Star Wars Director Says He Had To Be Sneaky To Make His Movie
Not only that, but directing a Star Wars movie is a dream come true for the director. While he never thought it would happen, it was one of the reasons he became a director.
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Five years after its debut, British director Gareth Edwards recently talked about the sneaking around he had to do to create Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. When he met with Lucasfilm’s Kiri Hart about working on the 2016 Star Wars film, he was working on Godzilla (2014). Edwards was finishing up Godzilla at Warner Bros, and Rogue One was at Disney, which is a ten-minute walk away. In fear of jeopardizing the possibility of directing a Godzilla sequel if the first one went well, Edwards kept his rendezvous quiet. Instead, he would pretend to go out for food and meet up with Kiri Hart down the road.
While Gareth Edwards was interested in the Lucasfilm project, he was also hesitant about the secretive Star Wars project at first. He figured he was just one among plenty of directors meeting with Lucasfilm and that he wouldn’t make the cut, but the studio wanted him specifically. They were not talking to any other filmmakers about the project. And good thing they did because Edwards did not end up directing the Godzilla sequel. Not only that, but directing a Star Wars movie is a dream come true for Gareth Edwards. The franchise is one of the reasons why Gareth Edwards got into filmmaking in the first place. “It’s not the sort of thing that should happen to you in your career, like even the best version of where your career could go,” he told StarWars.com. “I feel very lucky, and I consider it very sacred territory.”
Despite its apparent fan approval, the filmmaker does not believe any compliments he receives about the Star Wars film. Gareth Edwards notes that often he thinks those who praise him for the motion picture do so to be nice. He is just thankful that the public does not hate it. That was his biggest fear in making Rogue One, that he would somehow ruin people’s childhoods by reinventing storylines that the movie watchers imagined as something else.
And that could have been the case, considering the end result of the film. If Shakespeare were alive today, he would consider Rogue One a tragedy. With virtually all of its heroes dying, under the guidance of Gareth Edwards, the film is the darkest in the franchise, according to Comic Book. Yet, the film was a critically acclaimed success and fan-favorite within the modern Star Wars era.
“I think it makes it more mythical,” Gareth Edwards said about the reactions to his Star Wars movie. “Things are more valuable when they only exist for a brief moment, and they’re not something you can always go back to. I feel like the fact that they did all–those characters came together and then can’t come together again, really, in the same way, probably helped the movie in some way.”
Star Wars aficionados have been critical of the manner in which the franchise has been handled since Disney bought Lucasfilm, but Rogue One seemed to mediate any tension between the fans and the films, thanks to Gareth Edwards. Rogue One was overshadowed a little bit by the success of The Force Awakens, released the year prior, however, it continued to be a fan favorite. While the solo project was never meant to be further explored, a brand new Disney+ series telling the story of Cassian Andor (played by Diego Luna) is now on the way from Lucasfilm.
