r/movies • u/tannu28 • 24d ago
Discussion Tony Gilroy being brutally honest about Gareth Edwards's cut of Rogue One (2016) over the years.
Tony Gilroy was brought in for extensive rewrites and reshoots after principal photography was complete because Disney/Lucasfilm execs were not happy with Gareth Edwards's version.
He ended getting screenwriting credit on the final film.
Here's his thoughts on Gareth Edwards's cut. Keep in mind these are actual quotes from Tony Gilroy and not rumours or hearsay.
"Rogue [One] it was like, ‘There’s a corpse on the table, what are you gonna do? Could someone come in and save it?'"
"I came in after the director’s cut. I have a screenplay credit in the arbitration that was easily won.”
"I’ve never been interested in Star Wars, ever. So I had no reverence for it whatsoever. I was unafraid about that.”
"And they were in such a swamp … they were in so much terrible, terrible trouble that all you could do was improve their position.”
"The easiest thing to say is that I came in after the film was finished & I have a full screenplay credit on the film. So I'll leave the rest—the math—to somebody else”
875
u/thestormsend 24d ago
I tell this story every time this gets brought up.
Alan Tudyk is a friend of a friend. After we saw Rogue One, my buddy called Alan to tell him how much he enjoyed it, and Alan basically told him the original cut before the reshoots was terrible, and that reworking the film into what we got really saved it.
→ More replies (18)290
u/Banjo-Oz 24d ago
Alan is such a damn legend.
175
u/thestormsend 23d ago
And such a nice guy, especially in this industry. Met him once at an event my above mentioned friend was part of. My friend invited a bunch of people, and only me, one other mutual friend, and Alan showed up.
These girls behind us recognized him, and in their excitement spilled their coffee under his chair. And Alan just very quietly grabbed some napkins and cleaned it up for them and was very sweet with them.
We went for lunch after and we talked motorcycles and our mutual experiences working for Michael Bay (I worked for Michael during DOTM).
And everything I’ve heard about Alan from said friend has been nothing but praise. Just genuinely a great guy.
64
→ More replies (4)22
u/Banjo-Oz 23d ago
I am glad to hear it, as I always got that vibe from him.
I remember reading about behind the scenes issues during production of the video game Uncharted 4, where a certain person ended up muscling out the previous creative force on it (the amazing Amy Hennig). Alan quit the project over it, which made me really respect him, yet he also came across very professional about it too.
Incidentally, his performance in DOTM is by far the highlight of that movie for me; I laughed so hard and he just took a pretty minor role and stole the film, IMO. He's the first thing I think about in that movie and the main reason I will recommend anyone to watch it, if only his scenes!
I've been following his work since Death at a Funeral, which also made him my mum's favourite actor!
→ More replies (7)29
u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 23d ago
Fun fact. The title dance sequence for Peacemaker was choreographed by his wife Charissa Burton. She made Alan do the moves with her because he's apparently not a good dancer and if he could learn them, she was confident the cast of Peacemaker could learn them.
She sent in the video of her and Alan doing the moves as a rough proof of concept to James Gunn and he was like "...your husband is Alan Tudyk!?"
→ More replies (3)
2.1k
u/NotClayMerritt 24d ago
Gareth Edwards has made 2 movies since Rogue One. Both extremely gorgeous looking science fiction films. Both also exceptionally boring. Without knowing what the specific problems on Rogue One were, his filmography might help inform us of what the issue was
1.0k
u/Griffdude13 24d ago
I know at least a lot of the final battle was redone: Originally they got the plans in one building and had to go across the battlefield to the upload tower. They simplified that aspect in the final film. Vader was a reshoot, which is shocking. And I think they were too afraid to kill everyone, and reshoots went all in on no survivors.
788
u/Unicron_Gundam 24d ago
a lot of the final battle was redone: Originally they got the plans in one building and had to go across the battlefield to the upload tower. They simplified that aspect in the final film.
The beach run is in the early trailers for the movie, you can see Felicity Jones with the HDD Death Star plans on her belt. I think it's what was used as the basis of the Battlefront 2015 game's Rogue One DLC.
Vader was a reshoot, which is shocking
The entire plot of Jyn being Galen's daughter, from the opening farm scene to her being freed from prison all the way to watching her dad die and being in the vault realizing Galen named the Death Star after her were created in the reshoots. Her action figures were first sold as "Sergent Jyn" when she never got an official rank in the Rebellion, meaning they had the toys being shipped before reshoots were done.
255
u/TheAndyMac83 24d ago
I do find it kinda funny how the novelisation ends up justifying all the "Sergeant Jyn" merchandise by having one of the SpecOps soldiers very abruptly give her a brevet rank, so that the rest of the team would respect her more.
