Going Rogue

By: Jamie Steinberg

You know that saying from the movie The Godfather: Part III where Pacino says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in?” Well, that’s where we find ourselves with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story! It is the origin story of the rebellion found within our beloved series and with new releases comes new stars! The cast sat down recently to discuss the film and gave us all quite the insight into the making of the movie, what we can expect and what the future holds for the franchise.

Here we find ourselves in a good news – bad news situation. It was announced that the Rogue One storyline would be a standalone film and, thus, no sequel. When asked to confirm, producer Kathy Kennedy stated, “When we came up with this idea to the standalone movies, what’s liberating in many ways is the notion that we can come up with these stories inside the Star Wars universe that really have a beginning, middle and an end, and they stand truly on their own and this does.” So, as you can see, Rogue One will just have one life.

Part of the good news though is that this film is a grittier version of the fight between the Empire and the rebels. According to director Gareth Edwards, this was a point of contention that Kennedy wanted to be sure kept consistent throughout the film. According to Edwards, “When we started playing around and experimenting, one of the things we did was we took real war photography like photographs from Vietnam and World War II and the Gulf. We used this bit of software that [EP] John Knoll wrote for Photoshop and put in rebel helmets on the soldiers and rebel guns and some X-Wings in the background instead of fighter jets, and suddenly you looked at this stuff and it was really engaging, and everyone who came and looked around the building and we showed them things, they’d get to these images and go, ‘Oh my God! Wow! I really want to see that film,’ and the studio loved it! The process of making the film becomes like the story you’re telling and in this case we were all literally in the trenches together trying to achieve these impossible tasks, like the characters were trying to steal Death Star plans, but as a group we’re trying to make a great Star Wars movie and so you feel like you’ve been through a battle together.”

Now, we couldn’t bring up a Star Wars film without touching on the efforts of the original man behind the movie – George Lucas. So, it will interest our readers to know what the most important thing from Lucas’ original trilogy that he wanted to bring to Rogue One. Edwards expressed, “The problem with Star Wars is that question takes about four hours. There’s not an individual thing – as long as you do this, it’s Star Wars and you’re golden – it’s like you’ve got to do about a thousand different things and mix them all together and get the balance just right. It’s like a really tricky thing to emulate what we love about the original, but feel like we’re telling a different story and it’s fresh. For me, we could have done like a very, specific genre film and stuck Star Wars on it and said that’s our movie. But George was always really good at mixing the genres together and creating this very emotional sort of mythological story that just happened to have robots and spaceships in it.”

Of course, once you have touched on the magic man himself you will want to get some perspective on the film from the point of view of the actors. Plus, don’t you want to know if the stars looked back to the film configuration to see where their characters would fit in? When posed to actor Diego Luna, he stated, “At the beginning, yes, I started with the script that was already interesting enough or me to kind of dig into myself and try to find this captain inside me and I guess the most important part was to do the military training. You have to establish a parallel too, with this galaxy far, far away and the world we live in. I spent two weeks with this ex-military in London, just taking about experiences and about the last ten or fifteen years of his life and that gave me enough material.” Actress Felicity Jones gave a different perspective saying, “It’s in Jyn’s head. It’s very clear. She hates the Empire. So, anytime she sees Stormtroopers she has this very clear instinct to take them down. So, I just tapped into that energy.” For characters with a more physical aspect to their portrayal, it was interesting to learn how they were able to use their abilities to help develop their roles. Actor Donnie Yen, for instance, mentioned, “We all have the force, it’s just we don’t realize it. I think it’s interesting to see, to me, Star Wars’ story is about reminding us the things that we neglect and forget. And the force – we always have kind of an ability. I don’t think of it as having the martial arts ability. It’s just being a human being – you do have the force.” Adding her thoughts, Jones expressed, “I’m kind of used to lots of corsets so it was really nice to be running around with a blaster and a baton to bash Stormtroopers with. It was an extraordinary process and you work very closely with the stunt team who take you through every kind of move and moment and support you throughout the whole thing.”

