NOTE: An earlier version of the following post was originally published in December 2021. I took the post down after noticing too many errors with it, and have since decided to revise it.
So a few days ago marked the fifth anniversary of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first ever live-action theatrical spinoff in the Star Wars franchise.
Because of this, I was thinking about the movie again recently, particularly the common complaint audiences had about the first handful of scenes feeling too “frantic,” and I realized something… The beginning of the movie is actually not that hard to fix. As a matter of fact, anyone can do it, as long as they have the right editing tools at home…
Oh, don’t get me wrong! Rogue One has a ton of issues. Way more issues than what any simple fan edit could fix. All I’m proposing here is that the first chunk of the movie (let’s call it “Act One,” for the sake of simplicity) can be turned into something much more effective than what it currently is with just a simple rearrangement of the scenes.
With that all being said, let’s break down, one scene at a time, how I would fix the beginning of Rogue One:
1.Delete the blue milk zoom-in
Minor nitpick, I know, but fan-service moments like these are fucking stupid and should not have been in the movie. Fuck this shit!
2.Add “Thirteen Years Later” after the title is shown
As you may recall, the film starts with a “prologue” sequence that shows Jyn as a little girl, watching her mother Lyra being killed and her father Galen being taken away. We then see the title of the film, complete with cheesy Star Wars font and all, before cutting to a shot of Jyn, now an adult, sitting in a prison cell, her mother’s necklace still around her neck. The necklace and Felicity Jones’s striking resemblance to the little girl from the prologue are enough to visually communicate to us that a significant amount of time has passed since the pre-title sequence. That said, I plan to move this scene to later in the story now. Again, the objective with this “fix” is to make it so that we stay on certain characters for longer. Therefore, the scene where we first meet adult Jyn should be moved to later, right before she gets rescued by the rebels. Because of this, we need something else to communicate to the audience right after the title reveal that time has passed now since the prologue. A simple “Thirteen Years Later” text would get the job done. And in case you’re wondering; yes, I did some research and made sure that was the exact number of years between the prologue and the rest of the story.
3.Delete Cassian’s introduction scene
I know what you’re thinking; “What’s wrong with you, dude?! The characters in Rogue One are already too flat as is!! You wanna make them even flatter?!” Hear me out… The biggest issue with the beginning of the movie is that it jumps around between too many locations and characters, in too short an amount of time. Therefore, if there are any scenes that can be cut out in order to “diminish this effect,” as franchise creator George Lucas himself once worded it, then they should be cut. This scene wasn’t even originally part of the movie anyways. It was written and shot entirely during the reshoot phase, and it shows. The guy Cassian talks to here is a horrible actor, and you can just tell the whole scene was shot in a day, on a super-tight schedule. Besides, everything we learn here is repeated to us a few scenes later, when Jyn meets the rebels. The only thing we’d really lose is the cool moment where Cassian is forced to kill his buddy in order to escape. That alone told us everything we need to know about his character arc. That said, we get a similar character beat a few scenes later anyways, when the douchey general guy tells Cassian to kill Galen as soon as he sees him, and Cassian nods in a reluctant but obedient way. Is this as compelling as him being forced to kill his friend? No, but it gets the job done of telling us what this character is all about, and sometimes less is more.
4.Cut to Bodhi arriving on Jedha
So after the prologue and the title and the “Thirteen Years Later” text, we cut to Bodhi arriving on Jedha, specifically the scene where he’s being walked through the desert by Saw’s henchmen. Bodhi’s actions are what kick off the whole story, so after the prologue, I think it makes the most sense to have him be the character we meet first.
5.Cut to Bodhi meeting Saw
In the real movie, after we meet Bodhi, we are shown a bunch of scenes with other characters before finally cutting back to him later, so that we can finally see him meeting Saw. Like I said earlier, the objective of this hypothetical edit would be to stay on certain characters for longer, to try to diminish the frantic “feel” of the movie as much as possible. Therefore, after seeing Bodhi being walked through the desert by the henchmen, I think the movie should hard-cut to the shot of Saw’s robot legs walking through the dark hallway while he shouts “Lies! Deceptions!” or whatever it is he pointlessly screams there.