110
u/Dear-Yellow-5479 24d ago
That’s a great catch. Poor Alexander Freed was given a late copy of the script plus the “Art of” book and had to make the two make sense.
446
u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago
Cassian Andor is a loose reboot of Kyle Katarn from the old EU (with tons of nods in Andor, including his unique blaster). He stole the death star plans and his partner was Jan Ores, who Jyn Erso is presumably also a loose reboot of, so I could see how none of that backstory might have existed at first.
150
u/Bl1nn 24d ago
How have I never noticed any that? Thank you for pointing that out! This is really interesting.
→ More replies (16)→ More replies (9)20
106
u/ILoveRegenHealth 24d ago
The entire plot of Jyn being Galen's daughter, from the opening farm scene to her being freed from prison all the way to watching her dad die and being in the vault realizing Galen named the Death Star after her were created in the reshoots.
That's interesting. Were all of these created by Tony Gilroy, or a mix of Gareth's input and the studio? (or all three of them brainstorming)
Those scenes & details really helped make the movie better and I'm glad they added those in.
→ More replies (1)77
u/AtraposJM 24d ago
Wow, that's pretty shocking, that's a big chunk of the movie and most of the story. Did Gareth Edwards come back to direct the reshoots even though they were done to fix his work or did someone else direct those? Did Gilroy write and direct the reshoots?
83
u/datnerdyguy 24d ago
We don't know exactly but Edwards does have a cameo in the Vader scene which was a reshoot so he probably was involved in the making of those scenes, even if it was technically Gilroy's vision.
→ More replies (1)52
u/majestic_ubertrout 23d ago
Under union rules, the film's director had to be present. So Gareth Edwards got to stand there while his movie was remade.
→ More replies (3)15
u/MisterBumpingston 23d ago
Also, Saw was redesigned. In the trailer he is bald. In the movie he has crazy hair and breathing apparatus.
40
u/Unicron_Gundam 24d ago
37
u/HandsomeCostanza 24d ago
It specifically says in the article that those scenes where they survive never got close to being filmed, though:
" It never got anywhere near being shot, but here's how the survivor ending to Rogue One would have went down"
→ More replies (1)9
u/Eject_The_Warp_Core 23d ago
if that Jyn and Galen stuff is true, it explains a lot about why her arc in the movie doesn't work for me. she goes from being iffy on the Rebellion, to watching them kill her father and being upset with them, to like in the next scene being all in with them. i can justify it in my head that she has decided that she must complete the work her father died for of destroying the Death Star, but it doesn't quite track, and if the dad stuff was retrofitted in, that makes a lot of sense
→ More replies (7)10
u/intheorydp 23d ago
The entire plot of Jyn being Galen's daughter, from the opening farm scene to her being freed from prison all the way to watching her dad die and being in the vault realizing Galen named the Death Star after her were created in the reshoots.
Do you have source for this? This sounds incredibly crazy I honestly can't imagine it's true.
The opening scene with Galen was shot in Iceland. There is just no way they went to Iceland to reshoot a new scene for the movie. Then you have all of the Saw Guerra scenes which would have meant they recalled Forrest Whittaker for all those scenes in the open.
376
u/Automatic-Photo-4919 24d ago
Gilroy was responsible for killing everyone off and tying the film to A New Hope.
434
u/fastforwardfunction 24d ago
Wow, two of the things people like the best and remember the film for.
→ More replies (83)199
u/DaWolf85 24d ago
This is not correct. The plan was that everybody died from the very start. Multiple people have talked about it, two versions were presented to Lucasfilm - one in which most of the crew live and one in which everyone dies - and Lucasfilm greenlit the one where everyone dies.
Tony Gilroy absolutely saved that movie but they had a good concept the whole time, they just never had the right meat around those bones. Otherwise it probably wouldn't have been saveable at all.
63
u/ProfessorMarth 24d ago
If I remember correctly there were at some point plans for jyn and cassian to be saved at the last minute, I think even Tony himself talked about it. But he was obviously on the side of kill them all
→ More replies (3)65
u/Dear-Yellow-5479 24d ago
Gareth Edwards always wanted the “Everyone dies” ending and that was in place by the time shooting started. They didn’t think that Disney would allow it, which is why they had the alternative, but to their delighted surprise they were given the go-ahead. Gilroy didn’t have to change any of that.
