Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Newest ‘Star Wars’ aims to be grittier
The newest ‘Star Wars’ installment aims for a grittier take on the space epic
Gareth Edwards has been living his own childhood dream.
“I’m just paranoid that I’m going to wake up in a minute and be in ‘Star Wars’ pajamas,” the British filmmaker said.
It has been a long and rocky road for the director of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” so it can be expected that Edwards might feel apprehensive as the latest adventure in the epic franchise opens today.
He was turning 2 years old when the original “Star Wars” hit theaters in 1977 — a perfect age to experience the mania that followed as the first trilogy unfolded.
“As a kid, I used to watch the films for hours and would sleep in ‘Star Wars’ pajamas, on ‘Star Wars’ bedsheets. So being part of the ‘Rogue One’ experience is something of a dream,” he said.
The new film is the first one-off “Star Wars” story, meaning it’s not a sequel. Its story leads into “Episode IV,” the original movie, and tells the story of a Rebel squad that steals the plans to the Death Star, the Empire’s planet killer that Luke Skywalker ultimately destroys.
The leader of the Rebels is Jyn Erso, a tough, independent fighter. This marks the second “Star Wars” movie in a row — after “The Force Awakens” — with a female as the main protagonist.
“Jyn just happens to be a woman who was raised in a war zone where she learns to survive,” Edwards says.
British actress Felicity Jones plays the heroine, and the Oscar nominee for “The Theory of Everything” might seem a surprising choice to some. Known for dramas such as “The Invisible Woman” and “Like Crazy,” Jones says: “I really had been waiting for this kind of role for so, so long. I was looking for a character like Jyn. So being in the film was a no-brainer.”
Jones says she was a bit of a tomboy growing up and stays fit by swimming, though she did go to a boot camp to train and take martial-arts lessons.
“Felicity is really strong and really tough and learned kung fu for the movie,” Edwards says, “but what’s great about her is that she’s not afraid to expose her vulnerabilities and weaknesses.”
Jones describes Jyn as someone who has had to fight her way in the world.
“Her life hasn’t gone according to plan, so she isn’t very trusting of people. And what we see is her being thrust into a cause in true ‘Star Wars’ fashion and traveling out into the galaxy to find her destiny.”
The actress says she watched “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” while preparing. “I wanted to bring in that sort of spirituality in terms of combat.”
So they changed her costume to give it more of a reference to Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Force, something Jyn believes in. But Jones also wanted the character’s fighting style to be scrappy.
“She has a street fighter’s mentality. It’s not eloquent or balletic but more like Thai boxing,” the actress says. “I spent a lot of time in sweatpants lifting weights in preparation for the role.”
What Jyn is not — unlike Luke or apparently Daisy Ridley’s Rey in “The Force Awakens” — is a Jedi.
In fact, no Jedi appear in “Rogue One.” Overall, the rebel band in the film are a war-weary bunch who have seen and done some terrible things.
“We would always try to find places in scenes where you would see a little crack in the armor,” Edwards says, “because I wanted the audiences to relate to the characters who are not perfect and are not superheroes.”
“I certainly think this is a darker movie than the other ones,” says Riz Ahmed, who plays Bodhi Rook, a onetime pilot for the Empire who switches sides because of his conscience. “It definitely has a grittier, more boots-on-the-ground, war-movie feel.”
Edwards says when they were first deciding about the direction of “Rogue One,” he was inspired by images from such films as “Apocalypse Now” and “A Thin Red Line.”
“So one of the early experiments we did,” says the filmmaker, “was with war photography. We took some images from Middle East wars, Vietnam and World War II and we Photoshopped ‘Star Wars’ helmets on the soldiers and put Stormtroopers in the background. There were very strong emotions in images, and when we took it back to the studio, they get very excited about it.”
The screenplay for “Rogue One” was written by Chris Weitz (“The Golden Compass,” “About a Boy”) and Tony Gilroy (“The Bourne Legacy,” “Michael Clayton”).
Gilroy was believed to have been brought in for some rewriting and reshoots last summer after principal photography had been completed. Edwards says he and the writer-director had worked together for a few days on “Godzilla,” so they already had a relationship.
No one is giving up details about how much Gilroy may have been involved in reshaping the story, but some reshooting and pickup shots were always planned, Edwards says.
“Reshoots are very standard,” Ahmed agrees. “It’s a credit to the filmmakers to keep pushing at it until they are happy with it. That takes guts. It would have been easy just to say, ‘We have so much momentum behind this we can just put out something that is just OK.’ “
The British actor recently received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in HBO’s “The Night Of,” in which he played a Muslim-American student accused of a brutal murder.
As it turns out, Ahmed — who is also a rapper who performs as Riz MC — went to Oxford at the same time as Jones. “She would go to my hip-hop parties, but I didn’t really know her very well. We had friends in common. Felicity is such a joy. She’s such a hard worker, down-to-earth and charming.”
Ahmed is part of an inclusive cast in “Rogue One” that includes Mexico’s Diego Luna and China’s Donnie Yen.
“We wanted to represent the whole world and were really pleased the way it panned out,” Edwards says. “We didn’t set out to do this consciously, but when the poster was released, I was standing there looking at the faces and thinking, ‘Yeah, we did OK.’ “Ahmed sees it as a natural progression. “These days you are telling a story that everyone in the world has access to, whether it is streaming services or multiplexes in Jakarta or San Francisco or Santiago. So it makes sense that our stories are as diverse as our global audiences are now.”
Like Edwards, the 34-year-old actor was a big fan of “Star Wars” growing up, and both the 6-year-old in him and the grownup really wanted to do the movie. Just before we talked, he said he had been taking selfies with Darth Vader, who by the way appears in “Rogue One.”
Ahmed was so intent on getting the role that he sent multiple audition tapes to Edwards.
“Maybe I went a little over-the-top because it was ‘Star Wars,’ “he admits, before jokingly adding, “but Gareth never should have given me his email address after talking to me on the phone for 10 minutes. It’s a ridiculous level of trust.”
The actor thinks “Rogue One” is coming out at the right time — “when there’s a lot of division our society.”
“It’s great to have something to bring everyone together,” he says and points out that his character, whose name Bodhi means awakening, had an awakening about the political situation around him.
“He realizes that he’s got to stand up for what he believes in and try to do the right thing,” Ahmed says. “You just can’t wash your hands of the world’s problems. I think there is a strong message in there about making an impact.”