Category Archives: Rogue One

Rogue One Nominated For Academy Awards

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Via comicbook.com:

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has been nominated for two Academy Awards, as announced Tuesday morning.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is nominated for sound mixing, where it is competing against Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, La La Land, and 13 Hours.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is also nominated fro visual effects, alongside Deepwater Horizon, Doctor Strange, The Jungle Book, Kubo and Kubo the Two Strings.

Last week, Rogue One: A Star Wars story achieved a box office milestone by crossing $1 billion globally.

WHAT IS THE BEST SCENE IN ROGUE ONE?

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Via Starwars.com:

IN THE STORY OF THE REBELS’ FIRST VICTORY OVER THE EMPIRE, WHICH SCENE RANKS HIGHEST? TWO STARWARS.COM WRITERS DEBATE!

One of the great things about Star Wars is that it inspires endless debates and opinions on a wide array of topics. Best bounty hunter? Most powerful Jedi? Does Salacious Crumb have the best haircut in the saga? In that spirit, StarWars.com presents From a Certain Point of View: a series of point-counterpoints on some of the biggest — and most fun — Star Wars issues. In this installment, two StarWars.com writers discuss which scene from Rogue One stands above the rest. Spoiler warning!

Click below to read the full article.

Why Leia Was at the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One

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Via io9.com:

A big question Star Wars fans have been asking, even weeks after Rogue One’s release, has been: Why the heck was Princess Leia at the Battle of Scarif? Luckily, a few experts from the Lucasfilm Story Group have cleared the air.

Star Wars expert Pablo Hidalgo and company appeared on a recent episode of The Star Wars Show, mentioned late last week. They were asked why Leia’s consular ship, Tantive IV, appeared at the end of the film, directly connecting Rogue One to Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Turns out, it’s because she and Admiral Raddus got sidetracked during their already scheduled trip to Tatooine to pick up Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“The plan was always that Leia was going to go to Tatooine to pick up Obi-Wan and Raddus was going to escort her,” Hidalgo said. “Then the news of Scarif came in, and that was deemed more important … [because] it’s the one warship that they have at this point.”

Hidalgo said Raddus was accompanying Leia because she was the “public face of the cause,” and they needed to keep her safe so she could continue getting them supplies. The ship’s inclusion itself was explained in the Rogue One novelization; Tantive IV remained on Raddus’ warship, as opposed to staying on Yavin or flying solo, because it was undergoing some repairs. That could be why it was unable to outrun the Star Destroyer—other than the fact that it’s, you know, a Star Destroyer.

Another little interesting tidbit shared was that Leia was actually on Yavin the whole time the Tatooine trip and Jyn Erso’s rebellion were being planned. Hidaldo said they kept Leia’s presence a secret because the movie wanted to “save the reveal,” but Leland Chee added that they added R2D2 and C3PO’s cameos as a clue.

Rogue One Tops $1 Billion Worldwide!

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Congrats to Rogue One, via BoxOfficeMojo.com:

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which brought in an estimated $7 million this weekend as its domestic cume climbs to $512.2 million plus an additional $9 million internationally. This brings the film’s international gross to $499.1 million for a worldwide gross over $1 billion, making Rogue One the 28th film to have ever grossed over $1 billion worldwide and Disney’s fourth 2016 release to cross the milestone

Will ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ Be Nominated For An Academy Award?

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Via Mic.com:
On Jan. 24, nominations for the 89th Academy Awards will be announced. While it is all but certain that critically acclaimed films like La La Land, Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea will receive major Oscar nominations, could there be a few surprises as well? Almost definitely. Could one of those be a nomination for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story? Keep reading.

It should not be all that shocking to anyone at this point that Rogue One, the first of several planned Star Wars anthology films, has been a smash hit. To date, the film is estimated to have earned over $500 million domestically and nearly $1 billion worldwide. When the dust settles, Rogue One will likely be the second highest-grossing Star Wars film, behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Like The Force Awakens, Rogue One has been very well received by both fans and critics, with the film holding an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes (and an 88% from users). But can Rogue One do what The Force Awakens did not and secure a major nomination at the Academy Awards?

There was some speculation last year that Star Wars: The Force Awakens could nab a best picture nomination at the 88th Academy Awards. After all, with the Academy now allowing more than just five best picture nominations, there is some flexibility to recognize blockbuster films that otherwise would be ignored at the awards ceremony. In the end, the film earned five nominations, but all for below-the-line categories.

