“To the point where when they were designing all the weapons and the guns, one of the first faux pas I committed is they would show me ideas for guns for Deathtroopers,” he continues. “They’d have all these different designs and you’d say, this one feels too antiquated, this one feels like something they’d have in World War 2. They’d say that’s exactly the Stormtrooper weapon from A New Hope. [Back then] they were just grabbing real world guns and costume, and just doing a little thing to it that made it feel like Star Wars – if you go too far it’s Flash Gordon, or it’s Star Trek.”

And those pleasing matching shapes of the Star Wars universe? They’re no accident. Everything is carefully designed to bring that specific feel to the world. “If you look at the [original designers] Ralph McQuarrie and Joe Johnston and everyone else, they have a certain aesthetic that they can’t shake off, and it’s really great,” Edwards explains. “You see a lot of repetitive shapes and ideas. An obvious one is that the Death Star looks very similar to the top of R2-D2’s head. It’s got all the same proportions, and you see these shapes recurring throughout, so the trick was to try and look at those shapes and subconsciously copy them and put them into designs.”

Rogue One also has its own new line up of ships to add to the Star Wars universe – hello, U-Wing – and Edwards took the time to made sure that each one was perfect and fit into the world we already know so well. “It’s like a dream situation to be trying to come up with the ship you didn’t see in the original trilogy that feels like it might exist,” he confirms. “That took ages, about six months. There were literally thousands of designs – we didn’t go, ‘Okay, let’s design a U-Wing’ It’s let’s do whatever looks good and then we’ll pick a letter of the alphabet that it most looks like!”

Read the full interview with Gareth Edwards in the brand new issue of SFX magazine out now. Alternatively, subscribe to future issues here (opens in new tab). 

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Check it out below…

In addition to a glimpse of a new U-Wing starfighter taking off the teaser also gives us a few fresh shots of Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso and her band of rebels, including Jiang Wen’s Baze Malbus, Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor, and Donnie Yen’s blind warrior Chirrut Imwe, who looks like he’s just laid waste to a bunch of stormtroopers. Here’s hoping we get to see a little more of that scene when the full trailer debuts tomorrow.

Directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen and Alan Tudyk, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is scheduled to open in UK and US cinemas on December 16, 2016.

Images: Disney/LucasFilm

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One such panel will be dedicated solely to Star Wars: Rogue One (opens in new tab), and on StarWars.com (opens in new tab) it was announced that those who are unable to attend will now be able to watch a full livestream of the panel online on July 15. 

While not exactly revolutionary, livestreaming is a smart decision on the part of Disney and Lucasfilm as this way they got more coverage on the film – social media and otherwise – in real time. Not to mention, it’s just nice that die-hard fans who didn’t manage to snag a ticket will still be able to get a little bit of the Star Wars Celebration experience. 

Directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, and Alan Tudyk, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is scheduled to open in UK and US cinemas on December 16, 2016.

Images: Disney/LucasFilm

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“I mean it was always part of the plan to do reshoots”, Edwards told Entertainment Weekly (opens in new tab). “We always knew we were coming back somewhere to do stuff. We just didn’t know what it would be until we started sculpting the film in the edit”. 

“There’s lots of little things that we have to get, but it’s all little things within the preexisting footage. Obviously, you’ve got to work around everyone’s schedule, and everyone’s on different films all over the world, and so it’s a bit of a logistical nightmare”.

Edwards’ comments were backed by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who noted that “there’s nothing about the story that’s changing” while indicating that the film won’t necessarily be adjusting its dark tone:

“One of the things we’re doing with these Star Wars stories is embracing the uniqueness of the different genres, and we’re very deliberately leaning into the various styles of directors that we’re approaching so that each of these movies will very intentionally have a very different tone and style from the saga films. Gareth [Edwards] has shown a stylistic preference that’s much more handheld, visceral, inside-the-action kind of feel. He does a lot of handheld, intimate, close-up work. That’s not something you’ve necessarily seen in a Star Wars movie before”.

It’d be easy to read this and think damage control, but I see no reason to doubt what Edwards and Kennedy are saying here. For some reason there is a weird stigma when it comes to reshoots in big budget filmmaking at the moment, even though additional filming only makes the final movie better. 

Have these comments changed your outlook on Rogue One?

Directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, and Alan Tudyk, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is scheduled to open in UK and US cinemas on December 16, 2016.

Images: Disney/LucasFilm

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