ROGUE ONE has been out for about two weeks and has lived up to most people’s expectations, dominating the box office in the process. There was some fear, though, that it could fail to live up to the standards set upon it after everyone wet their pants after hearing about planned re-shoots. But everything that went into the final cut made for a fine film, and according to star Ben Mendelsohn there’s apparently much more we will never see.
During an interview with Collider, interviewer Steve Weintraub asked Mendelsohn (who plays Orson Krennic) if it was true that there were many different versions of scenes that where shot during production, with the star saying:
Yep, absolutely, very much. We did have multiple, multiple ways of going at any given scenario, we had multiple readings of it. So should they ever decided to, there would be a wealth of ways of approaching these different things. And I know from having seen sort of the crucial kind of scenes throughout it, I know there’s vastly different readings of at least four of those scenes.
He was then asked if it was done so much so that it could play out like an entirely alternate cut of the movie:
Absolutely, with enormous differences within I would’ve said 20 or 30 of the scenes… There would be enormously different renderings.
That being said, Mendelsohn did talk about how, overall, his character came out on-screen in much of the way he was pitched the role when he signed on:
In terms of the overall swoop, yeah, very much. I think that Krennic developed sort of along as we went, he had different ideas. And he settled yet on exactly –He was still thinking of a couple of variations in a lot of things at that stage. If you want to talk about alternative takes on things, there’s been quite a few different renderings of this within Gareth’s mind, and I dare say some of it’s been captured on film. So there are different renderings.
Though it’s no secret actors do “different takes” while on set, it seems what Mendelsohn is saying is that with ROGUE ONE there are entirely different paths some of the scenes took, which would’ve added up to a different movie. He even went on to say that when he saw the movie his reaction to some of the scenes was along the lines of, “Oh wow! He went with that. That one, yeah. Ok, I get it.”
Of course we will never know the lengths to which these “alternate scenes” may go, which is a shame because seeing an alternate cut of the movie could prove interesting, purely from a curiosity angle. I don’t doubt that we got was the best movie possible out of everything they shot, but as we saw in the trailer there are some vastly different scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut. Being it’s STAR WARS, which is owned by Disney, I’d say we will never get a “director’s cut” of the flick, but at least now there’s plenty to ponder like why, out of all the scenes, they didn't include Jyn running at that goddamn AT-AT!
ROGUE ONE is in theaters now.