"Rogue One" director Gareth Edwards has heard your crazy fan theories
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” director Gareth Edwards told CBS News that the rampant online speculation during the film’s production made him begin to question reality itself.
The standalone film takes place before 1977’s “Star Wars” and follows young rebel Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) as she leads a ragtag team from the Rebel Alliance to steal the plans to the newly built Death Star while also trying to find her missing father (Mads Mikkelsen). With details about the plot carefully kept secret, fans have been left to theorize about additional ways these new characters fit into the preexisting story.
“I think it’s fun, I think it’s part of the sport of anticipating a film,” Edwards said when asked about some of the more outlandish fan theories. “Some of them are really wacky, though, and you go, ‘Why?’ And others you go, ‘Actually, that’s quite interesting, how would that work?’”
While he wouldn’t confirm whether any of the theories he’d read online actually got it right -- fans will have to wait until the film’s Dec. 16 release to find out -- he did admit he found reading stories about the film’s production affected him in ways he hadn’t expected.
Earlier this year, “Rogue One” underwent extensive reshoots, something some fans and critics took as a sign of trouble.
“Reading on the internet, probably the first thing I learned making a film is you can’t believe anything,” Edwards said. “There was so much stuff written about our film whilst we were doing it that wasn’t true that you then stop believing anything else. You end up reading news reports about stuff going on in the world you go, ‘I don’t know if I can trust this anymore.’ Because if it’s all coming out from the same process -- it’s like Chinese whispers on a massive scale.”
Gareth acknowledged the reality of working on a franchise as massive as “Star Wars” in 2016, even if he’d prefer to work in seclusion.
“If I had my way, you’d make films and they’d go out and people would like them or they wouldn’t, but we live in a world now where you have this direct connection with everybody and this 24-hour news cycle and things explode, but they just as quickly disappear,” he explained. “You’ve just got to ride it out.”
One of Edwards’ favorite internet rumors about the plot of the film might have been made in jest. In “Return of the Jedi,” as the rebels prepare to take on the Empire’s second attempt at building a Death Star, Mon Mothma (Caroline Blakiston) says, “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.”
While that mission to steal Death Star plans isn’t the same one depicted in “Rogue One,” it is one of the more memorable lines from the first trilogy. And the character Mon Mothma appears in this film, though played by Genevieve O’Reilly.
“Talking of internet theories, I thought this was really funny,” Edwards said with a grin. “Someone said that Jyn’s character’s name was going to be ‘Minnie Bothans.’”