Rogue One Round Up!

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Rogue One creators address reshoot concerns - Reshoot this, reshoot that... Get The full scoop from Director Gareth Edwards: 'We’re putting a lot of pressure on ourselves until the very end'

Darth Vader Lives! - New details on the Sith lord's return in 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story'

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones)
A streetwise delinquent who has been on her own since 15, she has fighting skills and a knowledge of the galactic underworld that the Rebel Alliance desperately needs. “She’s got a checkered past,” says Lucasfilm president and Rogue One producer Kathleen Kennedy. “She has been detained [by the Rebellion] and is being given an opportunity to be useful. And by being useful, it may commute her sentence… She’s a real survivor. She becomes a kind of Joan of Arc in the story.”



Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna)
Andor is a by-the-book Rebel intelligence officer, brought in to steady the volatile Erso, but he’s no square. He’s committed, steady, and practical, and has seen more than his share of combat. “He conveys a fair amount of experience and the reality of what it’s like to do this every day, to try to figure out how to resist the Empire effectively and intelligently,” says Kiri Hart, Lucasfilm’s chief of story development. “It’s not easy.”



Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen)
Pronounced chi-RUT, he’s no Jedi, but he’s devoted to their ways and has used his spirituality to overcome his blindness and become a formidable warrior. “Chirrut falls into the category of being a warrior monk,” says Kennedy. “He very much still believes in everything the Jedi were about.” He maintains that belief even though the Jedi are no longer there to protect the galaxy. As director Gareth Edwards puts it: "This idea that magical beings are going to come and save us is going away, and it’s up to normal, everyday people to take a stand to stop evil from dominating the world.”



Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen)
Heavily armored, Baze prefers a blaster to hokey religions and ancient weapons, but he is devoted to protecting his friend Chirrut at all costs. “He understands Chirrut’s spiritual centeredness, but he doesn’t necessarily support it,” Kennedy says. Baze goes along with this Force business because “it’s what his friend deeply believes,” she adds. Think of them as a little like the galactic version of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.



Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed)
Bodhi is this Rebel squad’s lead pilot. He tends to be hot-headed, but any abrasiveness is overshadowed by his skills in the air — and the void of space. “He flies a lot of cargo, one of his key jobs,” Kennedy says. “And he tends to be a little tense, a little volatile, but everybody in the group really relies on his technical skills.”



K-2SO (Alan Tudyk)
This towering, powerful security droid is described by Edwards as “the antithesis of C-3PO.” In other words, he’s tough, confident, not especially interested in "human/cyborg relations," and the complete opposite of a neurotic fussbudget. “Kaytoo is a little bit like Chewbacca's personality in a droid’s body,” Edwards says. “He doesn’t give a s--- about what you think. He doesn't fully check himself before he says things and does things. He just speaks the truth.” Like Jyn, he’s also seeking a bit of redemption for past wrongs. Droids, too, can have regret.



Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen)
Jyn’s estranged father is like the galactic version of nuclear pioneer J. Robert Oppenheimer, with doomsday knowledge that is sought by both the Empire and the Rebellion. “He’s one of those people that has insight into you know specific aspects of just how the universe works,” says Hart. Where has Galen been, if Jyn has been on her own for years? “The circumstances of how the family got to the state that it’s in is something that we probably don’t want to share right now,” Hart says. (Lucasfilm isn't revealing his image yet, so this is file picture. Don't worry -- the button-down isn't retro galactic fashion.)



Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn)
On the opposing side, this villain is an ambitious Imperial apparatchik who intends to use his squad of Deathtroopers to pulverize the Rebel uprising and ascend into the Emperor’s graces – while hopefully avoiding the wrath of his enforcer, Darth Vader. “The bad guy is a lot more terrifying when he’s really smart, and really effective,” says Knoll. “There is a lot of palace intrigue going on in the Empire, with people conspiring to move up the ranks and sabotaging each other. There’s not a lot of loyalty there.”



Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker)
This character has a past that Star Wars completists will recognize immediately when they see his name, even if he looks very different than the way they've seen him before. (He even looks different from when we saw him in the teaser trailer.) There's so much to say about this character, we’re going to break out a separate on him and his history in The Clone Wars.



Deathtroopers
This shot of a squad of Deathtroopers, who are tasked with hunting down and destroying the fragmented Rebel uprising.



Jyn Undercover...
Rogue One is an ensemble story, but its central figure is Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), a young woman recruited by the Rebellion to infiltrate the Empire and secure details of its latest weapon – a moon-sized battle station we know as the Death Star. Here we see her in disguise, armed for conflict inside an Imperial corridor. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy says Jyn starts as an outlaw and “becomes a kind of Joan of Arc in the story.”



Krennic Schemes for Dominance
Ben Mendelsohn's Director Orson Krennic is responsible for protecting the security of the Death Star project, but he's also a manipulator within the Empire. "He understands the system and he knows how things work, but he also is not above trying to bend it to get what he needs or what he thinks he wants," says Kiri Hart, Lucasfilm's head of story development. Krennic is intended to be a contrast to Imperial officers we’ve seen before, like Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin. “Tarkin is the model for these really cool, icy types, you know?” Hart says. “Krennic runs a little hotter than that, so that’s kind of fun and it’s a little bit different. … He is unpredictable and volatile.”



