Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little followup to the tweets below. Thanks to Vineyard for getting my initial reactions up ASAP. I pretty much covered my thoughts via my twitter stream, but I wanted to focus on one particular aspect of the panel and the thing that got me the most excited for Gareth Edwards' Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One and that's the very specific kind of movie he wants to give us.
Yes, by making it a prequel and telling a story about a mission we already know succeeds there is the danger of undercutting the tension of the film. But you can also say that we know how WW2 ended so Saving Private Ryan shouldn't have been intense. The key is him giving us characters we give a shit about. People that will we'll miss if and when they die along the way.
My favorite thing he said about Rogue One was that it will exist in a gray world and the outcome will solidify the more solid black and white/good and evil world of A New Hope. Specifically he said the good guys do bad things and the bad guys do good things in this story. They're people in a war, trying to survive.
The heist aspect was downplayed and the war movie aspect was played up, so I assume we're going to see a pretty epic war movie from the perspective of the boots-on-the-ground soldiers doing this strike. It sounds more like Seal Team Six than Ocean's 11.
If that's what Edwards pulls off then we're in for something special. I don't know about you, but I'm psyched about the prospect of a Star Wars movie that doesn't have one lightsaber or super powered person in it. This one seems to be all about the soldiers that are fighting the good fight while the top dogs are off doing their thing and if that's what we get then I'll be over the moon.
Check out the article below for my live-tweeting run from the panel for more details!
Gareth Edwards was at Star Wars Celebration today to unveil some HUGE new stuff re: his upcoming STAR WARS spinoff, which we now know will be called STAR WARS ANTHOLOGY: ROGUE ONE. Our very own Quint was there, and these were his Tweets straight from the scene:
What are these stand alone movies? Origin stories? Spin-offs? Kathy Kennedy is about to explain.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Lucasfilm wanted freedom to tell stories in different timelines with different characters in different genres
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
The spinoff Star Wars movies are officially called Anthology films
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Gareth Edwards said he's embarrassed to admit he cried when he saw the new trailer.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Edwards' Star Wars film starts shooting in the summer
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Rogue One teaser shows a sole TIE fighter flying through a canyon, then up to a hazy Death Star on the horizon
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Looks like it will be the Death Star plan heist flick afterall!
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Yep, official synopsis for Star Wars: Rogue One confirms it's about the mission to steal the Death Star plans.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Edwards says that the absence of the Jedi is very much felt in this film. It's very much about people without powers being heroes
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
The Death Star in the footage was pretty well built, but still low in the atmosphere... Not in space.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Edwards calls the film real and "gray." "The bad guys are good and the good guys are bad."
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Production art shows rebel troops attacking something on a rainy night. Think rebels mixed with seal team six
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Felicity Jones will play a rebel soldier, says Edwards. He also said she dropped everything to do this movie because she's a huge SW fan.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Zero Dark Thirty DoP will shoot Rogue One. Doug Chang one of the production designers
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Rogue One has VFX guy who worked on Saving Private Ryan. "You're not kidding about this being a war picture." "It is called Star WARS."
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
ILM's John Knoll will get a story by credit on Rogue One. He pitched the concept and started the ball rolling.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
According to Kathy, Rogue One was one of the first pitches she heard when she came onboard.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
"I couldn't sit in the cinema knowing someone else made this film." - Gareth Edwards
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) April 19, 2015
Sounds excellent, no?
The crusty seagdog may come on later and flesh out his thoughts on what he saw. For now, enjoy this bootlegged copy of the ROGUE ONE teaser before it gets slapped away!!!
That’s no moon! It’s a space station!!!!!
STAR WARS ANTHOLOGY: ROGUE ONE attempts to pull an Ocean’s Eleven on the Empire on December 16th, 2016.
