“Rogue One” is releasing on Digital HD this Friday, and to celebrate the home release of the latest “Star Wars” movie, Entertainment Weekly will be running a series of articles this week revealing some behind the scenes secrets from the film.
Their first article reveals how the creative team was going to end the movie, and how some of the main characters were actually going to survive the film.
Here is how Entertainment Weekly breaks down the original ending of “Rogue One:”
The Death Star emerges from hyperspace to lay waste to Scarif and protect the Empire’s secrets by destroying the special weapons facility along with the Rebel incursion.
But this time there was no last-second broadcast of the plans from a satellite tower. Jyn and Cassian were to escape the surface of the beach world carrying the data tapes.
“A rebel ship came down and got them off the surface,” Whitta says. “The transfer of the plans happened later. They jumped away and later [Leia’s] ship came in from Alderaan to help them. The ship-to-ship data transfer happened off Scarif.”
Darth Vader was still in pursuit and began attacking Jyn’s shuttle as the Rebels tried desperately to transfer the information from the data tapes to Leia’s vessel. Finally, Vader was successful in breaching their shields and destroying the craft.
The audience would have been left fearing the heroes were dead. But as Vader’s Star Destroyer ventures off to chase Leia’s Tantive IV, we would have remained focused on the shuttle fragments floating in the vastness of space.
“They got away in an escape pod just in time,” Whitta said. “The pod looked like just another piece of debris.”
“The fact that we had to jump through so many hoops to keep them alive was the writing gods telling us that if they were meant to live it wouldn’t be this difficult,” Whitta says.
From reading that, it definitely sounds like we got the better ending in the final film. It really would’ve ended up like they went out of their way to make sure some of the heroes survived if ended like that, and we would’ve lost that great sense of heroic sacrifice that worked so well in “Rogue One.” Not to mention we wouldn’t have gotten the amazing Vader sequence if they ended it that way!
For more on “Rogue One’s” original ending, be sure to read the full article over at Entertainment Weekly.
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