'Rogue One' Editors Discuss Changes To The Ending And Which Scenes Were Reshoots

Following the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, there has been a lot of chatter about the reshoots that ended up bringing significant changes to the final cut of the movie that we saw in theaters. We've scrubbed through a bunch of the footage from the trailers and TV spots, noticing that one of the biggest changes in the movie appears to be what our heroes do in the third act, specifically with regards to the Death Star plans.

Now some discussion about the significant changes to the Rogue One ending, as well as details on which scenes are reshoots, have been revealed by the film's editors, John Gilroy and Colin Goudie. Find out what they had to say about the Rogue One reshoots after the jump, but beware of spoilers if you haven't seen the movie yet.

John Gilroy and Colin Goudie sat down with Yahoo UK to discuss their work on Rogue One, and they pointed out some specific changes that came from the reshoots, some of which included how we meet our characters before they all end up together. Gilroy explains:

The story was reconceptualised 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 [Cassian Andor, the Rebel spy played by Diego Luna], and Bodhi's character [Bodhi Rook, the defected Imperial pilot played by Riz Ahmed].

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 [Jyn Erso, the reluctant leader of the film, played by Felicity Jones], how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better.

This is rather interesting, because from my perspective, all the jumping around to meeting the different characters after the title card is what feels a little clumsy. However, if these scenes were added in reshoots, that means that the original cut would have given us even less to latch onto with some of the Rogue One crew (one of the problems I had with the movie even in the final cut), so it sounds like it was an overall improvement.

Goudie talked more about the changes in the opening and how they were intended to give some more exciting introductions to our characters:

The point with the opening scenes that John was just describing was that the introductions in the opening scene, in the prologue, was always the same. Jyn's just a little girl, so when you see her as an adult what you saw initially was her in a meeting. That's not a nice introduction.

So having her in prison and then a prison break out, with Cassian on a mission... everybody was a bit more ballsy, or a bit more exciting, and a bit more interesting.

So the first scene we may have seen with Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) would have been her getting her mission from the Rebel Alliance instead of being busted out of prison. That's probably for the better since it added some action into the mix. But those are small changes compared to what happened to the ending.

Though Gilroy wasn't quite as forthcoming with specific details as he was on the opening scene reshoots, he did confirm that it was reworked significantly:

It changed quite a bit. The third act has a lot going on. You have like seven different action venues, the mechanics of the act changed quite a bit in terms of the characters, and I don't want to go into too much detail about what had been there before, but it was different. We moved some of the things that our heroes did, they were different in the original than they were as it was conceived.

However, even though there's a significantly different cut of the movie that exists, it wasn't much longer than the final cut we saw. Goudie explains:

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.

For me, I don't want to see the current version of the movie with some deleted scenes tossed back in, but I do want to see what the original ending of Rogue One was like. Sadly, those scenes will likely never see the light of day.