With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story set to get a digital release this weekend, a flood of information about the film's development process has found its way online.
This has included details about a different ending in the early drafts of the script which saw both Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian (Diego Luna) survive the mission.
The latest tidbit to surface online is that one of the characters in the film was originally supposed to be a Jedi.
“The prologue, at one point a long time ago, was going to be the Empire coming to kill the Jedi, and Jyn’s mom was going to be a Jedi. […] We were witnessing one of those kills and Krennic would be the person sent to do it.” said screenwriter Gary Whitta.
However Whitta and fellow writer, Chris Weitz realised pretty early on that making Jyn's mom a Jedi would leave the audience expecting Jyn to follow in the same path.
“Our instinct told us that we wanted a scene where Jyn is orphaned because of what Krennic does, which sets her on her path of being a child of war. The problem was that the second you make her mom a Jedi you spend the entire movie questioning whether Jyn is a Jedi or not.”
There's also the whole Jedi Knights are supposed to be unattached and childless thing as well. Then again that never stopped the Skywalkers.
The best outcome from the writers' decision not to make Jyn's mom a Jedi is that they ultimately decided they needed a character that was somewhat connected to the force and wrote Donnie Yen's character, warrior monk Chirrut Imwe. For our money Yen was easily one of the best things about the movie so we're pretty glad about how things turned out.
Via Uproxx
