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(It’s out on Blu-ray April 4.)
“The original instinct was that they should all die,” screenwriter Gary Whitta tells EW.
“It’s worth it.
That’s what we always wanted to do.
But the creative team still wanted their noble sacrifice.
“It doesn’t feel depressing.
It feels like you want them to succeed at any cost.
You do whatever it’s crucial that you do to get there.
It’s a gauntlet that they’re handing to Princess Leia.
You get that moment where the crowd feels like it can cheer at the end.”
“We were still scratching the itch that they all needed to die.
Chris Weitz [who wrote another draft] thought we were right,” Whitta says.
“They finally went off and fought for it.
We got the ending that we wanted.”
Jyn was an enlisted Rebel soldier instead of a street criminal recruited on a spy mission.
“In fact, some of the toys that are sold still say Sgt.
Jyn Erso,” Whitta says.
“That’s who she was, she was a sergeant in the Rebel Alliance.
By the time we changed that, some of the toys were already in production.
I have a Sgt.
Jyn Erso on my desk, even though she’s not a sergeant in the film.”
So did everyone live to fight the Empire another day?
“I didn’t sayeveryonemade it off.
Kaytoo always died,” Whitta said.
“Jyn did survive.
‘Cassian’ also survived.
There were a lot of casualties on both sides, in both versions of the scripts.”
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.”
Finally, Vader was successful in breaching their shields and destroying the craft.
The audience would have been left fearing the heroes were dead.
“They got away in an escape pod just in time,” Whitta said.
“The pod looked like just another piece of debris.”
Don’t like that ending?
Neither did the creators.
That’s why they begged to change it.
We were constantly trying to make all the pieces fit together.
We tried every single idea.
Check back to EW.com on Tuesday for Day Two ofRogue One Revelationsweek: A deleted Darth Vader scene …
Rogue One: A Star Wars Storyis out Friday on digital and will be available on Blu-ray April 4.
