#it's such a callback to the Revenge of the Sith alternate ending

[swan2swan]

This shot was made specifically for me, personally.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Re: Star Wars prequel novelizations - the Revenge of the Sith book is genuinely one of the best things I have ever read and changed my life.

THANK YOU, anon, for reminding me about the Revenge of the Sith novelization.  I just reread it, and my crops are watered, my skin is clear, and — I cannot overstate this — I actually remember why I love Star Wars.  That love has been for too long stolen by The Fandom Menace sucking the life out of those movies to invent a new definition of suffering while digesting them slowly over a thousand years.

Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover is one of the greatest works of adventure fiction I have ever read, and it continues to inspire the way I write action sequences and character conflicts.  It does so damn much to transform a movie that is, to be honest, just okay.  There are a couple of big additions from the novel that make the whole Skywalker saga richer, and there are about five hundred little tweaks that deepen the lore in a way that shows that Stover loves Star Wars to the core.

First big addition: having Obi-Wan tell Padmé that he’s in love with Anakin. This is great because yay, queer representation!  But within the specific context of RotS, it also sets up the super-important contrast between Obi-Wan and Anakin.  Obi-Wan, Stover’s novel makes clear, is the quiet and unassuming embodiment of everything a Jedi is supposed to be: he’s selfless, loving, hard-working, and incredibly skilled with the Force.  Obi-Wan falls in love with Anakin, realizes that Anakin doesn’t love him back in that way, and... lives with it.  He spends time with Anakin, supports Anakin, enjoys Anakin’s company, and doesn’t act like the world will end if Anakin isn’t his.

Anakin loves Obi-Wan, in a siblinglike way, and he loves Padmé.  But he’s got a nasty habit of expressing that love through possession and control, through going behind Padmé’s back to “fix” her life without her permission.  Anakin falls in love with Padmé and immediately concludes that he cannot possibly live like this: they must begin a secret relationship, and he must both marry her and remain a Jedi.  Later he destroys the Jedi and eventually Padmé herself because he sees himself as having no way out of that dilemma.

And all the while, Obi-Wan is there in the background.  Also in love with someone with whom he cannot have a relationship, and just… dealing with it like an adult.  Because millions of people are in love with people who don’t love them back, and that’s just how it is sometimes.  It’s selfish to obsess over “having” their love at all costs.  For Anakin, that obsession with saving Obi-Wan and Padmé eventually leads to him killing them both.

When Yoda tells Anakin that he must deal with his fear of losing Padmé through letting go, Anakin takes this to mean “let her die.”  But what Yoda means is not “let her die,” but rather “love her the way Obi-Wan loves you: quietly, selflessly, and with a willingness to do what’s best for her, whether or not that means you get to have her.”  And Anakin never understands that, because Anakin’s view of the world is so intensely egocentric.

Second big addition: updating the Force to explain the Dark Side. Revenge of the Sith, even more so than any other Star Wars, is all about the contrast between the Dark Side and the Light Side.  Here, Stover’s contribution is brilliant; he makes the Dark Side egocentric and the Light allocentric.

Terminology! “Egocentric” in psych refers to the perspective that focuses on how the world affects you and how you affect the world.  At the extreme, egocentric thinking can be believing that a baby is crying in a deliberate effort to annoy you, or that every person in a crowded cafeteria will remember what shirt you wore when you ate there a week ago.  “Allocentric” refers to the perspective that the self is one of several disparate elements buffered around by the world.  At the extreme, allocentric thinking can be failing to realize that others are reacting to your presence, or viewing your own life as one thing you can give to help others.

Stover doesn’t use those terms, but he does describe how Dooku “drew power into his innermost being until the Force itself existed only to serve his will” (p. 64).  Later, Obi-Wan “gave himself to the living Force… the Force moved him, let him collapse as though he’d suddenly fainted, then it brought his lightsaber from his belt to his hand” (p. 285).  Dooku ultimately loses his fight against Anakin because he focuses on how everyone is responding to him, and misses that Anakin and Palpatine are beginning to build an alternate alliance right under his nose.  Obi-Wan ultimately wins his fight against Anakin because he allows the Force to shove him around, and sets aside his concern with both his own life and that of his best friend while fighting for the greater goal of peace.