6.Tarkin introduction
So after we see Saw order his henchmen to take Bodhi to the squid monster, we should cut to the scene where we first meet Tarkin in the movie. I’m pretty sure this is how it plays out in the actual movie anyways, so I won’t comment any further on this.
7.Cut to black, with Galen’s voice saying “Stardust”
As soon as Tarkin’s intro scene ends, I want to cut to the scene where we meet adult Jyn in the prison cell. That said, cutting straight from Tarkin to adult Jyn’s intro would be a little too “sudden,” so to ease the audience into it, I would cut to black first, and add a quick soundbite of Galen’s voice saying “Stardust,” as I feel this would act as a good setup for when we see adult Jyn waking up in the prison cell immediately after.
8.Cut to adult Jyn introduction
And finally, this is where I would put the quick scene of adult Jyn in the prison cell, waking up from a nightmare and looking at her mother’s necklace.
9.Delete intro shot of the planet Wobani
In the real movie, right before we see K2SO rescuing Jyn from the tank, we get a quick establishing shot of a purple planet with some text saying something like “Wobani: Prison World.” But because we are now moving adult Jyn’s intro and her rescue right next to each other, this shot is no longer necessary, so I’m getting rid of it. Not that it matters, by the way, but in case you haven’t noticed, Wobani is an anagram for Obi-Wan.
10.Cut to K2SO rescuing Jyn
Immediately after adult Jyn’s intro scene in the prison, we cut to the sequence where she’s rescued, starting with the shot of the tank moving across the muddy terrain, and concluding with her “surrendering” to K2SO, just like in the actual movie.
11.Add the flashback montage right after the U-Wing departure
In the actual movie, after Tarkin’s intro scene, we get a flashback montage dream sequence, where we see two different points in Jyn’s childhood intercut with one another. I like this sequence, and want to keep it, but since we moved the Tarkin intro up a bit, this scene no longer fits there. So instead, I would just fade to black and cut to this little dream sequence right after we see the U-Wing with Jyn, Galen and K2 leave Yavin 4. The next scene we see is Jyn waking up right as they arrive on Jedha anyways, so it still fits just fine.
12.Delete the “You just watch yourself” shit
The rest of the movie plays out the same, with the one exception being that I would delete the “You just watch yourself” callback. Like the blue milk zoom-in, it’s just stupid fan-service, and the fact that it was ever even thought of for this movie makes me cringe…
And that’s pretty much it! Like I said in the beginning of this post, I still have plenty of other issues with Rogue One beyond the stuff mentioned here. That said, none of those other issues can really be fixed with simple fan-editing, as they’re all far too “baked” into the story. Again, the purpose of this post was just to propose how the beginning of the movie could have played out in a much smoother way, with the key being that it should have held on certain characters for longer.
One last thing I would like to say here is that, while I don’t necessarily hate this movie either, I have a feeling I would have liked the original cut much more, before they did all the reshoots. The middle section on the rainy planet is my favorite part of the movie, and from what I’ve heard, it’s basically the only section that wasn’t changed in reshoots, and it shows…
That said, it also sounds like the original cut had a much “bleaker” tone, which doesn’t necessarily fit with Star Wars (even the darkest corners of it). It sounds like the original deaths of all the characters in the final act were much more “random,” which was meant to highlight how, during war, good people often die in random, meaningless ways when they’re out on the battlefield. Word on the street is that Disney felt this was too bleak, so Tony Gilroy was brought in to give all the characters “meaningful” deaths, which basically changed the whole theme of the movie to being about “the importance of sacrifice.” While I admire the effort, all of their deaths and reasons behind them felt a bit convoluted to me. Part of me wishes the studio would’ve just let original director Gareth Edwards do his own thing. I think the fact that he hasn’t been active in the industry at all since this movie came out says a lot…
Despite all this, there are still moments in Rogue One that I enjoy here and there, so happy fifth birthday to the movie…
Peace!
PS: Oh yeah, I would also get rid of all the planet name tags from the movie. That stuff wasn’t needed…
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