda reappears. Ordinary citizens are the ones
who have to step up and show their heroism.”
He pitched the idea to Kennedy, who became
enthusiastic about putting it into production; the
foundations for the first Star Wars standalone
feature were laid.
Lucasfilm was determined that the anthology
films not only utilise different genres in their
storytelling approach but also provide the
opportunity for new filmmakers to bring their
own unique vision to the Star Wars universe.
“That’s the wonderful thing about the
standalone films,” says Kennedy. “It gives
us a very wide range and huge palette of
opportunity.”
Just as Lucas drew inspiration from Akira
Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958) for A
New Hope, Rogue One takes its cues from
World War II ‘mission’ films like The Dam
Busters (1955) and The Guns of Navarone
(1961). To bring this gritty Star Wars story to
the screen, the producers met with British
filmmaker Gareth Edwards, whose acclaimed
debut feature Monsters had landed him the job
of helming the 2014 remake of Godzilla.
“He had been on our radar for a long time,”
says Kennedy. “When he made Godzilla we
knew that he’d taken the next step in big, tent-
pole moviemaking.
“Gareth has that wonderful combination that
is uniquely suited to Star Wars films,” she adds,
“which is an emotional understanding of the
characters inside the Star Wars universe and a
sense of what is a strong family-type film that
appeals to all ages. Gareth has a unique ability
to combine a sense of humour with thematic
storytelling.”
As the inaugural standalone film, Rogue
One is indeed the rogue one in the Star Wars
canon, a fact Edwards embraced when it came
to investing this new addition with his own
distinctive style and personality.
“What I wanted to do was to make Rogue
One more natural, more realistic and a little
more organic; to make it feel like a real world,”
the director explains. “This is a time with no
Jedi, no god to come and help the people who
are under this massive threat.
“We’re the first one out, so knowing these
films could be different was exciting, but how
different was the big question and what does
that mean. I love Star Wars. I grew up with the
original trilogy and to me they’re
the ultimate movies. I feel that a
massive upside to not being a
part of the Saga is we have a
license to be different.”
No Luke Skywalker. No Jedi. No episode number or
opening title crawl. As the first standalone adventure set
in a galaxy far, far away, Rogue One is an important and
exciting addition to Star Wars history. Words Adam Colby
The Rogue One Blu-ray is chock full of bonus
features but fans will notice the absence
of any deleted scenes, despite footage that
didn’t make the final cut featuring in early
trailers (like the TIE fighter that rises in front
of Jyn Erso). Gareth Edwards set the record
straight in a recent interview with Fandango:
“There’s not an individual scene that you
can drag and drop and put on a Blu-ray,”
he explained. “There are little things that would come and go during post-production, but they’re not
scenes. They’re more moments within the scenes or a single shot. So it’s impossible to be able to do
that, and that’s why the decision was made.”
Director Gareth Edwards
• Rogue One:
A Star Wars
Story
is out
on April 5