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The I've Seen Rogue One Thread (spoilers OBV)


captainbleh
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I doubt it. Most of the stuff that didn't make it probably doesn't make sense anymore post-reshoot.

 

I'm starting to think that TFA was the SW movie the world needed, but R1 is the movie fans wanted. Curious to see final box offfice.

It's amazing that some people don't get that the point of TFA was to say "No, really, you can like Star Wars again. You can trust us. This is a safe place. But also give us your money please."

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TFA and pretty much every Marvel movie trailer have things that look major that don't end up in the film.

 

I wish people would get over the reshoot thing.

 

That said, the reshoot writers got higher billing than Whitta and Kinberg, so that means the final script was more than 75% different from the last draft without their names.

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TFA and pretty much every Marvel movie trailer have things that look major that don't end up in the film.

 

I wish people would get over the reshoot thing.

 

That said, the reshoot writers got higher billing than Whitta and Kinberg, so that means the final script was more than 75% different from the last draft without their names.

I'm just curious about it. But I don't think the reshoots were a big deal because I am very pleased with the film we got. Had it been a bad film, then I'd be pissed about what really happened with all that.

 

But it does beg the question of whether trailers are becoming too much what with every single scene and shot in the teasers dissected 10 different ways before the film is released. I actually like Adam Driver's idea:

 

http://www.cinemablend.com/news/1599391/what-if-star-wars-episode-8-opened-without-ever-showing-a-trailer-heres-what-adam-driver-thinks

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How is that "percent different" calculated?

By WGA arbitration usually.

 

When a lot of writers get involved sometimes the WGA will do this-- everyone involved submits their last draft and a board at the WGA reads them all to decide who deserves what credit. They look for differences.

 

The percentages are actually not known-- what they say versus what they do tends to vary, because the board is never the same. The 75% I threw out is just based on what I have seen happen in arbitration to friends. I've also heard 50%.

 

Also, arbitration generally happens when somebody contests something. Credits are submitted to the WGA and all writers involved, and if anyone objects, it goes to arbitration. If no one does, the credits go as proposed-- keep in mind people may have had it in their contracts that they'd have a certain credit, or no credit at all.

 

The shooting script for London Has Fallen was basically my work. I took the story from one script and married it to action from another. But then another writer came after me that rewrote all the dialog. A writer ahead of me asked for arbitration, but I bowed out of the process cause I contracted as a script doctor with no credit. (which I am still totally fine with). Had I wanted to though, I honestly don't know how it would have gone.

 

I have seen some writers come in, and just change character names and dialog and that's it-- and still get top billing. I've also seen some writers get credit (like Joss Whedon with Alien 4) because they wrote the first draft, but the end result was nothing like what they turned in. Again, since the board is not permanent, different interpretations of what constitutes "different" could vary.

 

So while there's never any way to know for sure, the bigger the company, the more they play by the rules. Doesn't get much bigger than Disney. SO to that-- Rogue One's credits are:

 

Story By John Knoll and Gary Whitta

Screenplay By: Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy

 

Quick guide to writing credits:

 

"Written by" is given to a sole writer, or paired writing team if the material is 100% original and they are the sole author. This is actually a rare credit these days.

 

"Screenplay by" is given to any combination of writers wherein more than one author has been involved, or if the material is based on previously written IP or is an adaption.

 

"Story by" credit is given to writers who have done one of two things: written a detailed story treatment that was used to develop the movie or serve as an outline for a script and/or have written an early draft that was subsequently tossed out, but the preceding scripts recycle characters, key concepts or sequences.

 

Two writer names separate by an ampersand "&" means they are a writing team.

Two (or more) writers separated by the word "and" are subsequent writers.

 

So my educated guess is this:

 

John Knoll has said he was pitching the idea for years to Lucas. As an FX guy he probably really wanted recreated as many ANH locations and characters as he could, and he worked up a basic story. A suicide mission to steal the death star plans. Key locations, rough character ideas, and a loose plot are generally what makes up a treatment. The Lucasfilm brain-trust (Kathleen Kennedy, Lawrence Kasdan, Simon Kinberg, and the E7-9 directors) heard the pitch and liked it.

 

Gary Whitta was touted as the writer when the project was announced. He was the screenwriter they hired to adapt the treatment, and whatever ideas the brain trust added to it, into an actual screenplay to flesh out the characters and make the plot work.

 

Kind of like Arndt with TFA, whatever he turned in, didn't cut the mustard. He was out as of January 2015. Filming didn't start until August. A movie this size has over a year of prep, so by this point, most of the larger set pieces and locations were likely locked. So it was likely the character work they didn't like. (Again, a lot like TFA).

 

This is when Weitz came on.

 

Knoll isn't a screenwriter, so I feel safe saying that he contributed concepts and ideas, and enough of Whitta's draft was in play that they together share the story by credit.

 

The timeline pretty much says that Weitz must have written the eventual shooting draft as they started shooting after he was hired, and Gilroy came on after principle had wrapped as a known fix-it guy.

 

Given that he and Weitz share the screenplay credit, that means enough of Weitz's script remains that he was not bumped back to Story By.

