Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was originally going to feature Leia more, but the filmmakers opted against it because of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones). Lucasfilm's first crack at a Star Wars anthology film brought fans back to the original trilogy era, directly leading into the events of A New Hope. To emphasize the connection between the Gareth Edwards movie and the 1977 flick, it featured a cameo from a young Leia Organa, revealing what she was up to before Darth Vader caught her.
Introducing a team of heroes, Rogue One chronicled the gang's mission to swipe the design blueprint for the first Death Star. With the help of Jyn, whose father created the plan and embedded a fatal flaw in its construction, the ragtag squad took it upon themselves to infiltrate an Imperial installation on Scarif where the layout was hidden. This was after they failed to be granted permission by the Alliance Council, deeming the move too risky. Apparently, the film's Rebellion meeting scene was supposed to feature Leia, but Edwards and his team ultimately scrapped the idea.
During CineFix's watch-along for Rogue One, writers Gary Whitta and Chris Weitz provided some live commentary, giving fans more insight on the creative process of crafting the anthology movie. They revealed that Leia was originally planned to give the rousing speech in the war room as the Rebellion decided on what to do with the information they got about the existence of the Death Star. However, they eventually decided to have Jyn deliver the pep talk, which featured one of the most memorable lines from the movie - "rebellions are built on hope" because they thought it would be more impactful.
As much as people love seeing Leia in any Star Wars content, the filmmakers made the right choice to give Jyn the speech. She had a personal stake in the matter considering her father Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) sacrificed his own life to make sure that the Rebellion had a chance against the Galactic Empire and their Death Star. Given that Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) ultimately decided against her proposition, it would create an awkward situation since Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) was also present during the roundtable. Saving the Leia cameo until the very of the movie was a great way to emphasize how integral Jyn and her team's sacrifice was to the events of A New Hope.
Outside of Rogue One's narrative, seeing more of a de-aged Leia in the movie would've caused a bigger backlash regarding the VFX work on the character. While Lucasfilm did a great job in bringing to life Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing), the same couldn't be said with the film's version of Leia. Her brief appearance at the end to the movie was enough for fans to tolerate, anything more than that could've significantly affected how people remembered Rogue One.
Source: CineFix
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April 17, 2020 at 09:23AM