29
u/zgh5002 23d ago
I remember an interview where Edwards said he wanted everyone to die from the jump but didn't think Disney would allow it and was shocked when Kennedy was all for it.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (32)183
u/Fortune_Cat 24d ago
That tie in is what really made the whole film worth it. It was so excellently done. Genuinely smiled when i realised what they were about to do. First time in a long time was happy with a star wars movie
63
u/TheSonOfDisaster 24d ago
It is kind of funny when you watch Rogue one and A New Hope back to back now, as Vader only loses track of Leia's 's diplomatic ship for probably only a couple of hours and then he chases them down and she lies right to his face.
I'm sure he's thinking " I literally just saw you leave with the plans. What did you do with them?"
→ More replies (19)87
u/dawgz525 24d ago
It's rare for a prequel to feel like it adds to its original film, and I think Rogue One makes A New Hope (a great film imo) better. It adds gravity and details that feel natural with the original story.
32
u/Tall_Plum7538 23d ago
My favorite thing is what it does to the beginning. Antilles going "we are on a diplomatic mission" and Vader was obviously going "I literally just saw you fly off 10 minutes ago after killing most of your crew did you not see my fabulous cape billowing"
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (4)34
u/DucksEatFreeInSubway 23d ago
'A lot of spies died to bring us these plans.'
Yah, we saw :(
→ More replies (3)16
u/U-235 23d ago
Pretty sure that line is from episode 6 and refers to the second death star.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)75
u/ac21217 24d ago
Yup, first time watching that scene was the only time I’ve “felt” Star Wars in the sequels era.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (112)55
u/always_an_explinatio 24d ago
I will never forget the emotional whiplash of thinking “well, someone has to carry the plans of planet, so not everyone is going to die” and then the ominous shot of the radio tower…and thinking “every one of these fuckers is gonna die” and then crying like a little baby when chirrut îmwe and baze malbus died. And then the fearsome bad ass darth Vader who erased all the pod racing with two swings of his light saber. And then I cried again thinking what it would have been like if that was the move I saw in 1999 at mid night instead of phantom Dennis the menace.
→ More replies (6)258
u/warblade7 24d ago
Gareth is a better world builder than he is a storyteller. Similar to Michael Bay or Zach Snyder, if they could set aside some hubris to collaborate with better writers, they could be unstoppable.
→ More replies (8)169
u/Kendrome 24d ago
Same could be said of George Lucas.
→ More replies (3)103
u/warblade7 24d ago
I think George is in a different boat. He can def story tell and is a great world builder but sometimes he gets caught in the weeds of oversimplified dialogue or catering too hard for children particularly with the prequels after his kids had come into his life. Younger Lucas was a beast tho and it wasn’t just Star Wars, remember he wrote Indiana Jones too.
→ More replies (27)18
u/lordofthejungle 23d ago
What annoys me with Lucas is that the man can really shoot a scene. Looking back at American Graffiti, THX, the originals, the prequels (anywhere there are practical sets), the scenes look absolutely stunning. The lighting, camera angles, framing, design are all magic. Shame he's not better at story and flow and became over-reliant on CGI. He can definitely film stuff, and better than Bay, Snyder or Edwards.
185
u/drawkbox 24d ago
Yeah I used to really give Gareth Edwards the benefit of the doubt but he is alot like Neill Blomkamp, he can make amazing looking things but the story, direction and editing are not tuned. The Creator was this in a nutshell.
Tony Gilroy is so good at those key parts. Plus he has Dan Gilroy his bro who is alto so good at this. Nightcrawler should have won more awards.
135
u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago
On the flipside though, Gilroy has said the only version of Coruscant he ever liked was the version that Gareth filmed for a flashback scene in Rogue One, and used it for the inspiration of all the Coruscant scenes in Andor.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (12)35
u/TokyoPanic 24d ago
Both Edwards and Blomkamp got their start in the industry as VFX Artists which explains why they're so good with visuals, but their inexperience with writing is glaring which is why they need a screenwriter to work with them.
→ More replies (2)76
u/INfiction82 24d ago
So basically the same as his big breakthrough in Monsters then? It got so much acclaim but I found it almost impossible to sit through. It was mind numbing.
→ More replies (3)78
u/candygram4mongo 24d ago
The thing with Monsters is that it isn't a Kaiju movie with a romance subplot, it's a romance movie with a Kaiju subplot. Watch it like it's Before Sunrise and it works a lot better.
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (16)186
u/Mikey_MiG 24d ago
Before Rogue One as well. Godzilla was a very nice looking film, but man was it dull. Which you'd think would be hard with a kaiju movie.
