Before we know it Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will have been out for a month. But despite this, fans and the Star Wars community haven't stopped dissecting and discussing every frame from the first standalone film in the franchise. While the reception for Gareth Edward's galactic war story has been universally well received, there are a few points of contention for the movie. One of which is the various exciting shots that were seen throughout the trailer and marketing campaign that never made it into the final film. This happened with The Force Awakens too, although we now may have an explanation for some of those mystery shots.
Gareth Edwards recently sat down for an episode of the podcast The Director's Cut. When asked about the missing footage, he revealed that while filming, the cast and crew would do "Indie Hour", in which they could play around and let off steam. This is apparently where some of the trailer shots, including the one of Jyn in disguise, came about. He said the following (via Uproxx),
It was just a way for the crew of understanding, for now, we're just going to do loads of random shit. Don't try to ask, we can't explain. It would just be things I thought were a beautiful moment or 'This is a great idea' and a lot of the stuff in the trailer ended up through that process... We finished a shot and [Felicity Jones] was just walking to the next shot, which was at the end of the tunnel. And as she walked, someone switched the lights on and the way they turned on they went clickclickclick like this. Someone called her, and she just turned around a little bit and I was like, 'Oh my god that looked great.' And I was like 'Stop stop stop!' and everyone stopped. 'This will take 10 seconds, just roll camera'....Then obviously 10 seconds turned into a half hour, and we probably did 17 takes. So that ended and there's that feeling of, 'Well what was that for?' And I was like, 'I don't know, that just felt good.
Well, this certainly makes sense. There was a plethora of extra shots due to "Indie Hour", which explains why they never made it into the film. Some of these shots were never meant to be on the silver screen, but the cool ones did serve a function through the trailers. Waste not, want not.
Like The Force Awakens, many Star Wars fans were disappointed when cool shots from Rogue One's trailer didn't make it into the film. Because Star Wars movies keep their footage so safe guarded, fans tend to memorize every moment from the scarce few trailers that are released. As such, they expect these moments to all pay off at the theaters, which isn't always the case.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is still raking in tons of money in the theaters.