What was most interesting was the touching of diversity and representation in this film throughout the main characters. Many fans are enjoying seeing the various new faces of the film reflecting those of various colors and creeds. So, what was fascinating was how producer Kathy Kennedy touched on the importance of crafting the cast and characters of the film. “I think it’s incredibly important to Star Wars,” noted Kennedy. She went on to say, “Having a cast that represents and reflects the world today and having characters that people can relate to all over the world…This is very much a global industry. Films mean something to people all over the world and it was certainly important to this story. It lent itself very, very well. Having that sense of diversity as people come together was really important to our story” So would she like to see a greater addition of women to future Star Wars films? “That would be great,” Kennedy said. “I think it is really important. I found it really interesting when I first stepped into this job and I started to look at what it means to be a female hero, a female heroine. I think the character of Rey, the character of Jyn, I think these are empowered women that are not necessarily just taking on male characters, they’re genuinely female heroines. And I think that’s really important to the way we tell stories and so I think it will make a difference.”

Rogue One also sees the introduction of characters from the animated Star Wars series as we meet character Saw Gerrera. That had us wondering if there were plans to expand animated roles into the feature films. Explains Kennedy, “That isn’t really the approach that we have. We don’t sit down and start isolating a list of characters and then build stories around those. We really are starting with the stories themselves and then if some of those characters might come in to what it is we want to do or say, we’ll consider it then. But that’s not part of the strategy now.” Sounds like you’ll just have to wait and see animated fans!

And what of the villains of the film? There is quite a gray area when it comes to Rogue One as opposed to a very black and white distinction between heroes and villains in the series. Luna thinks this is a greater reflection of the current state of our world. “I think it’s a modern approach to Star Wars and we live in a different world today. If you revisit all the films, it’s kind of like a stamp of what was going on and a reflection on the world back then. Ours has to do the same. We live in a diverse world where racial and cultural diversity is in fact making us richer and more interesting. But it is a complex world we live in and making the right choice many times looks horrible. And these people are in war.” Well said. So, where does this gray area leave Cassian and Jyn? Are they heroes? Yes, according to Luna. “Cassian is a true hero, as Jyn and everyone in this team. It’s just that they are the heroes we can be, just regular people doing amazing stuff and no special powers, no Jedis. It’s just conviction and teamwork and the hope of actually being able to shape the reality we live in. That’s makes them great.”

We couldn’t touch on this film without mentioning the biggest bad of them all though – Darth Vader! Aren’t you dying to know what it was like to be in a scene with this iconic villain? Star Ben Mendelsohn explained, “First thing you have to do is just get over the fact you’re doing a scene with Darth Vader. It took me a little while to feel like I could answer him with some solidity, like we could have a discussion, as it were. That took a little while. And also Darth, his gestures and mannerism are so familiar that finding someone that can execute that in a way that is fluid is its own skill set. So, that requires a certain amount of thought and consideration.”

Now for a look into the technology! K2 may have seemed like it was strictly created by CG, but in fact that was the magic and mastery of actor Alan Tudyk! “I was wearing a full body jumpsuit sort of thing. It’s such new technology, even still. Sometimes people wear cameras on their heads, sometimes there’s dots all over their face, they have balls all over their suit.” What kind of hoops did Tudyk have to jump through then to get into character? Tudyk explains, “The way that ILM did it, I wore a suit that was very comfortable. It didn’t have all that restriction on it, it just had interesting designs on it. It was like a luge costume from like the Italian team, like it looked cool. It didn’t have the colors. But then I was on stilts so I was 7’1” so I towered over everyone most of the time. Just even at that height it was colors and how you moved that helped me get into character.” While he may have had the costume and makeup that came later, it seems it was just good old fashioned acting that we have come to enjoy from this chameleon of an actor. That also means that if there was something that needed a bit of tweaking they needed to seek out Tudyk to have him re-record and copy his performance for K2.

Okay, so what question remains is that of whether or not non Star Wars fans can appreciate the film or if it is something they’d need to get backstory on by watching the franchise in order and to completion. According to Kennedy, you’ll be fine if you just want to hit up the theater to see this without any prior research. “It’s absolutely a standalone. I think the great thing is that this could be a real introduction tot eh whole franchise for many people who haven’t necessarily followed it or younger people who don’t’ know that much about Star Wars and other parts of the world who don’t’ know that much about Star Wars. So, it really does stand on its own.” Phew!