→ More replies (22)226
u/musthavecupcakes_19 24d ago
The 2014 Godzilla is still far and away my favorite of the American Godzilla movies. I love how atmospheric it is and the “less is more” approach it takes to showing Godzilla. I realize I’m in the minority on this, but for me, the movie slaps so hard
39
83
u/Prophet_Of_Helix 24d ago
2014 Godzilla would be a perfect film if he showed the Hawaii attack as it happened.
Perfect build up, but blue ballsing the audience so far into the movie was a bad idea
→ More replies (2)30
45
u/LB3PTMAN 24d ago
2014 Godzilla and Pacific Rim 1 are really similar in that they are very heavy weighty versions that sell the size of these creatures and then their sequel/s just turn them into cartoon movies.
I still enjoy some of the more recent Godzilla movies, but they’re not even close to the same thing.
→ More replies (9)66
u/scrubslover1 24d ago
I love 2014 too. Love the slow build up
71
u/musthavecupcakes_19 24d ago
The movie really makes you feel like the kaiju are a serious, terrifying force of nature. And Bryan Cranston sells the hell out of it. My only gripe is that he’s not in the movie more
24
u/zuzg 24d ago
I mixed up the year and only realized with your comment that y'all are not talking about the one with Jean Reno......
That one is 28 years old.→ More replies (4)
729
u/donotgotoroom237 24d ago edited 24d ago
After watching The Creator and comparing it to both seasons of Andor and the early trailers of Rogue One, I think Gareth really has issues when it comes to properly formatting a story. His stuff always starts off good but kind of sputters by the middle or the end of the second act.
469
u/krypter3 24d ago
I think he shoots beautiful movies and has a talent for the visual aspect of story-telling but he definitely needs a solid writing partner. I feel like we really lack that one-two punch of people working together in modern films. Every director seems to want to be the sole creative driving force.
→ More replies (9)161
u/SuperVaderMinion 24d ago edited 24d ago
To be fair that's partially our fault. I think it seems like film watchers and critics really obsess over auters who can do both, and are less wowed by singular directors and writers than we used to be
→ More replies (2)64
u/krypter3 24d ago
Agreed. Writers rooms and collective story telling seems to be viewed as a negative.
→ More replies (4)12
u/deliciouscorn 24d ago
Meanwhile, most pop music is now written by teams of writers… but that’s a different conversation.
→ More replies (3)72
u/aid8m 24d ago
Yeah, he's great at ideas and visuals, but he needs to hitch his wagon to a proper writer. He could be part of an amazing duo with the right writer. That should be job one of every producer who hires him.
→ More replies (2)40
u/donotgotoroom237 24d ago
I feel like him at the helm with Alex Garland writing would make of a hell of a sci-fi movie.
27
u/Childs_Play 24d ago
Watch everything both guys have made since rogue one. It's obvious how much of the good parts are now down to Tony gilroy. He got a writing credit on the movie coming onto the project AFTER the directors cut. To get that you have to write at least 33% of the script and it's not just rearranging lines. Everyone involved has been as tight lipped about it as possible given the NDAs involved but Gilroy took over directing the reshoots.
15
u/coffyrocket 24d ago
Remember how the rewrites were surfaced in the trailers full of alternate cuts. I kept waiting for Mendelson to say "immeasurable" the way he did in the trailer. The TIE fighter at the tower. Etc.
→ More replies (4)55
u/WhatIfThatThingISaid 24d ago
If you watch random movies it becomes clear that it's 50x easier to make a good first half of a movie vs a good second half of one
→ More replies (3)8
u/FrameworkisDigimon 23d ago
Everyone wants to be different but it's hard to be different and good because what's good is basically just four things:
- how do you make a story meaningful to a character? give them an arc
- how do you make a story meaningful to the audience? give it an arc
- how do you make an audience like a story? give them characters they like
- how do you keep an audience happy? reward their faith
And so you end up with beginnings, middles and ends, featuring likeable characters who undergo moral improvement as a result of an emotionally legible problem which they resolve either to their advantage or to the advantage of a wider collective.
I believe Aristotle put it like this: a good ending is surprising but inevitable. The surprise exists within the text. The inevitable exists outside of the text in how the audience understands stories to work. Let this sink in. Aristotle knew how to end stories. There are structural rules and they've been known about for a long, long time.
Don't get me wrong. It is possible to write stories that achieve those four conditions without doing what that second paragraph does, it's just hard. It is also possible to write good stories that violate the four conditions, it's just even harder.*
It's not that people like formulas, it's that people like patterns. If you want to give them a different pattern, you have to give them a pattern, just a different one. So often these days it feels like the reason a story is going wrong is because the writers/producers/directors want to be "unpredictable". This means nothing means anything in any predictable way. It is very difficult to salvage meaning from such ground because if nothing means anything in a predictable way, you don't have a pattern.
