Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has spoken to Fandom about the fan-made video that has emerged online, which stitches the ending of Rogue One ending to the opening of A New Hope.
He revealed the lengths he and the crew went to to ensure the ending of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story blended seamlessly with the opening scenes of Star Wars: Episode IV. Fans will know that the finale of the 2016 spin-off film leads directly into the original Star Wars film, released in 1977.
“Someone mentioned this to me and sent me a link and I’ve got to sit down and watch it,” Edwards explains. “I hope it works. I mean, that was the goal. We ended up being really particular about all the details of the set and the lighting and the camerawork and stuff, so I hope people feel it connects.”
A whole team of people worked together to make sure the merging of the two films was as seamless as possible without compromising the quality of what we see on screen.
“If you look at the original rebel helmets, it looks like coathanger wire that’s coming out as the aerial on the helmet,” he says. “So, we had to improve that and put a little metallic fixture at the top of it, and things like this, just so it didn’t seem too cheap. But they get away with it back then because the grain and the film quality hid a lot of these things.”
Edwards says that they had to go much further than they did in the originals as a result of better cameras and projectors, and the fact you can see more detail than you could back then. But the painstaking accuracy is also down to Edwards’ lifelong fanatical devotion to Star Wars – and in particular his commitment to attempting to watch the film as *cough* a youngling on a daily basis.
“More than any other scene in any other movie I’ve probably watched the opening of Star Wars the most,” he says. “As a kid, I would put my Beta Max tape in and hit play. Probably after 15 minutes, my mum would shout and make me go to school, and I’d come back the next day and I’d rewind it and hit play again.
“I’ve probably seen that opening, well, hundreds of times as a kid, and so we were really familiar with it. Every little detail.”
It definitely shows.
‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ is available in the US on Digital download now, and on Blu-ray and DVD from April 4. UK fans can get their hands on all formats from April 10.