Not only that, but Obi-Wan’s understanding of the Force moves beyond that of most Jedi.  He compares “the will of the Force” to “the will of gravity,” in essence stating that simply because it is beyond human comprehension doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own rules.  One can be a Jedi without needing to understand the Force in the same way one can be a pilot without needing to be a physicist.  In RotS, we see that his refrain of “search your feelings” is a way of calling on a Force user to be mindful enough to accept realities that are already evident, if one can only allow oneself to have that knowledge.

Stover also uses these competing perspectives — allocentric and egocentric — to explain why the Jedi Order falls.  The tight control the Order exerts over the Jedi moves them away from the will of the Force and toward the will of the Council.  Its insularity creates a sense of superiority, which is the reason so many Jedi fail to see their clone troopers as threats until it’s too late. Stover tweaks the Jedi Purge scene to emphasize that the only reason Obi-Wan and Yoda survive is because of their selflessness.  Obi-Wan takes the time to befriend his alien mount, repeatedly confirming her well-being, and then she shields him with her body when his troopers open fire.  Yoda respects the Wookie command and puts himself in a position to assist rather than lead the resistance movement on Kashyyyk, meaning that when a fight breaks out between him and his troopers the Wookies don’t hesitate to side with him.  Yoda and Obi-Wan are the only two Jedi who truly give themselves to the service of others, and thus they are the only two to survive the Purge.

...and the million little favors this book does for the movie.

During the opening battle, having Obi-Wan tell Anakin to “use the Force” to fly a narrow trench and having Anakin roll his eyes at such an obvious suggestion.  It’s a callback to A New Hope, but one that drives home how much more the Force is integrated in the lives of Old Republic Jedi than it is in the lives of Imperial kids like Luke.

Fixing the minor continuity error from Episode III to Episode IV — why would Admiral Motti dismiss Vader as following outdated superstitions if there were millions of Jedi within his lifetime? — by explicitly stating that the Sith are considered a dead culture.  Ergo, Vader’s “ancient religion” isn’t the Force in general; it’s specifically the Sith creed.

Making Palpatine scarier and more seductive than he is in the movie.  Stover’s rhetoric about killing even the Jedi children is frighteningly rational and coherent, and he uses it to give Palpatine some stomach-churning speeches while corrupting Anakin.

Using the novel format for all it’s worth.  Stover skims over the physical-comedy elevator sequence in favor of having Dooku and Palpatine discussing their plans for the war.  He only tells us about Anakin’s conversation with Yoda after the fact, in scattered flashes as a panicking Anakin runs through the halls of the Jedi temple.  He gives us intense focus on Anakin’s mindset while trying to land the broken halves of Invisible Hand, less on what the ship itself is doing.  He cuts away from Anakin and Obi-Wan’s final battle, toward R2D2 and C3PO as they struggle to drag a dying Padmé into her ship out of a desperation to find some small way to help her.

Revealing that Palpatine spends the entire story trying to kill Obi-Wan.  This gets hinted at in the movie, but Stover includes several moments throughout Palpatine’s “rescue” from Dooku when Palpatine sets Obi-Wan up to die, and mentions like eight other attempts on Obi-Wan’s life as orchestrated by Palpatine.  It’s a great character addition, that Palpatine assumes he cannot get Anakin to fall unless he first eliminates Obi-Wan.

Expanding Padmé’s role in the movie (set dressing, and later refrigerator filling) by having her secretly organize and launch the Rebel Alliance right under Vader and Palpatine’s noses.

Those are just examples of how Stover clearly knows the Force, gets the Force, and strives to make the Force more internally coherent.  How he sometimes translates, sometimes preserves, and always improves the pacing and tone of the film.

I haven’t even touched on the FUCKING AMAZEBALLS imagery or introspection in the book yet, but this post is getting wicked long, so I’ll go ahead and leave it here for now.  Point is, all y’all should go out immediately and get a copy from your library and/or used bookstore, because Nonny is right and it’ll change your life.

[loopy777]

What’s your favorite composition by John Williams? And if you can’t choose just one, list your top 10.

My personal favorite is “Welcome to Jurassic Park,” the finale and credits music for the original Jurassic Park. I love the Jurassic Park theme, and this is a great suite of it combined with the ‘island theme.’ I like it even better than the concert versions of the same combination, as I think those are performed too quickly, even when Williams conducts.

And since I love talking about this, I’m also going to keep going for a top 10! Yay!