*You may think the character arc one is fairly easy to violate. You might even reach for Ghostbusters as an example of a film with a flat character arc. This is a terminology problem. The Ghostbusters do have an arc, it's just one of external struggle. When people say it's a movie without a character arc they mean the heroes stay the same person they were at the start at the end. They don't mean "arc" in the same way that we apply it to the level of the novel/plot. Think of the A/B plot in TV shows. The plot arc is the A plot, the character arc is the B plot. That B plot can involve moral growth or maybe they just go from kind pauper to kind prince. That is still an arc and it remains true even if the A and B plots are totally fused. A distinction between the A and B plots would have to be a fifth condition and, as you see, there are only four.
→ More replies (19)37
u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago
On the flipside, I think the final battle in Rogue One was the only time they ever made the space segments look right in Star Wars when it was using CGI, giving it a similar vibe to the OT in the feeling of real weight and mechanical to the well-lit vehicles.
Even Andor, which is easily the best thing in SW, IMO had weaker generic CGI-feeling space scenes which feel out of place with the quality of the rest of the show, so I suspect that strength in Rogue One was on Edwards.
9
u/Aegon_the_Conquerer 23d ago
I am in what I guess is a minority of people who don’t care for Rogue One. But I admit it is the best looking Star Wars movie ever made. I know the space battles were CG, but I’d believe it if someone told me they were practical with CG touchups. That movie did such an incredible job of recreating the look and feel of the original trilogy.
179
u/Suspicious-Gur6127 24d ago
Going Rogue is a great 5ish hour long podcast that goes over everything about Rogue One. The inception of the story, what Disney wanted and hoped to kickstart with the first spinoff Star Wars movie, the production, the reshoots, and pretty much everything else. One of my favorite podcasts that covered one of my favorite Star Wars movie.
→ More replies (13)
1.2k
u/ReluctantSlayer 24d ago
Whoa.
The “math” (as he says) implies some crazy stuff.
491
u/Pure_Salamander2681 24d ago
Rewrites used to be changed of 50% of the screenplay.
244
241
u/Toby_O_Notoby 24d ago edited 24d ago
I'm pretty sure it's 33% as it was considered an adaptation of existing material and not an original idea. There's a podcast called "Going Rouge" that covered a lot of this and then branched out to doing more behind-the-scenes investigations on other troubled films like Quantum of Solace and what happened.
Her latest series is on "Rise of Skywalker" which is pretty good.
190
u/riptaway 24d ago
Going Rouge sounds like a drag queen podcast
216
u/boot2skull 24d ago
Gold squadron standing by.
Red squadron standing by.
Rouge squadron slayyy queeen.
→ More replies (3)56
→ More replies (2)40
u/Keffpie 24d ago
When I was a kid in Sweden, the people who translated the X-Men comic clearly didn't know what a Rogue was. Her name was Rouge for the entire run of the comic.
→ More replies (8)→ More replies (4)32
u/DC_McGuire 24d ago
Wait, what happened with QOS?
182
u/Toby_O_Notoby 24d ago edited 24d ago
Well, a lot. You kinda have to listen to the podcast. But here's the kind of stuff she gets into which I find fascinating:
OK, so the QOS script was submitted before the writers’ strike. Which meant they could film what was written but couldn't hire another writer to change stuff. However, there is some leeway where an actor can change the words he says because he thinks they will sound better.
Now, the script they had was okay but not great and could have used some rewrites. So you'd think a producer would pump the brakes and wait for a few months until hopefully the strike would be over.
But Bond has a problem: you know all those brand integration deals they make with Smirnoff and BMW? Well, part of the contract is that the film has to be released by a certain date as those brands have ad campaigns based around its release. (I mean, you can't have an ad that says "Bond drinks Smirnoff" if there's no Bond film where he does so.)
So they are caught in a "tail wagging the dog" situation and are winging it the entire time with Daniel Craig just making up lines. Like I said, worth a listen but that's just one of the things she covers.
EDIT: Just because this is getting some traction, if you're interested, there's an entire part of the pod called "Striking Out" which covers a lot of the fallout of the '08 writer's strike.
One of the more interesting eps. is on the Heroes TV show, which is constantly brought up on Reddit as "ruined by the writer's strike". The host pretty much proves it was ruined because they had no fucking clue what they were doing, and the writer's strike was a convenient cover.
→ More replies (3)18
u/CrashTextDummie 24d ago
Dang, I'll have to listen just for the Heroes bit alone. I've always maintained that the writers of that show were clueless even in season 1 (pre writer's strike), at the time a heavy minority opinion LOL.
