Rogue One: A Star Wars Story co-writer Gary Whitta has revealed new details about the film’s cut Darth Vader scene. The first of Lucasfilm’s spinoff movies, Rogue One’s third act infamously underwent heavy reshoots in the summer of 2016, ahead of its release the following December. Writer Tony Gilroy was paid $5 million to oversee the reshoots, describing the film as being in “terrible, terrible trouble” prior to his involvement, Fortunately, things worked out in the end and Rogue One went on to become a critical success, grossing just north of $1 billion at the global box office.
Of course, those weren’t the only major changes Rogue One went through over the course of its development. Whitta was the first credited writer involved with the film (before Chris Weitz and Gilroy) and a number of the ideas he pitched - based on ILM VFX supervisor John Knoll’s initial concept - never even made it into the screenwriting process. That includes a scene where Vader single-handedly mows down a blockade of Rebel troops during the heroes’ assault on Scarif in the third act. He’s talked about it before on Twitter, but has since shed some additional light on the scene.
Addressing one of his followers (who asked if there was anything “truly bats**t” Whitta pitched that didn’t make it into Rogue One), the writer once again tweeted about the abandoned Vader sequence, revealing some new details in the process. You can read his post below.
As Whitta mentioned in his tweet, the scene he pitched was similar to the one in the finished film where Vader slaughters a pack of Rebel soldiers in a corridor as they rush to get the Death Star’s plans safely aboard the Tantive IV. The sequence in question is a bit polarizing among Star Wars fans; some feel it restored Vader’s image as a terrifying force (pun not intended) of evil, while others view it as unnecessary fan service that’s tonally out of touch with the rest of Rogue One. Whichever way you cut it, it’s a brutal scene and one that Whitta has likened to a horror movie more than a Star Wars film. Obviously, we’ll never know if the variation Whitta pitched would’ve been more, less, or equally meaningful to Rogue One’s narrative, given its placement in the middle of all the action on Scarif. But based on what the writer’s revealed, it definitely would’ve resulted in just as high a body count.
In the three years (and counting) since its hit theaters, Rogue One’s reputation has not only improved, a growing number of fans even consider it to be the best of Disney’s Star Wars movies so far. Lucasfilm hopes to tap into the goodwill towards the film with its developing Cassian Andor prequel series for Disney+, with Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk reprising their roles as Cassian and K-2SO for the show. Reportedly, the series was on the cusp of being cancelled last year, before Gilroy (once again coming to the rescue) was hired as a writer and director. Whether he’s planning to include a Vader murder rampage scene of his own for the spinoff, well, that remains to be seen.
Source: Gary Whitta
