'Rogue One' Alternate Ending Plot: A 'Happy' Ending for Rebel Heroes
"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" was not always meant to end on a somber note for the heroes, as recently revealed by the spinoff's co-writer.
As fans know, the film concluded with Jyn Erso's (Felicity Jones) motley crew successfully obtaining the Death Star plans, giving up their lives in the process.
Gary Whitta admitted to Entertainment Weekly that they devised a happy ending for several members of the group, should Disney find the original ending, the one that fans saw in the film, a bit too dark.
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"The original instinct was that they should all die. That's what we always wanted to do," Whitta, who wrote "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" with John Knoll, told Entertainment Weekly.
"But we never explored it because we were afraid that Disney might not let us do it, that Disney might think it's too dark for a Star Wars movie or for their brand," he went on to say.
The writers felt that while they succeeded in their mission to get the plans, they had to pay the ultimate price in doing so. "Rogue One" director Gareth Edwards said that it is more of wanting them to be able to pull it off "at any cost."
"It's a sport where the clock is ticking, and they need to just dive across the finish line. You do whatever you need to do to get there. It's a gauntlet that they're handing to Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). You get that moment where the crowd feels like it can cheer at the end," he explained.
Thankfully, the higher-ups over at Lucasfilm and Disney were on board the dark "Rogue One" ending, which is why this is what fans saw pan out in the cinemas.
In the happy ending that Whitta and Knoll put together, Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) and Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) are not in the picture.
Jyn was not a street criminal recruited by the Rebels on a spy mission and was instead an enlisted Rebel soldier. "In fact, some of the toys that are sold still say Sgt. Jyn Erso," Whitta said.
"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," he added.
"Rogue One" was also supposed to see Jyn and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) survive, with Princess Leia's ship fetching them from Scarif to get them to safety. The transfer of the plans happened off the planet, which exploded to smithereens in the original ending.
"The fact that we had to jump through so many hoops to keep them alive was the writing gods telling us that if they were meant to live it wouldn't be this difficult. We decided they should die on the surface [of Scarif,] and that was the way it ended," Whitta explained.
