18 Moments From the ‘Rogue One’ Trailers That Aren’t Actually in the Movie
NOTE: The following post contains SPOILERS for Rogue One. Mostly, though, it contains spoilers for things that aren’t in Rogue One.
If you keep at least one eye on movie news, you’ve probably read about Rogue One’s extensive reshoots, which were the subject of much speculation over the summer. According to some reports (which were later disputed by the filmmakers) as much as 40 percent of the movie was reshot. To the credit of director Gareth Edwards and the rest of his team, the movie flows pretty smoothly, and doesn’t bear too many obvious indicators of post-productions changes and meddling.
But if you watch the movie’s trailers, particularly the earliest teasers from before the reshoots took place, you start to see that Rogue One really did look pretty different a year ago at this time. A lot — and I mean a lot — of stuff in those trailers didn’t make the final cut. Lines of dialogue are missing. Shots are changed or erased completely. And in one case there’s a big scene that’s been drastically changed, which suggests that at some point Rogue One had a totally different ending than the one we’ll see in theaters this weekend.
The specifics of what was changed and why will have to wait for a later date, but for now here are at least 18 things that appear in the Rogue One trailers that don’t appear in the actual movie. There are probably more, too.
Teaser Trailer
1) 00:10 - The trailer opens with an unseen Rebel asking Jyn Erso to state her name for the record. In the film, the Rebels reveal that Jyn’s been living under an alias, then say her name for her.
2) 00:28 - Jyn’s line “This is a Rebellion, isn’t it? I rebel!” isn’t in the finished film.
3) 00:42 - In the trailer, Mon Mothma tells Jyn her mission involves investigating a “major weapons test” that is “imminent.” In the film, Mon Mothma gives her a different mission: To find Saw Gerrera in the hopes that he can lead them to Jyn’s father, Galen Erso.
4) 1:02 - This shot isn’t in the movie.
5) 1:12 - These shots of Jyn and Cassian running through the Imperial base aren’t in the film (in the film, they’re disguised as Imperial officers inside the base).
6) 1:17 - This shot of Orson Krennic walking through the watery ruins of the Battle of Scarif doesn’t appear in the film. (Krennic never leaves the Scarif base, in fact. Plus, the entire battle takes place in broad daylight, and this scene is at sunset.)
7) 1:19 - Throughout the teaser, we hear Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera. In this shot, we see a young Saw is the one delivering this voiceover. Except the young Saw only appears in Rogue One in the film’s brief prologue, where he rescues Jyn from Krennic and his Deathtroopers. When the movie finds him again, Saw is a broken-down fighter with a huge tuft of gray hair.
8) 1:22 - One of the longest shots in the Rogue One teaser follows Jyn and Cassian running with Rebel forces on a Scarif beach amidst heavy blaster fire from AT-ATs. Except Jyn and Cassian never run with Rebel forces on a Scarif beach; they spend the entire battle inside the base while the rest of the Rogue One squad distract the Imperial army. (This is probably the most important change on this entire list. It seems to suggest that Jyn and Cassian previously attempted to hand-deliver the Death Star plans. In the movie, they never make it off the planet. In the original cut, did they escape? Is it possible Jyn or Cassian survived previous iterations of Rogue One?)
9) 1:28 - The teaser ends with a dramatic reveal of Jyn in an Imperial uniform while Forest Whitaker whispers “What will you become?” in voiceover. Neither the shot or the line appear in the film.
Official Trailer #1
10) 0:45 - Cassian says “I’ve been recruiting for the Rebellion for a long time.” Has he? He doesn’t say that in the movie, and we don’t see him recruit anyone. In the film, he’s a ruthless spy sent on missions that sometimes blur the line between right and wrong.
11) (Also, this shot of X-Wing pilots being paraded through the streets of Jedha got cut too.)
12) 1:02 - K-2SO says to Jyn “The Captain says you are a friend. I will not kill you,” to which Jyn replies “Thanks.” None of this appears in Rogue One. (And by the time this scene occurs in the film, Jyn and K-2SO have already met.)
13) 1:45 - In the trailer, Jyn walks out on a catwalk above the Scarif Imperial Base and is confronted by a TIE fighter. In Rogue One, Jyn walks out on that catwalk to realign a satellite dish to transmit the Death Star plans. But no TIE fighter ever zooms up into view like this.
14) 1:52 - The words “A Star Wars Story” don’t appear onscreen in the film, which only bears the title “Rogue One.”
15) 1:56 - This shot of Darth Vader doesn’t appear in the movie.
Official Trailer #2
16) 0:41 - This dramatic shot of a massive fallen statue doesn’t appear in the movie. (A different angle appears instead.)
17) 1:15 - This shot of Vader’s reflection doesn’t appear in the movie.
18) 1:16 - This line from Krennic about the “power that we are dealing with here” (not to mention Ben Mendelsohn’s wonderful delivery of the word “POW-wah”) didn’t make the final cut.
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