Birth of ‘Rogue One’
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there were more stories than those of the Skywalker family. That was the idea Disney was counting on when it purchased George Lucas's empire Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, and the rights to everything in the Star Wars universe. Sure, they'd continue chronicling the trajectory of the Skywalkers, but what else was out there?
It was 30-year Lucas veteran John Knoll who thought of telling the story of the rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star, only alluded to in the opening crawl of the original 1977 Star Wars. And with that, Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story was born. It hits theaters next week, kicking off Lucasfilm and Disney's spinoff gamble. There are already two more in the works, including a young Han Solo standalone for 2018. The plan is to release the spinoffs in the gap years between the next two installments of the main saga (Episode VIII comes out next December.).
British director Gareth Edwards' film is set in a time of conflict and unrest, as the Empire grows and various rebel factions assemble in resistance, introducing a whole batch of new characters: The heroine Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones); her scientist father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen); a rebel spy, Cassian (Diego Luna) and his sarcastic droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk); an extremist, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker); and a pilot for the Empire, Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed).
"We tried to feel embedded like a real film crew in a war zone and give it that kind of flavor," said Edwards, who was sometimes literally in the trenches with the cast.
Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Imperial Officer Orson Krennic, said it's "pretty intense."
"There is a lot of battle," Mendelsohn said. "This is a tougher Star
Wars film, in certain respects, than any of its predecessors."
Rogue One is being treated with a secrecy similar to that of The Force
Awakens. The cast has seen it, but few others will until the film's premiere in Los Angeles on Dec. 10.
For Diego Luna, this is as it should be. Watching The Force
Awakens and knowing precious little about it let him experience cinema as he did in childhood.
"You sat down and let the film happen to you and those answers come to you through the voice of a director—not through the voice of a blogger and a reviewer and then the trailer and then the song and the toy," Luna said. "Because of the secrecy and because of all these filters, they're managing to go back to that time where cinema happened inside of the cinema."