Rogue One will almost certainly receive at least one of the nominations The Force Awakens received last year. Nominations for the film’s visual effects, sound editing, sound mixing and editing are all likely in play. Rogue One could also potentially receive a nomination for its score, as Michael Giacchino did a tremendous job not only incorporating elements of John Williams’ famous music, but making his own.

Will Rogue One receive a best picture nomination?

Of course, we still have not answered whether Rogue One could sneak a major nomination. You can take it to the bank that Rogue One will not be recognized in any of the acting categories. This is not a knock on Felicity Jones (who was excellent), but rather, recognition of the crowded best actress field. It is also unlikely that Rogue One would receive a nomination for its screenplay, though that’s probably more likely than it receiving an acting nomination. Furthermore, while Edwards directorial effort was superb, the best director field is just too crowded. Edwards will most likely not come up with a nomination. This leaves only best picture as a possibility.

Click below to read the full article.

Rogue One Music Syncs Up With Star Wars’ ‘Imperial March’

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 Via io9.com:

One of the coolest and most controversial things about the latest Star Wars movie is how it incorporates the series’ past. Now it’s been discovered that, aside from folding in characters and digitals recreations of actors from the original trilogy, Rogue One secretly has a musical homage to those movies, too.

Folks on the internet—Redditor cyborgcommando0 and Tufts University professor Frank Lehmann, specifically—noticed that the “Hope” theme from the Rogue One soundtrack had strong similarities to the Imperial March. It turns out that the choral element from “Hope” matches the horn fanfare from the iconic Episode V theme when sped up.

Subtly splicing in that motif is a very cool way of acknowledging the links between the movies. Hats off to composer Michael Giacchino.

Darth Vader’s Big Rogue One Moment Was a Late Addition

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Via Comicbook.com:

Even the people who didn’t love Rogue One: A Star Wars Story left the theater feeling exhilirated, thanks to the final sequence featuring none other than Darth Vader. In a vicious and violent moment, Vader shows the true power of the dark side of the Force, deflecting blaster bolts, slashing, Force choking, and stabbing his way through Rebel soldiers like nothing.

While Vader’s presence, and the idea of a hard copy of the Death Star plans being handed off to Leia were both in the initial concept of the closing moments of the film, the dark side rampage was a late add.

“It was a fantastic add – the Vader action scene, with him boarding the ship and dispatching all those rebel soldiers. That was something conceptualized a little later,” editor John Gilroy, who joined the project toward the end of the reshoots, told Yahoo! Movies. “The main structure was there,” he clarified, but the actual Vader, going through the air lock and trying to get to the shuttle Star Wars fans know is the Tantive IV, moment was new.

“It was a really great punch in the arm and something I think fans wanted to see,” Gilroy said.

That also explains why two actors are credited as portraying Darth Vader in the suit – Spencer Wilding did all the original scenes, while Daniel Naprous was brought in for the action sequence, purely due to the timing of the additional shots.

Click below to see the article.

An Answer To One Of Rogue One’s Mysteries

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Via Cinemablend.com:

Warning: spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story are ahead!

The events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story culminated in an epic battle on and around the planet Scarif. On the surface, Jyn Erso’s troops and some X-Wings kept the Empire distracted while she and Cassian Andor seized the Death Star plans. Out in space, Rebels ships were waging an assault on the Imperial forces around Scarif. Part of that attack included a Hammerhead corvette ramming into a broken-down Star Destroyer so it would crash into another Imperial battleship, and the force of those two ships subsequently took out the shield gate protecting the planet. It was a key victory in the battle, but some Rogue One fans have wondered whether the Hammerhead’s crew died in the process. Almost a month after the movie’s release, it’s been revealed that’s not the case.

During an interview with EW, Rogue One producer John Knoll discussed the thought that went into determining whether the men, women and other alien life forms aboard the Hammerhead would make it out alive, specifically by getting off the ship on life on escape pods. Eventually an animation of the pods being launched was created, but director Gareth Edwards found it distracting. However, the VFX team was still able to sneak in an indirect reference to the crew. Knoll explained:

“The last shot you see of the Star Destroyers crashing down through the gate — it’s a very subtle thing, and it would probably be hard to tell this — but the lifeboats are all gone on the Hammerhead. It’s my story that the Hammerhead crew got into the life boats and made it out.”

