The Chosen One Twist – SWR #273
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Topics:
Digital release of Rogue One
Rogue One Revisions by Anthony Breznican of ew.com
That TIE Fighter in the trailers
The planet of Dantooine
ANH cameos
Getting the Death Star tapes to their ship
Alternate ending: Some characters lived including Sgt. Jyn Erso (ew.com)
A rebel ship came down and got them off the surface,” Whitta says. “The transfer of the plans happened later. They jumped away and later [Leia’s] ship came in from Alderaan to help them. The ship-to-ship data transfer happened off Scarif.”
Darth Vader was still in pursuit and began attacking Jyn’s shuttle as the Rebels tried desperately to transfer the information from the data tapes to Leia’s vessel. Finally, Vader was successful in breaching their shields and destroying the craft.
The audience would have been left fearing the heroes were dead. But as Vader’s Star Destroyer ventures off to chase Leia’s Tantive IV, we would have remained focused on the shuttle fragments floating in the vastness of space
“They got away in an escape pod just in time,” Whitta said. “The pod looked like just another piece of debris.”
Bonus Vader scene where he kills an Imperial officer (ew.com) (wired.com)
Instead of lying wounded on a transmission platform while the green beam of the Death Star literally incinerates him on its trajectory into the planet, Krennic found shelter from the blast. In what sounds like a type of epilogue to the story, we would have seen his rescue by Imperial forces.
“They tore him out of the rubble and they brought him back,” Whitta says. “When they’re going over the ruins, he somehow survived.”
“It’s a bit of a reach,” Whitta says, “which is why it isn’t in the finished film.”
Had the filmmakers continued pursuing this storyline, Krennic would have been recovered along with presumably other valuable artifacts belonging to the Empire’s special weapons division.
“He survived the blast and they pulled him up and brought him to the Star Destroyer to report to Vader,” Whitta says. “He’s all beat up, his cape’s all torn up and stuff, and he thinks he has survived.”
Except this time, Vader isn’t just wielding deadly puns.
Krennic thinks he has endured. He thinks he has served valiantly for the Emperor. He thinks he has done everything right, everything within his power … right up until an unseen force squeezes off the air in his throat.
“Vader kills him for his failure,” Whitta says.
Jyn’s mother was a slain Jedi (ew.com)
“The prologue, at one point a long time ago, was going to be the Empire coming to kill the Jedi,” says director Gareth Edwards. “And Jyn’s mom was going to be a Jedi.”
“We were witnessing one of those kills and Krennic would be the person sent to do it.”
Star Wars is full of lost children, striving to survive on their own, relying on the care of others: Luke, Leia and, in a darker sense, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader himself. In The Force Awakens and the animated Rebels series, Rey, Finn, and Ezra Bridger also fit this archetype of the abandoned innocent who finds a new family in a fight against the forces that stole their loved ones.
The fatal flaw in the concept was that Jyn was never going to become a Force-wielder, so the filmmakers feared her Jedi mother would become a distraction. A tease without a payoff.
“Our instinct told us that we wanted a scene where Jyn is orphaned because of what Krennic does,