“Adventures on Earth” (from ‘E.T. the Extra Terrestrial’): Again, this is the finale and credits, which touches on all the great themes from the movie and includes the big, rousing, emotional climax. It’s funny- just two days ago I was talking about how everyone was comparing the end of Mandalorian Season 2 to the ending of E.T., and I speculated that the reason it didn’t work as well for me as everyone else is because Ludwig Göransson, while a great composer, just doesn’t do that Spielberg-sentimentality as well as Williams. But then, no one does.

“A New Hope and End Credits” (from ‘Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith’): I’m cheating with this one. I love the Star Wars music. It’s what made me aware of John Williams in the first place, and it got me to realize that the reason I wasn’t excited by all the pop music that my peers were into wasn’t because I disliked music- I just didn’t like that music. Star Wars taught me that I like the full, complicated performance of an orchestra, that the different sounds of the various instruments intrigue me more than lyrics (which I have to concentrate to understand), and that I like storytelling in music. Star Wars is probably the ultimate expression of that in the career of John Williams, not just because of how thematic it is, but also the breadth afforded by his doing nine movies spread across over 40 years. So how do I pick something to represent that? The main theme? The recurring Force theme? A suite? Yes, I have to go with a suite. But which one? I went with the one from the finale of ‘Revenge of the Sith’ for several reasons. It includes nice expressions of the themes of Leia and Luke, referencing the classic trilogy. It has “Battle of the Heroes,” which I consider one of the standouts of the prequel trilogy. And, for the soundtrack release, this suite includes pretty much all of the expanded version of “The Throne Room” from the very first Star Wars movie, which I feel was a great way for John Williams to take a bow at the end of a trilogy that can be criticized for many things but absolutely not the soundtrack. (By comparison, the soundtrack release for ‘Rise of Skywalker’ was a bit of an anti-climax, as Williams’ last Star Wars movie. That should have included a whole second CD that’s just an hour-long suite of music from the entire 9-film saga! Disney could have afford to take a loss on it! If they’re not going to release properly restored versions of the full series’ soundtracks, they owe to the John Williams fans!) And, of course, there are multiple expression of the Force theme in this piece, from the ‘binary sunset’ final scene of the movie itself to the B-segment of “Battle of the Heroes” to various parts of “The Throne Room,” and that theme might very well be the signature of the series at this point, since it has meaningful recurrence throughout the saga. The main Star Wars theme is Luke’s theme, and is reused throughout the saga as callbacks and call-forwards to that same kind of heroism, but George Lucas kind of messed up the focus there when he expanded things with the prequels. So the Force them is really the dominant theme in the saga, and that’s appropriate. I probably could have selected just the Force theme for this, but by cheating and picking a suite, I get other stuff, too, and get to acknowledge the prequel-era music (which is arguably superior to Williams’ work on the classic trilogy), so it’s a win all around.

“Out to Sea / The Shark Cage Fugue” (from ‘Jaws’): I think we have to recognize that John Williams has made an indelible mark on all of human culture- it is impossible for us include a shark in our media without a pulsating musical motif. He has literally defined the sound of sharks in our imagination. Even so, I think the soundtrack to Jaws is under-valued; sure, everyone knows the shark theme, and there’s no big thematic stuff like in Star Wars or super-emotional stuff like in most of the Spielberg scores, but it’s still a great soundtrack with really solid adventuring music that’s so wonderfully lively and fun to listen to. This suite is a great example of that, mixing samples from the second half of the movie with lighthearted moments, some of the more action-y chase music, and some darker stuff like when the ship is destroyed by the shark. I’ll often just whistle parts of this for fun even if I haven’t listened to the soundtrack or watched Jaws in over a year.

“The Visitors / Bye / End Titles” (from ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’): People are sleeping on this soundtrack, let me tell you. It starts out with weird alien sounds and standard action music, but the ending -- where mankind makes peaceful contact with aliens via the medium of music -- is one of the standouts of Williams’ entire career, one of the greatest examples of that Spielberg sentimentality. I find this music to be absolutely glorious, majestic and full and transcendent. The little joke of having an instrumental recurrence of “When You Wish Upon A Star” along with the ‘five tones’ motif is something I find actively amusing- wish upon a star, and alien life with reach out in response! XD I wish I could have linked to some of the alternate arrangements from the restored 40th Anniversary release from La La Land Records, because they’re absolutely fabulous and I love blaring them on my car’s speakers, but it seems that no one has pirated and posted them on Youtube. WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING WITH THEIR TIME?!

