There was a fair bit of controversy around ROGUE ONE when fans learned that there was some reshoots done. While this is generally the norm for big-budget flicks, word leaked that these reshoots were actually quite extensive. Judging from the initial trailers for the film, we have an idea of how so! However, the movie was released, most people loved it and that was that! Yahoo recently caught up with editors John Gilroy and Colin Goudie, who opened up about the editing process and even some of the scenes that were added in the reshoots. Check it out!
Colin Goudie on the editing process for ROGUE ONE:
I’d worked with Gareth previously. I cut his movie MONSTERS so we’d already got a relationship and I’d actually done a couple of projects with him before that as well. So he got me on board in September of 2014 and asked me to do a story reel for ROGUE ONE.
There was no screenplay, there was just a story breakdown at that point, scene by scene. He got me to rip hundreds of movies and basically make ‘Rogue One’ using other films so that they could work out how much dialogue they actually needed in the film.
For example the sequence of them breaking into the vault I was ripping the big door closing in WARGAMES to work out how long does a vault door take to close. So that’s what I did and that was three months work to do that and that had captions at the bottom which explained the action that was going to be taking place, and two thirds of the screen was filled with the concept art that had already been done and one quarter, the bottom corner, was the little movie clip to give you how long that scene would actually take.
Then I used dialogue from other movies to give you a sense of how long it would take in other films for someone to be interrogated. So for instance, when Jyn gets interrogated at the beginning of the film by the Rebel council, I used the scene where Ripley gets interrogated in ALIENS.
Regarding the initial cut of the film:
It was not much longer than the finished film. I think the first assembly was not far off actual release length. Maybe 10 minutes longer? I genuinely can’t remember because that was nearly a year ago now. There’s no mythical four hour cut, it doesn’t exist.
John Gilroy on the reshoots:
They gave you the film that you see today. I think they were incredibly helpful. The story was re-conceptualised to some degree, there were scenes that were added at the beginning and fleshed out. We wanted to make more of the other characters, like Cassian’s character and Bodhi’s character.
The scene with Cassian’s introduction with the spy, Bodhi traipsing through Jedha on his way to see Saw, these are things that were added. Also Jyn, how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better. Of course, things like that have a ripple effect all through the movie so there was a lot of work to do, and as Colin said, there were three of us, we rolled up our sleeves and we got to work and made the movie you see.
While I’m certainly not one of the people who claims that Edwards’ original cut of the film was better, I wasn’t too happy with the end result as-is. In fact, the two introductory scenes that were added only served to bring up more questions as far as I’m concerned. Still, it’s a fascinating process how these kinds of films are made. We’re bound to hear more about these alternate scenes as time goes on!
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY is now in theaters.