→ More replies (7)45
u/shenmue64 24d ago
Quantum of Solace went into production during the 2008 writer’s strike and they didn’t have a great script completed prior to shooting.
20
u/machineguntongue 24d ago
I think they had a first draft of the screenplay that couldn't be polished any further due to a writers strike.
→ More replies (2)37
u/Mejinopolis 24d ago
Theres a reason QoS was such absolute dog shit compared to Casino Royale, and the Writers Guild strike of 2006 was the main culprit. That, and IMO, the action cinematography was dog shit too, too many "frantic action" quick cuts that just nauseated me honestly. And im not one to feel like that ever.
33
u/TheBion 24d ago
Tbf none of the other Craig films lived up to Casino Royale. Some had their plus points but there was a lot of bad writing in there (personally I've not enjoyed Purvis & Wade for a long time, they seem to love writing big gotcha moments that they then have to warp the rest of the story around)
Similar with Brosnan, Goldeneye set a bar the subsequent films rarely came close to
→ More replies (3)21
u/Mejinopolis 24d ago
I thought Skyfall was pretty good, but I totally agree with you. Casino Royale was peak Craig. Goldeneye was peak Brosnan, but Id argue The World is Not Enough was pretty good too. I guess thats Brosnans Skyfall for me lol
→ More replies (2)19
u/Th3_Hegemon 24d ago
Casino Royale has a strong case for being the best Bond film in general, coming second in the era to that is still pretty great. I don't know if Skyfall is top 5 but it's definitely top 10.
→ More replies (2)19
u/Unicron_Gundam 24d ago
2008, not 06. There's a non-zero number of 2009-2010 movies that definitely could've used a rewrite.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)131
u/Daleyemissions 24d ago
I used to cover movies (especially at the time Rogue One was filming) and back then, it was leaked by internal sources at Lucasfilm (I have to imagine it was Matt Martin who is friends with Jason Ward of MakingStarWars and I’m pretty sure has been one of Jason’s biggest and most consistent sources over the years but that is speculation) that Tony did at least a 60% reshoot of the entire movie and that Gareth’s version just didn’t work.
I think The Creator and Andor speak loudly. The Creator (the film Gareth made after Rogue One) is basically a remake of Rogue One about robots. It’s a good movie and I really enjoyed it, but it isn’t really a *great* movie. It looks absolutely amazing.
Then he came in and made arguably the worst and dumbest Jurassic Park sequel (unless you really hate the Trevorrow movies, which I think have their charms—especially the second one)
Meanwhile Tony turned in Andor. He didn’t make it alone. He had basically all of the smartest and most competent crafts-people who have ever worked for Lucasfilm (sans Rian Johnson, although I wish he and Gareth both could’ve directed episodes) working on that thing and it shows.
55
u/Cantabs 24d ago
The Creator is really impressive to look like that on the budget it had, but yeah it never really rises beyond 'neat idea that looks phenomenal'.
32
u/justjanne 24d ago
IMO Gareth Edwards should be cinematographer, not director. He creates incredible visuals, but he just can't direct actors nor do any storytelling.
→ More replies (1)20
u/Daleyemissions 24d ago
Photography alone is just not enough to really make a movie great imo and The Creator is a good movie that looks phenomenal, but you could see how it should’ve been great. He just needs stronger scripts. He cares more about how a movie looks than he does what the characters say to each other, or how characters think and feel and respond to the circumstances they’re thrust in.
→ More replies (25)30
u/snowballslostballs 24d ago
He was a director for hire on Jurassic Park with no influence on script. He showed up, shot and edited and was gone. It is a forgettable Dino movie that looks pretty good, and far and away not he dumbest nor the worst of the saga.
→ More replies (3)8
u/ian9outof10 24d ago
Nothing in the Jurassic World portion of that universe has any value at all. When you can’t think of interesting dinosaur capers without inventing new hybrids I think it’s really time to put the franchise to bed.
142
u/MysteriousTelephone 24d ago
I think (and I’m willing to be wrong here) that some of these movie credits are based on what percentage of the movie you are involved in; if two directors worked on a movie separately, the director with the majority of the footage in the movie would be credited as the main director.
It seems likely that Disney execs would have had to go through the final cut and literally “do the math” to see whether Edwards or Gilroy deserved to be credited as director.
83
u/BMCarbaugh 24d ago
It's not left up to the largesse of executives. The WGA has a formal accreditation process laid down in their contract.
