Rogue One Bits: The Voice Of Admiral Raddus, A 'Star Wars Rebels' Cameo, And A Preposterous Boycott

In this edition of Rogue One Bits:

I'm of the opinion that if Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and members of the "alt-right" (AKA, white supremacist Neo-Nazis) want to boycott your product, you are doing something right. So good for you, Rogue One – you've got the white nationalists all riled up and writing angry Reddit posts about organizing boycotts of the most popular movie series of all time. Maybe it will be like that time they organized a boycott of Broadway's Hamilton, only for that show to celebrate its best week yet.

If you want to actually read some loathsome comments by disgusting racists about how a multicultural Rebel Alliance team led by a woman is a bad thing, Raw Story has compiled the relevant information. All I can say is that Star Wars has always been about the battle against fascism and authoritarian rule and to pretend otherwise is to miss the point. People who willfully ignore that so they can be racist and misogynistic while still liking Star Wars are (and this is the purely scientific word) tools. If there's one thing I learned from the Rogue One interviews I ran earlier this week, it's that everyone involved in the film is proud of its multicultural cast and that yes, it's no accident that the evil Empire reflects Nazi imagery. Boycott away. No one is going to miss you.

In more cheerful news, actor Stephen Stanton has revealed that he provides the voice for Admiral Raddus, the Mon Calimari commander working with the Rebel Alliance. While we don't know much about the character (other than him resembling an alien frog version of Winston Churchill), we do know a lot of about Stanton, who has voiced Wilhuff Tarkin, Mas Amedda, Moralo Eval, Meebur Gascon and other characters on Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.

First of all, here's the latest TV spot for Rogue One. It's about 12 seconds long. Ah, remember the good 'ol days when we were ecstatic about any footage from this movie?

However, the real story here is that the shot of the Rebel fleet amassing above Scarif features a tiny cameo from a familiar ship. Look to the bottom right of the frame and you'll find the Ghost, the ship crewed by the cast of television's Star Wars Rebels. Star Wars News Net reports that Rogue One's visual effects supervisor (and story creator) John Knoll initially pitched that the crew of the Ghost should be present for this decisive battle.

For a slightly meatier TV spot, there's this 30-second preview, which leans very heavily on Rogue One's gigantic set pieces. There isn't a lot of new footage, but you should show this to anyone that is inexplicably worried that this movie won't feature enough action.

Jedi News has the details on a recent American Society of Cinematography – Coffee and Conversation event with Rogue One director of photography Greig Fraser, who spoke about being able to "light in 3D" thanks to pre-vis and how they utilized 360 degree sets to have total freedom while filming. You can read everything at the link above.

We have previously written about how the Rogue One premiere will wreak havoc on Los Angeles traffic for a few days, but hey, at least there's a full-size X-Wing now parked in front of the Hollywood Pantages Theater.

STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE is standing by to open in 4,000+ theaters next weekend. SPOILER ALERT: They steal the Death Star plans!

— Exhibitor Relations Co. (@ERCboxoffice) December 8, 2016

If you still haven't bought your Rogue One tickets, you may want to get on that. If not, know that the film is opening in over 4,000 theaters next week, so you should be able to find an empty seat at some theater at some time.

The LA Times spoke with Rogue One director Gareth Edwards about the production of the film and he (finally) was able to speak at length about those extensive reshoots. Edwards claims that the documentary-style shooting process led to a more complex editing process, which led to a cut that required additional work and some reworking:

We'd always planned to do a pickup shoot, but we needed a lot of time to figure out all this material and get the best out of it. So that pushed the entire schedule in a big way. Then Disney saw the film and reacted really well and they said, 'Whatever you need, we're going to support you.' Our visual-effects shot count went from 600 to nearly 1,700, so suddenly we could do absolutely anything we wanted. To design 1,000 visual effects shots should take a year, so it was all hands to the pump and we never came up for air really until about a week ago,

Actor Riz Ahmed, who plays Bodhi Rook in the film, also commented on the reshoots, saying that they came from a position of wanting to make the best possible movie:

There were a ton of reshoots. But if people want to read anything into that, I'd encourage them to read into it the guts it takes to unpick stitching rather than just try to embroider over it, to make it right. I admire [Lucasfilm President] Kathleen [Kennedy] and Gareth and the whole team for having the guts to go, 'Let's reopen this. Let's do some of this again.' I think it's because they really care —and hopefully that's something that shows when people see the film.

Interestingly, some of Ahmed's choice words reflect sentiments he shared with me when I interviewed him almost a week ago.

Gareth Edwards also spoke to Mashable about the reshoots, making it clear that they're a luxury many films can't, not a sign of trouble:

On Godzilla we did pickup shoots. On this movie we did pickup shoots. For the next movie I want to do pickup shoots. You shouldn't ever stop. [...] In the days before the internet, maybe this wouldn't have been such a big deal. But it's just part of the world we're in now.

And you know what? He's entirely right about the last part.

The complete tracklist from the upcoming Rogue One soundtrack has been revealed and it looks like composer Michael Giacchino has abandoned his usual silly naming conventions in favor of something more straightforward. In a vacuum, you can look over these titles and be fine, but if you've been following the production of this film closely, this is a fairly comprehensive summary of the movie's major beats and you should tread cautiously.