I attended the press junket this past weekend for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, during which time I had the chance to chat one-on-one with director Gareth Edwards about the politics of the film, the legend of the Jedi by the time of Rogue One, and the timelessness of Star Wars stories.
Disney screened 28 minutes of footage from Rogue One before press interviews, but fear not: This is a spoiler-free conversation with the filmmaker about his movie, which follows a group of Rebel spies out to steal the plans for the Death Star in the time leading up to the events of the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope.
IGN: The fall of the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith only happened roughly twenty years before Rogue One begins and yet they're treated as almost a myth. How does your film address how it seems that so many people and recent events can be almost forgotten or treated as myth in just a few decades?
Gareth Edwards: I think the world itself is a really big place and in the Star Wars world, that universe is massive. And so I feel like there were certainly people who saw them or knew them and obviously we saw that in the other films. But it becomes Chinese whispers when it has to travel across not just planets but, like, different solar systems and so I think there's just people that have never seen anything that's proven this or had anything to do with it. But in theory that issue was in A New Hope to some extent.
But that's why we wanted Jedha [a planet that's a holy site for believers in the Force] in the film as kind like of the the Mecca or Jerusalem of Star Wars and it's a place where we can go and feel and experience this idea of a belief system in the Force. But also it's occupied territory by the Empire and it sort of symbolizes that the Jedi are falling away. That whole belief system is ending and that this new regime is going to dominate. It's hard, if not impossible, I don't think I'd ever want to make a Star Wars that didn't include the Force.
IGN: Now, you just touched on the politics, the idea that it's an occupied place. One thing that really jumped out at me is that they say the "T' word. They say "terrorists" at one point in the footage you showed us.
Edwards: There was one, wasn't it?
IGN: The Imperials refer to [Forest Whitaker's character] Saw Gerrera as one. I guess Clone Wars actually already used that word to describe him. But was there ever any sort of concern about linking the Rebellion with something that's painted in our world as something awful, something bad?
Edwards: I think probably what we tried to do with the film is muddy the water a lot more. In A New Hope it's very clear what's good and what's evil. But the reality is, most people you would consider evil, when you see things from their perspective, they're trying to do something good and they tend to see you as evil, too. Film and story is a chance to point that out. I don't think you get peace by destroying everyone you think is evil. You get peace by understanding each other. And so, we're trying to show that from all different perspectives. We have good people that end up doing bad things, we have bad people that do good things, but every character in this film has their own perspective on events.
People that you can easily write off and put in a box and say, like, you tend to want to pick people up and say, "Are you good? Are you evil? Which one are you?" And a lot people can have elements of both and we have a lot of characters in the film that do -- that don't fit in a box. I find that really exciting and interesting. It gets you thinking and it became, it felt like the Star Wars I loved but taken up to the next level where big kids like me and you, there's some meat on the bone.
IGN: Your film is a female-led, multi-ethnic team going up against largely white male Imperials. That may have taken on a more significant meaning for some groups in light of recent political events. Has Rogue One suddenly become a counter-culture film? I know it's a loaded question, but it's something I'm curious about.
Edwards: I think obviously we starting making the film two and a half years ago, so there's no way we could anticipate what's going to happen two and a half years later. But when Star Wars is done well, it's very much like storytelling -- these stories are sort of circular and George [Lucas] believed this, that they kind of, they repeat themselves over and over and their kind of the same story. That's why stories in the Bible or Shakespeare, classic literature, they still work today because they talk about the human condition and for better or for worse, we don't really change much. We just repeat the same things over and over. Like, there's probably as many wars happening today as there was 2,000 years ago.
And so if you make a timeless story like Star Wars, then it's always going to feel relevant. It's always going to feel like it's reflecting something of the moment. That's no conscious -- that's just more to do with us as people that we never change and we -- if you showed, not necessarily this film, but you know, a great Star Wars film, 20 years from now I hope that people will say, "It's strange that it's kind of relevant today? There's someone in power is being fought against by others who are having to do things on a sort of revolutionary level." Kind of stop the corruption. I just think that we are constantly accusing each other of that and trying to overthrow them and become powerful ourselves. It's this never-ending thing.
Look for more coverage of and interviews from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in the days ahead of the film's December 16 worldwide release.
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