“Remembering Childhood” (from ‘Hook’): Look, I don’t care what people think of the movie. I haven’t even watched it all the way through in over a decade, probably. But this is one of Williams’ best scores, no fooling. I want a 5-CD expanded soundtrack of this thing with every second of music from the film, the stuff that was recorded that didn’t make the final cut, alternate versions of the stuff that was used, etc. I love this music. Every moment is great. And Remembering Childhood is one of the standouts; it uses the main flying theme at the end, and the beginning is a big triumphant instrumental rendition of the “When You’re Alone” song that sounds great. But the showcase is the stuff that accompanies Peter Banning getting his memories back and becoming Peter Pan once again. It’s emotional and reflective and nostalgic and heartwarming. It’s a perfect musical sandwich.

“Prelude and Main Title March” (from ‘Superman’): Just like John Williams invented the sound of sharks, he invented the sound of cinematic superheroes with his score for Superman. It’s the perfect embodiment of the first and ultimate superhero, and everything that’s been written for the character since has either been a pale imitation or a deliberate attempt to do something different (to lesser effect). And I love the exuberant sound it has, like it’s shouting, “It’s Superman!”

“Love Theme” (from ‘Superman’): Two from Superman?! I didn’t even mange to fit two from Star Wars and had to resort to a suite! (Not that Superman isn’t one of Williams’ best. It’s great.) However, I feel like I had to include this one. Lots of movies have love themes, and Williams himself has written a bunch. But IMO the Love Theme From Superman is the best of them. I’ve never been in love and I don’t ever expect to be, but I have to imagine that this is what love sounds like.

“Theme from Schindler’s List”: There’s a lot of music on this list that’s warm and positive and exciting, but John Williams is also great at quieter stuff, without losing any of emotion. I think the theme from ‘Schindler’s List’ is probably the preeminent example of that, perfectly mournful and full of the proper sound, a unique sound that’s completely unmistakable. Of course, Itzhak Perlman‘s performance is a huge part of that. The theme is still good when played by others, but there’s something special about Perlman’s rendition.

“A New Beginning” (from ‘Minority Report’): Another finale, but this one isn’t a summary of the rest of the movie’s music like the others. It’s a fairly stand-alone piece, but I just love the sound of it. I’m never getting married and I don’t dance, but this is totally going to be the music for the first dance at my wedding reception.

If anyone else has favorites from John Williams’ oeuvre, feel to reply or reblog with additions. I’d love an excuse to re-listen to those.

[duhragonball]

Talkin’ ‘Bout Star Wars

I just realized someone might see this title and think it’s a review of Episode IX, which I kind of forgot about.    Actually, I was gonna talk about this Count Dooku audiobook I bought, but I guess I only got back into Star Wars books because of Episode IX, so maybe I should back up.

I liked Rise of Skywalker.   I went in unsure of what to expect, because a lot of people hated Episode VIII, and I thought it was awesome, so when I saw scathing criticism of IX, I had no idea whether to take that seriously.    “Man if you thought VIII was bad, IX’s even worse.”  Stuff like that where I didn’t know how to interpret it.    

The fundamental problem with IX is that they were going to do a Leia-centric movie and Carrie Fisher died before they could get started.    I’m pretty sure this had a lot to do with why Darth Sidious is all over the movie, but maybe he would have been in it regardless.   He definitely brings a lot of star power to the movie.    He makes it feel more important than it would have been if it was just Kylo Ren horsing around as the main bad guy.    And while I enjoyed Carrie Fisher as the hardboiled-but-sensitive General Leia, she never seemed quite as comfortable on-screen in the sequel movies as Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford.   I mean, she was in VIII, but she spent most of it in a coma, and Laura Dern seemed to be her understudy.    Maybe Carrie was just waiting for the spotlight of Episode IX, and maybe she would have risen to the occasion, but if not, they would have done well to have the Emperor in the same movie, just to carry some of the load.  

I’ve seen complaints about how fast-paced Episode IX is, and how ridiculous some of the revelations are, but you know, Episode IV realllly drags for the first half-hour, so I’m happy they made a new one that caters to six-year-old me’s desire to get on with things.   As for the whole Rey Palpatine thing, I don’t know, was that any less absurd than whatever fan-theories were floating around in 2016?