While no one aboard the Hammerhead was a major Rogue One character, the ship was integral to the Battle of Scarif. had it not plowed those Imperial ships into the shield gate, Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor would never have been able to transmit the Death Star plans off the planet, and the space station would have remained the ultimate power in the universe. Unfortunately, things don’t get any better for the Hammerhead crew. Longtime Star Wars fans know that escape pods have to eventually land somewhere, so the only place for these people to go was on Scarif. John Knoll continued:

“Our story was that they made it down to the surface of Scarif, and were standing around the beach going, ‘You know what, it isn’t so bad here!”

Sadly, it was bad down there, because eventually Grand Moff Tarkin ordered the Death Star to destroy the Imperial base on Scarif after it had been compromised, wiping out anyone in its vicinity. While it’s possible that some of the escape pods were able to land elsewhere on the planet, it stands to reason that the Empire would have eventually tracked those Rebels down. So even though most, if not all, of the Hammerhead crew didn’t perish aboard the ship, their luck didn’t improve afterwards.

The Origin of Jyn Erso’s Name

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Via Yahoo.com:
It was visual effects ace John Knoll who first pitched the idea for the standalone Star Wars hit Rogue One to Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy. And now we know how the film’s heroine, Jyn Erso, played by Felicity Jones, got her unique name.

“I wanted a really strong, smart, and active female character as the lead of this movie,” Knoll, chief creative officer of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic effects house, told Yahoo Movies. “I have three daughters, and they were all growing up, and they were all young when I was working on the prequels. I felt like Star Wars could really use another good strong smart and decisive female character.”

When it came to naming her, Knoll didn’t have to look far for inspiration. “My youngest daughter is Jane, and my wife is Jen, so [Jyn] is sort of mashup of them. And growing up my aunt was Aunt Ginny, [short] for Virginia, so there’s a little bit of that, too. It’s a mix up of a lot of my favorite women in my life.”

There’s plenty of good nerd fun to be had trying to decipher the origins or inspirations for Star Wars character names, and Rogue One is rife with monikers waiting to be cracked. Mysterious resistance leader Saw Gerrera is an obvious nod to Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. Director Orson Krennic might be an homage to the iconic Orson Welles, who was originally considered for the voice of Darth Vader. Cassian Andor is practically an anagram of Lando Calrissian. And Bodhi Rook is probably not a tribute Patrick Swayze’s Point Break surfer-criminal, but we like to think it is anyway.

As for Jyn Erso, I figured it was a play off of Charlotte Brontë’s literary heroine Jane Eyre. Not only do the names sound alike, Jane, like Jyn, is orphaned as a child and rises to prominence as a young woman. Eyre has long been viewed as a proto-feminist, and Erso, along with The Force Awakens‘ Rey, ushers in a new breed of empowered women in the Star Wars universe. (Another theory out there pointed out that Jyn Erso sounds like Jan Ors, a character who appeared in the LucasArts videogame Star Wars: Dark Forces.)

Earlier, we ran some of these theories by Kennedy and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards (watch the video below), and while they gave credence to a couple of them, they did debunk any Eyre connection. Edwards, though, thought Jyn was named after women in Knoll’s family. He was right.

John Gilroy Talks About Rogue One’s Ending

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Via io9.com:

Jyn and Cassian facing off with Krennic. Bodhi working communications. Chirrut and Baze fighting on the beach. The space battle. The Imperials. And finally, Darth Vader and the ending. Trying to put the many, many pieces that are part of Rogue One’s third act together wasn’t quite as hard as stealing the Death Star plans, but it sure wasn’t easy

“It was a very complicated third act,” Rogue One editor John Gilroy told io9. “There’s a lot of things happening at the same time. Our characters are at different places in the movie and we’re cutting from one to the other to the other. And you had to keep things clear, but you had to keep things moving.”

Gilroy is one of three editors credited on Rogue One and was brought in well after principal production was completed. He explained that at some point the filmmakers had decided on a new direction for the movie (he wouldn’t discuss it beyond that, unfortunately) and he was brought in to execute that new vision.
“This movie was supposed to be different than other Star Wars movies,” he said. “They were trying to push the envelope of what a Star Wars movie could be. And when you do that, you try to walk that line. You want to make it different but you also want to very much make it part of the whole Star Wars saga. So trying to find that balance was the biggest challenge.”

Some of the changes were character additions at the beginning of the film (detailed in this article) which reverberated through the rest of the film, truly coming to a head in the third act.

Click below to read the full article.