‘Rogue One’ Director Explains Why Deleted Scenes Aren’t On Blu-Ray

Rogue One A Star Wars Story

Following its explosive debut last December, many fans were quick to point out that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story had many scenes that were advertised that did not make the theatrical cut. Since a number of scenes were changed during reshoots, that isn’t necessarily surprising, but many fans were left confused by the absence of any deleted scenes on the film’s Blu-Ray release. Director Gareth Edwards offered an explanation as to why.

Edwards gave a few reasons for not including the extended versions of some of the trailer-exclusive scenes in an interview with Fandango. One of the big reasons is that a number of the shots are brief, alternate versions of what we actually got in the movie that wouldn’t warrant their own deleted scenes:

“There’s not an individual scene that you can drag and drop and put on a Blu-ray… There are little things that would come and go during the process of post-production, but they’re not scenes. They’re more moments within the scenes, or a single shot. So it’s impossible to be able to do that, and that’s why the decision was made. The stuff people talk about, like what they saw in the trailer, they’re not scenes you can just put on a DVD. They’re moments within scenes and threads, and you pull a thread and it all changes. It was changing the whole time. It’s not like there was one version and then there was this other version – it was like this thing that incrementally evolved constantly through all of post-production and didn’t stop until there was a gun at our heads and we were forced to release the movie.”

Continuing this line of thought, it was explained that the marketing department got many clips from the studio before were determined to be included in the actual movie, which is a practice that isn’t all that uncommon – Rogue One is just a special case due to all the reshoots. Edwards also noted that there was another reason that many of the Scarif scenes at the end weren’t included on the Blu-Ray – the visual effects work on them were never finished.

While this is understandable for not including scenes like the moment pictured above when Jyn faces a TIE fighter at the end of a tower bridge (said to have been cut for either being a visual test that wasn’t intended for the film or for being shot down by another fighter moments later in a scene that was deemed to be too similar to one earlier on in the battle), it doesn’t really explain scenes that would have provided extra exposition. Scenes such as Saw’s warning to a younger Jyn about what the Empire does to the people it catches and Krennic talking with Darth Vader about how powerful the Death Star is could have fit in with the version of the movie that we received, so their omission is rather confusing. Perhaps we’ll see those some day when there’s an inevitable re-release, but for now, they’ll have to sit in Lucasfilm’s vaults.

Rogue One is still playing in theaters and has a cast that includes Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Ben Mendehlson, Jiang Wen, Donnie Yen, Riz Ahmed, Forest Whitaker, and Mads Mikkelsen. James Earl Jones provides his voice for a cameo appearance as Darth Vader. The film is slated to be released through digital formats on March 24 and through home video formats on April 4.

Source: Fandango