 

That said, when extensive reshoots don't use the last writer, and need new material, the director often cooks up the lines, or an uncredited script doctor steps in. Leatherface had reshoots, I wrote all of them save for one last minute scene that the director cooked up on-set. Gilroy getting shared Screenplay By credit means that Gilroy came up with significant enough pieces to deserve being credited.

 

So to me, that says the reshoots were indeed pretty big. But I still don't think it's a big deal. All movies have reshoots-- I don't know that this means the project was ever doomed or in trouble, it just means that what they had wasn't working, or they had better ideas after things were shot. That's something people don't get. Reshooting doesn't mean things are BAD-- most big movies plan for them-- especially ones like SW and Marvel movies where so much of them are made via FX in post. New and better ideas are developed on the back end and they decide to go back and fill in scenes to help it out.

 

Or maybe it was terrible. We'll never know.

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I took an Entertainment Law class where that was an entire unit. Thanks for the refresher and applying it here.

 

I never viewed the reshoots as a bad thing, even if they were massive or whatever. Quite the opposite. They had the wherewithal to stop for a second and go "Hm. This isn't what we wanted to make. Let's think about this."

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Exactly, the problem is though that for some reason people want to believe that these stories are like handed down from God to the creators. You see it when people comment or complain that originally Vader wasn't Lukes father or that Luke and Leia weren't twins as if these are some kind of flaw. Stories grow and change in their telling. The reshoots never had to be indicative of major flaws in the movie.

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I've also seen some writers get credit (like Joss Whedon with Alien 4) because they wrote the first draft, but the end result was nothing like what they turned in.

 

I'm guessing that Whedon lost that bit of arbitration and got stuck with the title.

 

Reminds me of Leigh Brackett's credit in ESB. Lucas has basically said that he gave her the credit purely out of respect despite his not really liking her first draft and not much of it surviving into the movie.

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II recall him saying that as well. I read her draft years ago, but I don't remember a lot of the details. I know Leigh invented the Lando character-- in her draft he was a clone (I think), but the idea remained of him being an administrator that was being used by the Empire that ultimately flips.

 

I don't know how arbitration would go for her-- but a lot of times inventing characters gives you credit. In TV, if you are a freelance writer and you add a character to a show that ends up becoming a re-occuring guest or a regular, you get royalties for it.

 

The project I'm working on now has three writers before me, but I've basically tossed out all of their story and started from scratch. I've re-used character names and some setting descriptions (as it is a location-based movie). That alone probably means the previous writers will get a story by credit.

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I wish the prequels had had more extensive reshoots.

Seth is going to reshoot them in a few years.

 

With a new cast.

 

And a new script.

 

Since they won't actually do that, my current dream is to do an Obi-Wan trilogy, with each film taking place after one of the PT films. So sort of a do-over in the same era, but with less suck.

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I know Leigh invented the Lando character-- in her draft he was a clone (I think), but the idea remained of him being an administrator that was being used by the Empire that ultimately flips.

 

That's probably the one aspect of her script that it's a shame didn't make its way into the series. The Lando we got was okay, but he's a pretty basic character. An old clone who has outlived his "brothers" is an interesting idea to explore. An old relic of both the Republic and Empire (or possibly whomever they were fighting in the Clone Wars back then) long ago tossed aside, but now being used again by the Empire. It's a good idea that could still conceivably be recycled by bringing back Temuera Morrison.

 

Finn is vaguely similar enough that it sadly isn't likely to happen even if they did think of it. Hmm... unless he served as a mentor for Finn. That could work.

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From a review I read:

 

 

 

Now, scrap that stupid Bob Fett one-off and gimme Young Vader Murders A Lot Of People: A Star Wars Story..

 

This is something I didn't realize I wanted, even with that last scene. I'm on board for that idea though! Keep the Vader-as-one-of-the-best-villains-in-cinema-history rennaisance going!

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A version of that (what Lucas1138 said) was one of the Rogue Ones that existed in my head (and not just mine), with Vader being summoned to locate and destroy anyone who had come in to contact with the plans in something resembling a cross between Alien and No Country for Old Men (Darth Chigurh, heh), and the final shot being Jyn's ship being destroyed by Vader in his TIE Advanced just after she has managed to transmit the plans.

 

Chirrut's final moments as a confrontation between him and Vader would have been interesting, and Chirrut's reaction to sensing him too.

 

But after seeing Rogue One, I wish there hadn't been any scenes with Vader apart from the last one, apart from maybe a teaser shot / scene of him waking up in the bacta tank (if he sleeps) to let you know that he's coming.

 

Would a movie with lots of scenes of Vader just being a silent (apart from the iconic breathing) killing machine work?

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The idea of a Fett movie doesn't interest me a whole lot. A Vader movie is probably a bad idea as well. Combine the two however, where Vader employs Fett to help him take down straggler Jedi might have enough decent material for a decent movie, though.

But imagine a movie that does for Fett what R1 did for Vader. Something that truly shows us the badass we always got the impression he was, but never saw.

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