It was teased in the previous story that Forest Whitaker’s character in “Rogue One” would be a surprise, and boy is it! Entertainment Weekly has revealed that Forest Whitaker is playing none other than Saw Gerrera, the rebel freedom fighter we first met in season five of “The Clone Wars” in the Onderon arc.
A new image was also released of Saw Gerrera from “Rogue One,” where you can tell he looks different from how he was first shown in the trailer, as he now has a full head of hair, and looks very much like a battled-hardened solider who’s fought since the Clone Wars.
Here are the details about Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera from Entertainment Weekly, and why he was chosen to be the first character created for ” The Clone Wars” to be brought into live action:
By the time Rogue One takes place, just before the events of 1977’s original Star Wars, more than two decades have passed since the events of Revenge of the Sith. As played by The Last King of Scotland Oscar-winner, Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera is bulkier, more battle-hardened with the years, and maybe a little shellshocked. He has continued to fight; and, as he suggested in the trailer, he has become something — and it’s not quite a hero. Rather, he’s a man who has tried to do the right thing by occasionally doing questionable things.
“Consider him kind of a battered veteran who leads a band of Rebel extremists,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy tells EW. “He’s on the fringe of the Rebel Alliance. Even [they] are a little concerned about him.”
For Rogue One, they needed a character on the borderline, someone who would represent the extreme end of the fight against the Emperor. Producer John Knoll’s idea was to show how the Death Star is a threat that pulls the disparate Rebel factions into a place of unity. The Lucasfilm story group plucked Saw Gerrera from Clone Wars history as a good candidate for a radical.
“The Death Star is the event that sort of pulls everybody into a place of unity, and prior to that it’s a little bit more divided. Who are at the different ends of that spectrum?” says Kiri Hart, Lucasfilm’s head of story development.
I personally think this is awesome. Bringing in a character from “The Clone Wars” into live action in a way that makes perfect sense like Saw Gerrera does is cool on so many levels, and just adds to the importance of that series.
Be sure to check out the full article about Forest Whitaker playing Saw Gerrera over Entertainment Weekly.
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