I liked Rey’s character arc in this movie, where she goes from having no family to being terrified of her pedigree, to declaring herself to be “Rey Skywalker”.    Also, I dig her yellow lightsaber, even if she never got a chance to use it in the movie.   In fact, let me get a picture of that up here....

Niiiice.   Whenever I look this up, I see all these links to fan theories about what this means, or how it’s a callback to eight other characters from the comics who had yellow lightsabers, but I’m pretty sure she only ended up with this color because they wanted to give her something different and uniquely her own.    If she had a blue or green blade, fans would think she took the crystal out of one of Luke’s old lightsabers, but this indicates that she built her own from scratch.   Also, Rey even having a lightsaber is probably intended to demonstrate that she still has a mission in the galaxy, even after the First Order and Sidious are defeated.   

Anyway, the main issue I have with the movie is that it does play fast and loose sometimes.    It felt like they had a plan for Finn and a plan for Poe, but both plans sort of got lost in the shuffle, and we sort of have to take their big victory as newly minted generals to serve as a finish to their character arcs.    Leia’s big moment is basically her lying down to take a nap, and I get it, that was probably the best they could do, but still.    I read Nein Numb got killed in the movie, and that kind of pisses me off.    

Mostly, it just doesn’t hold up as well as “The Last Jedi”.   I think part of the reason “Revenge of the Sith” is the most popular prequel movie is because it pays off the thing everyone wanted to see: Anakin becoming Darth Vader.   I remember the first time I saw “Attack of the Clones”, and I was kind of surprised to see Anakin kill all the Sand People, like they were turning him evil a little too early, so that had me wondering if he might turn to the dark side in that movie, which sort of distracted me from what was actually happening on the screen. With Episode III, you knew exactly what you were getting, because they couldn’t save any big moments for “Revenge of the Sith, Part 2.”    In a similar vein, I think the big thing audiences wanted from the sequel trilogy was to find out whatever happened to Luke, and Episode VIII answered that question completely.    It sort of undercut Episode IX, and I guess that was what J.J. Abrams was complaining about.

Darth Sidious’ whole comeback is kind of a problem.   I love the character, and it makes sense that he could somehow survive and come back.    In the movie, he just quotes his line about “unnatural” abilities and that’s the only explanation we get for how he survived Endor, built his new fleet, and made Snoke.    People call it a cop out and they’re not wrong, but he’s the one character who can get away with it.    That said, his return raises far more questions than answers, and somehow he’s even stronger than he was before, which raises even further questions.    I mean, if he could just go to this secret planet and build a fleet of planet-destroying ships, why did he bother running for public office?     

I’m sure there’ll be a novel that tries to tackle some of those issues, but the bigger problem here is that Episode IX made me realize that I missed the more vulnerable Darth Sidious from the prequels.     What I love about Episode I is how you’ve got the Sith, looking very similar to the Emperor and Vader in Episode VI, except they don’t have the might of the Empire behind them.    In Episode I, Sidious can’t just force choke his subordinates when they displease him, because he needs those guys.  Darth Maul can’t send a legion of troops to capture Queen Amidala; he has to do it by himself.  They have to be sneakier and trickier than they are in the original trilogy, because they’re still trying to get the Empire set up, and that’s really fascinating to me.   Even in the original trilogy, Palpatine is supreme, but still vulnerable.    He dissolves the Senate, but only once the Death Star is available as an alternative.   He worries that Luke Skywalker “could destroy us.”       

In Episode IX, he seems to have no worries at all, I guess because he’s counting on Rey to murder him for whatever essence transfer he was planning.   I suppose this was why he finally died to his own Force Lightning, with Rey deflecting it with two lightsabers.    Critics ask why he didn’t just stop shooting lightning, but that’s kind of his deal.    He kept shooting at Mace Windu, even when it wrecked his face, and he kept shooting when Darth Vader turned on him.   I mean, if he stopped shooting lighting at Rey, what then?    His fleet would lose the battle, and Rey would refuse to kill him, and he’d just be stuck.    The Sith crave power, and power only matters when you exercise it, so it makes sense that all the Sith characters get wrecked because they bit off more than they could chew.   If you asked Sidious why he didn’t just turn off his lightning, he probably wouldn’t even understand the question.