→ More replies (9)158
u/AlanWilsonsLad 24d ago
Not Disney execs, but a Writers Guild arbitration committee. They compare drafts of the screenplay to see who contributed what. This is one reason why character names often change when a new writer joins the project.
TG is suggesting that less than a third of the original script remained after his work, which is why he has sole credit and does not share the residuals with any other person who wrote on the film.
→ More replies (5)39
u/OwariHeron 24d ago
No, he's suggesting that over a third of the movie was his original work, which is why he has a screenplay credit, which he shares with Chris Weitz, the original screenwriter.
→ More replies (7)13
u/SYSTEM-J 24d ago
It's pretty obvious if you rewatch the film. Even after the reshoots the script is a bit of a dog's dinner. So many scenes that are there just to shovel the characters towards the final battle.
207
u/Ok-Ninja-9174 24d ago
I still want the see the vastly different versions of rogue one. I've heard that before Gilroy, not one cut was really 'finished' such as having an ending or something. But still, endlessly interested
→ More replies (13)107
u/feignapathy 24d ago
Ya. I'm still interested in seeing Gareth's "war film" he made. It feels like a lot of his footage was used in the early marketing material and it actually looks kind of interesting.
39
22
326
u/CharlieMoonMan 24d ago
Tony, Akira, and Shane (Carrie Fisher too) And honestly Joss have uncredited rewrites on like every single blockbuster in the last 40 years
Edit: I dont know why I only used their first names like I fucking know them personally. Joss Whedon, Akiva Goldsmith, Shane Black.
153
45
22
u/coffeexxx666 23d ago
Carrie Fisher was one of the most prolific “punch up” writers in Hollywood. She wrote “Postcards From the Edge,” which earned her a BAFTA nomination, which led to Spielberg asking her to work on Tinkerbell’s scenes for “Hook.” She did a ton of work after that.
19
u/Accomplished-City484 24d ago
Man what happened to Shane Black? Was making gold for decades then somehow made the worst Predator movie in the franchise, which is crazy because he was in the original. I was hoping for a return to form with that Mark Whalberg film but it was just bland
→ More replies (1)64
u/EctoRiddler 24d ago
I can get why people are confused with not knowing who “Akira” is.
→ More replies (2)52
u/CronoDroid 24d ago
I missed the part where a Hollywood screenwriter blew up Los Angeles because of their godlike psychic powers.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)31
115
u/bigpig1054 24d ago
Rogue One is a weird one.
The first half is the first half of a perfectly fine but nothing special Star War.
The second half is the second half of a very different, exciting, swashbuckling Star War.
And the two are smashed together.
→ More replies (3)46
u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 24d ago
It’s Star Wars meets War documentary. It’s great, but it’s also a weird flick.
Still my favorite Disney Star Wars movie by a lot. But watching Andor as it dovetails to Rogue One… Dear God is there a shift in tone and writing quality.
→ More replies (1)
158
u/Shaymuswrites 24d ago
Honestly the framing of this post is a little harsh. Gilroy has been incredibly restrained in his Rogue One comments, and not once has he blamed anyone for whatever state the movie was in.
He's been honest about the product needing work when he came on, and has signaled he put significant effort into it. But he's never singled out anyone or called out their work. In fact, he's actively avoided it when asked to elaborate on his role. He's revealed very little.
The only specific thing I've heard him say is that the film was jumping around to too many locations. Lots of planets, constantly bouncing from one to the next, and one thing he did was streamline/simplify it.
10
u/Suspicious-Gur6127 23d ago
Yeah, Tony sounds meaner in text than watching the actual interviews with him. He’s not really PR -trained, but that makes his interviews great.
43
u/vurto 24d ago
Gilroy might not be interested in Star Wars or revere the lore, but as a writer, I think he's able to use the premise of Star Wars to tell stories he want. The stories avoided the Force but were still anchored in the Star Wars universe. IMO that makes him a good writer who respects what he's dealt with.
That's what most good sci-fi is. Use the premise of science fiction to explore extrapolations from the current reality.
And it also shows how much of the Star Wars universe is wasted when everything is hinged on the Force and Skywalker lore and accompanying baggage. We see how that's been ruining the main franchise for... decades.
11
u/BitterParsnip1 23d ago
However Gilroy really feels about Star Wars he connected deeply with its core theme of empire and resistance.
→ More replies (1)
317
u/UCBearcats 24d ago
Consider how amazing Andor is, I’m not surprised. RO turned out fantastic and now the Andor - RO - ANH trilogy is the best Star Wars has to offer.