Rest for Baze and Chirrut
Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen (Ip Man) plays Chirrut Imwe, a blind warrior monk who is not a Jedi but follows the path of the Force, and Chinese martial-arts actor and director Jiang Wen (Devils on the Door Step) co-stars as Baze Malbus, Chirrut’s Force-doubting rough-and-tumble protector. Like the original Star Wars, these characters owe a debt to the two peasants from a 1958 Akira Kurosawa adventure saga. “They’re inspired, again, by what inspired George in The Hidden Fortress, “ Kennedy says. “You could even say to some extent it’s, you know, R2 and C-3PO, a little bit of that.”



Paradise Lost
Keeping with the Star Wars tradition of planets with a single ecosystem, one key battleground in Rogue One is on a world that might resemble a relaxing seaside holiday destination if not for its proximity to the Death Star. That leads to a key battle in the film taking place on its balmy shoreline — blue waters and an eerie gray sky.



A Galactic South Pacific
We don’t yet know the name of this world, but it’s meant to evoke both heaven and hell — tranquility and war. “There’s this sort of South Pacific, tropical paradise planet that subconsciously leads into some of the imagery associated with World War II,” director Gareth Edwards says. “We went to lots of different places around the world, and one of them was the Maldives. When you're shooting Stormtroopers in paradise, you have the best job in the world, you know? You can't really deny it at that point.”



Toy Soldier
In one of the more intriguing photos from Rogue One, we have this image of Deathtroopers prowling on a tundra. One of them is holding what appears to be ... an action figure of sorts. The filmmakers didn't want to explain exactly what's happening here, but they confirm: yes, that's a Stormtrooper doll, a galactic version of a toy soldier. And it will have special significance in the story. (Decades later, an abandoned girl name Rey will also fashion a doll for herself — this one an X-wing pilot.)



Multicultural Cast
In this behind the scenes shot from the Yavin-4 base, Edwards consults with some of his lead actors: Jones, Diego Luna, Yen, and Jiang and Tudyk (in his performance capture suit). The movie's Rebel team is a deliberately diverse mix from our own planet, meant to reflect a galaxy filled with a wide variety of humans from many different worlds (not to mention a healthy mix of creatures and aliens). “People are coming to the Rebellion because something has happened that has galvanized or politicized them,” says Hart. “The question just becomes: What are those triggers for different people in different places?"



Rebel Soldiers Assemble
Here we see Diego Luna's Capt. Cassian Andor in the beach battle alongside some fellow Rebel soldiers — all of them human. From the original trilogy, we know a great many creatures also joined the Rebellion. Did those species line up and follow the lead of the humans after the events of Rogue One? Or have we just not seen some of the aliens who will join this battle? Director Gareth Edwards says there are at least two background creatures who fight with the squad, but they aren't major characters. "They're not necessarily front-and-center," he says, before joking: "But maybe one day, there'll be a spinoff movie."



Chirrut Imwe's Weapon
This shot of Donnie Yen's blind warrior-monk, Chirrut Imwe, gives us a good look at a new kind of weapon on his back. In the trailer, we see him face down a Stormtrooper using only a wooden staff. (No laser sword for him!) But the device slung on his back looks unusually ornamental for a mere blaster. It seems to be a more elegant version of the kind of bowcaster used by Chewbacca, and it makes me wonder if it has any historical significance. Also, what's a sightless warrior doing with any kind of blaster? Does his faith in the Force somehow help ensure his aim is true?



Baze Malbus Takes Aim
While Chirrut puts his faith in the Force, Jiang Wen's hard-bitten soldier, Baze Malbus, clearly believes more in the force of firepower. Here we see him taking up position beside a crashed X-wing fighter, toting a blaster that's linked up to a massive power pack on his back. Was he the pilot of this downed vehicle? In the teaser, we see Chirrut taking out Stormtroopers with this wreckage in the background. Is this where the two meet and become brothers-in-arms — or does their friendship go back much further?



Jyn and Cassian
In the era of fandom 'shipping, it's only a matter of time before people start drawing hearts around Jyn and Cassian. The filmmakers say he's the reliable, stable one who counters her loose-cannon tendencies, sort of Murtaugh to her Riggs. (There's probably a fandom out there who 'ship the two Lethal Weapon characters, too.) No doubt Jyn and Cassian form a trust and a friendship, but does that always have to mean romance? Is there perhaps value in showing a man and woman whose partnership is strictly platonic, an example of two soldiers who share a deep affection for each other, but not necessarily in that way? Or are we just going to 'ship, 'ship, 'ship until the Banthas come home?



Storming the Beach
Don't worry, the Empire isn't using choppers alongside its TIE Strikers to strafe the Rebellion. This is a behind-the-scenes shot, showing Baze, Chirrut, and a squad of Rebel fighters storming the beach. The helicopter camera is a surprising element, however, because it's not typically the kind of shot we've seen before in a Star Wars film, which tend to be more classically composed. Edwards says he's going for a hand-held, you-are-there approach to filming this battle, and a hovering, swooping camera angle could be an interesting component of that. The question now is how this approach will alter the vibe of what a Star Wars film can be.

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