I think it might have been cooler if Darth Sidious had been a ghost, or maybe an electronic backup of his brain, or something like that.   He looked pretty cool hooked up to that life support system, and I liked the idea that he was reduced to a shell of his former self, but even that would still be a grave threat to the heroes, especially if he got Rey or Kylo Ren to take orders from him.    Maybe he should have actually gotten to possess Rey, and then he would finally get all the gonzo powers he displayed in the movie, and Rey would have to kick him out of her body.   I dunno, maybe that’s not so different from what we actually got.   

I see fans talking about all these alternative versions of Episode IX, like that leaked script, or the concept art, etc.    They lament “Why didn’t we get this movie?” and I think that misses the point.    Maybe one version or another would be better, but in the end you really only get one movie, one shot at telling the story.   At some point, someone has to make the decision as to what makes the cut and what doesn’t.   The problem with writing a story is that the version in your head always looks better than it does in print, because in your head it’s this nebulous, ever-changing thing.    When you sit down to write it, you have to commit to one version, and decide whether to do this or that.   In this day and age, it’s a lot easier to find out about alternate versions and unused drafts.     You can watch the “This” version of a movie, and then go on the internet and see details about the “That” version they didn’t use.    And it’s easy to complain that they made the wrong call.    “Justice League” fans are convinced that there’s a secret “Snyder Cut” of the movie that would somehow be better than the version that actually made it to theaters.   That’s kind of sad, because they clearly must have enjoyed the theatrical cut to some extent, or they wouldn’t care about some other version of the same movie.   But instead of appreciating what they got, they obsess over a supposedly better version that may not even exist.   

I’m probably no better, because I sort of went into Episode IX figuring that it didn’t matter if it was good or bad, because there would be comics or novels that might expand on the stuff I wanted to see.     I think what I really want is a story of how Sidious survived Endor, and how he got set up on Exegul or however you spell it.     That, and Rey buckling some swashes with that yellow lightsaber.   Everyone’s mad about Rose Tico getting a small part in Episode IX, but to me it almost doesn’t matter, because she can be in whatever Rey comic series they make after this.   I mean, that doesn’t do Kelly Marie Tran any good, but I think she’s got a good career ahead of her, with or without Rose Tico. 

I don’t know, maybe this is why I don’t watch movies very much.   I’m mostly into franchises, where the movies themselves are just tentpoles for all the other media.   They don’t really need to be good, so long as some good lore comes out of them that someone else can use.    I was thinking the other day about how Episode II is widely considered one of the weakest Star Wars movies, but every Clone Wars story that came after it was directly inspired by that film.   And there’s a lot of good Clone Wars stuff out there.   It just makes me wonder if Episode II can really be as bad as they say it is.   Then again, it probably doesn’t make sense to say that spinoffs can retroactively fix what should be a standalone work.  

Anyway, I started this post because I wanted to talk about how YouTube keeps recommending me Star Wars meta videos, mainly about the Sith, because that’s what I’m into, and they’re usually covering stuff I already knew.   There’s at least three channels devoted to recapping stories from comics and books, or just straight up repeating information that was directly stated in the movies.    “Did you know Palpatine wanted to KILL Darth Vader?”   Yes, I’ve known since 1983.   He told Luke to kill him and he wouldn’t do it.  Then he and Vader killed each other.   It’s not complicated.   The funny thing is that I watch all these different Star Wars videos, and I can tell they’re narrated by different people, but they all sound like the Burger King Foot Lettuce guy.  

I got bored with these, so I started listening to the Dooku audiobook that came out last year.     It’s been pretty decent, but I was hoping for more Sith lore, and this book seems mostly focused on Asajj Ventress learning about Dooku’s Jedi career.   I’ve only got a half hour left in the book, and Dooku hasn’t even resigned from the order yet, so I don’t think I’ll see much of what he was up to between Episodes I and II.  

[marcuserrico]

How Darth Vader Got His Groove Back in 'Rogue One' Thanks to Last-Minute Tweak

Vader in ‘Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope’ (Lucasfilm)

From the moment he burst onto the blockade runner in 1977’s Star Wars: New Hope, Darth Vader has reigned as one of the biggest, baddest, most iconic antagonists in cinema. But let’s face facts: The Sith lord has largely been coasting on reputation these past 40 years. After all, most of his big-screen career has seen the erstwhile Anakin Skywalker being alternately redeemed in third-act Return of the Jedi heroics or humanized via the prequels’ backstory, which saw him develop from whiny kid to angsty adolescent to disaffected young adult, all too easily manipulated by Palpatine along the way.

