Here’s why all those “missing scenes” from the “Rogue One” trailers never made it into the movie
To know Rogue One is to love Rogue One, and to know and love it means that you’re well aware there are a lot of missing scenes from Rogue One. The missing scenes are intentional. From the time the first trailer was released back in April of 2016, to the time the movie was released in December 2016, the latest Star Wars movie went through an extensive set of reshoots. They were reshoots that change the plot of the movie so much that scenes we had seen in the early trailers we no longer in the final film.
That scenario actually happen a lot in Hollywood, and it’s common for moments from a trailer to never make it into a theatrical release. However, in the case of Rogue One like, 60% of the footage from the first trailer is just GONE from the movie. Roughly 40% of it is GONE from the second trailer. What happened to all this missing footage??
If this is a question that’s been plaguing you for the last week, you are not alone. Rogue One’s director, Gareth Edwards, has been nothing but ? when it comes to filling us in on what happened behind-the-scenes with Rogue One. He calmed us down when we had a thousands questions about the reshoots. Now he’s calming us down again, explaining where all that mission footage went.
Short answer: Blame Star Wars marketing.
"There was a bit of a process to refining the third act in terms of specific shots and moments, and certain things just fell away," He explains to Empire in a podcast that will go live on December 26th. "What happened was marketing loved those shots [we filmed early on before the reshoots] and said, 'Oh, we've got to use that.' And you say, 'Well, it's not in the movie,' and they said 'It's okay. It's what marketing does — we just use the best of whatever you've done.'"
Make sense. The trailers got us *so* excited to see Rogue One, but we did go into the movie thinking we were going to see one story…while instead we got another. But hey, it happens. And Rogue One was still a perfect fine (and GREAT) movie, regardless of the MIA scenes from the trailer, like Jyn and Cassian running across the beach with the Death Star plans, Director Krennic walking on water, Jyn’s “I rebel” line…
No, we’re not missing those at all. Even though we’re still dying to know how they fit into the greater Star Wars story and we will probably spend the rest of our lives trying to figure it out. Probably.