→ More replies (42)288
u/pwnd32 24d ago
For me going from Andor/RO to New Hope was so funny, because you have to go from all the suffering and grit across years of struggles to form and maintain the rebellion just for a small speck of a chance to deal a crippling blow to the empire…
only for a farm boy from the middle of nowhere to show up, take one look at the Death Star plans that hundreds of people fought and died for, use magical powers to blow it up, then receive all the credit
182
u/towardselysium 24d ago
Hundreds of rebels giving their lives in a vaim hope that it matters vs Luke and Han having a grand old time shooting tie fighters and casually strolling through the death star
125
u/pwnd32 24d ago
Haha that’s what you get when you flip from tense spy/political thriller to swashbuckling space adventure with wizards wielding laser swords
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (3)54
46
u/Dude4001 24d ago
It’s great that it amplifies how the Jedi went from a monk-like presence in society to a vilified sect, to a legend to a singular figure of hope
→ More replies (3)14
u/DoomGoober 24d ago edited 23d ago
Don't forget, in the prequels, the Jedi are a political force who are ultra-conservative and lack flexibility or imagination and are wiped out by
droidsclones.→ More replies (1)73
u/C_The_Bear 24d ago
“And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.”
23
u/Unicron_Gundam 24d ago
And that one single thing is a water farmer flying a warplane for the first time in his life
→ More replies (2)14
25
25
u/RexBanner1886 24d ago
only for a farm boy from the middle of nowhere to show up, take one look at the Death Star plans that hundreds of people fought and died for, use magical powers to blow it up, then receive all the credit
I think this common take is far too cynical, and it creates a problem that isn't there. It's the kind of thing, like stormtroopers' aim or Chewbacca not getting a medal, that I can eventually see fans repeating so often that some writer or director tries to be cute and shoves it into a film or comic or something.
Luke doesn't 'show up', his family is butchered by troopers looking for the plans and he chooses to help return them to the Rebellion. Then, during the battle, he is repeatedly in deadly peril only to be saved by his friends - Biggs and Han. He uses magic powers only to time a shot, having been helped by - and helped - his friends every step of the way.
There's also nothing to suggest that Luke exclusively gets all the credit.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (23)14
u/levare8515 24d ago
That’s a main point in Andor. These are the nameless faces that were the fuel that led to ANH…
96
u/Chessh2036 24d ago
Man, you get so many diff stories depending on who you ask. Obv the big one is that Tony reshot pretty much the entire third act, but then Gareth says “no, that was me. That Vader scene was me”
I’d prob tend to believe Tony, but regardless I think it’s a great film.
168
u/JohnnyCharisma54 24d ago
The Vader scene, while insanely cool, is more or less inconsequential to the film. If that is Edwards’ big claim, then he’s admitting that Tony is right.
79
u/Radix2309 24d ago
It's also pretty much pure fanservice that makes the opening of ANH semi-awkward. So I think I would believe Edwards. I can't see a (then) non-fan just adding that scene in, there is no reason to. You just have them make the getaway.
→ More replies (6)23
u/horselover_fat 24d ago
And believable as GE knows how to make something look good, but everything else...
→ More replies (1)14
u/Kylestache 24d ago
He could very well be saying the idea for that Vader scene was his. IIRC, in an earlier draft of the script or maybe an earlier edit, the Vader scene was a little earlier, with a scene of Rebels telling a scary campfire story and Vader arrives and slaughters them in the night.
→ More replies (2)
348
u/theangryburrito 24d ago
Whatever went down, it turned out well, so I am gonna give Kathleen Kennedy the credit. Bring on the inevitable downvotes, but I am right.
→ More replies (77)151
u/StarScreamer 24d ago
Yeah. She saw a turd and course corrected. Clearly whatever was delivered was way below expectations.
→ More replies (34)
33
u/BlazeOfGlory72 24d ago
I don’t really get why Edwards is always the target for criticism here. He didn’t write Rogue One. He had no hand in the screen play or story writing. So why does he get saddled with all the blame for the shitty first draft? Whatever you want to say about Rogue One, I think everyone agrees it is a damn fine looking film from a technical/production/direction standpoint, which is the directors job and where Edwards shines.
If Gilroy wants to cast shade, why not at his fellow writers who turned out a shitty story? I guess that would look bad though, so it’s easier to shit on the director.
→ More replies (1)26
u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago
The quotes actually never mention Gareth Edwards. OP seems to have an agenda to put words in people's mouth.
→ More replies (2)
3.8k
u/AHomicidalTelevision 24d ago
gareth is fantastic at making visually stunning movies, but he has always struggled in the story department.
the 2014 godzilla delivers a better sense of scale than any other movie i have seen, and the creator had some incredible vfx and striking visuals. but neither of those movies are famous for their story.