There's An Alternate 'Rogue One'... Sort Of

If you've been craving some more Star Wars after catching Rogue One in theaters this holiday season, perhaps I can offer you a recut. In a recent Collider interview with Ben Mendelsohn (who played mega-baddie Orson Krennic), the actor revealed that, somewhere out in the galaxy, there's a completely different version of Rogue One... it just needs to be made. "We did have multiple, multiple ways of going at any given scenario, we had multiple readings of it," he said. "So should they ever decide to, there would be a wealth of ways of approaching these different things." Intriguing. But considering that the film already clocks in at 2 hours 13 minutes, the mind boggles at what was cut out from Rogue One.

Apparently, the answer to that comes in a myriad of reshoots, ordered by Disney way back in May. According the Mendelsohn, there were "enormous differences" in about "20 or 30 of the scenes," and from these different takes you could paste together a new Rogue One. I believe it. In fact, if you look back at the trailer for the most war-like entree of the Star Wars franchise, it looks like it's for that alternate version, not the one released in theaters.

Or, OK, maybe not. But were certain lines spoken with a different cadence or emotion behind them? Do we get to learn more about Jyn's life before she went into hiding from the Imperial army? Was there an entire romantic subplot that (mercifully, for the sake of integrity) ended up on the cutting room floor?

It's kind of interesting to consider what was lost in those 20 to 30 scenes, and how they impact the rest of the story, if they impact the rest of the story.

I'm willing to bet that if there are truly enough changes out there, and they're more than nominal difference, we'll end up seeing them in time. A nice compromise, of course, would be to put the scenes as special features on the Blu-Ray. But if Disney, Lucasfilm and fam want to make fans really happy, they can probably re-cut and release a new version in 10 years. Or hey, why wait that long? We can just put it out if there's ever a lull between Star Wars movies. As if that would ever happen.