But, thanks to Rogue One, Darth Vader is back at his malevolent best, annihilating rebels with a mere flick of his wrist and flash of his lightsaber in the film’s waning moments. However, that climactic scene, which reestablishes Vader’s dark side bona fides, almost didn’t exist. According to editor John Gilroy, the badass action scene was one of the key late tweaks arising from the film’s infamous reshoots. “What was added — and it was a fantastic add — was the Vader action scene, with him boarding the ship and dispatching all those rebel soldiers,” he tells Yahoo Movies. “That was something conceptualized a little later.”

With the Star Wars standalone providing the connective tissue between Revenge of the Sith (which ends with our first glimpse of Anakin-as-Vader) and A New Hope, director Gareth Edwards always intended to bring back the dark lord. As initially conceived, though, Vader was more threat than death agent in his brief appearances — an ominous warning here, a nonlethal Force choke there.

Related: Watch Lego and 8-Bit Recreations of Darth Vader’s Climactic ‘Rogue One’ Scene

Gilroy, who came aboard the production late in the game to help incorporate the reshoots overseen by his brother, Tony, alongside Edwards, explains how that final scene changed over the course of the summer. Reverse-engineering the opening of A New Hope, Edwards and the Rogue One screenwriters had plotted out the ending almost precisely as it was rendered onscreen: Jyn and Cassian steal the Death Star plans from the Imperial archives on the tropical planet Scarif, and, with the help of their crew, manage to beam the data to the Alliance fleet orbiting above. From there, a hard copy is passed along until it winds up in the hands of Princess Leia, with Vader in hot pursuit. “As far as I know that was always the plan… the main structure was there,” explains Gilroy.

But then the Rogue brain trust decided to up the dark-side-of-the-Force factor and allow Vader to reclaim his Sith cred, storming the Alliance flagship, wiping out the crew, and nearly preventing the plans from getting to Leia. “It was a really great punch in the arm and something I think fans wanted to see,” the editor continues, again using “fantastic” to describe the inspired addition.

Related: ‘I Rebel’ and Other Scenes That Weren’t in ‘Rogue One’

As the Rogue One story was reshaped during reshoots, Vader’s earlier scenes were likewise retooled. Most notably, a segment featured in the first full trailer (below), was cut from the film.

Vader as seen in the ‘Rogue One’ trailer (Lucasfilm)

Because of the timing of the reshoots, a different actor was needed to don the ebony armor. Daniel Naprous wielded the lightsaber for the climactic scene, while Spencer Wilding did the chores for initial meeting between Vader and Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic. (James Earl Jones, of course, provided the Sith lord’s pipes throughout.)

Related: Exclusive Look at ‘Rogue One’ Concept Art

As Gilroy notes, fan service was important for the filmmakers. Aside from showcasing Vader at the height of his villainous powers, the film also revealed his home base, a lair on Mustafar. The castle was based in part on unused designs legendary concept artist Ralph McQuarrie dreamed up for The Empire Strikes Back.

Early versions of Vader’s lair by Ralph McQuarrie (Lucasfilm/from the book ‘Star Wars Art: Ralph McQuarrie’)

Concept art of Vader’s castle on Mustafar (Lucasfilm/from the book ‘Art of Rogue One’)

Mustafar, meanwhile, was the site of the fateful lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) in Revenge of Sith, where the Jedi master leaves his dismembered pupil near death on the lava-choked planet — one of the most memorable settings of the prequel trilogy.

While every other location in Rogue One is identified on screen by a chyron, Mustafar conspicuously isn’t. Gilroy explains that was an intentional Easter egg.

Related: Ultimate Guide to ‘Rogue One’ Easter Eggs and Callbacks

“We had one on for a little while, but what we realized was Star Wars fans — true Star Wars fans — if they saw the name, would know exactly what they were going to see. And we wanted it to be a bit of a surprise, so we decided to not put the title on so Star Wars fans could be surprised along with people who were not initiated to where Mustafar was.”

Craving more secrets of Rogue One? Learn how the filmmakers found Leia’s voice, recreated Grand Moff Tarkin, and came up with Jyn Erso’s name.

Watch Gareth Edwards explain how the characters were named in ‘Rogue One:’