Star Wars Bits: New ‘Episode 8 Rumors,’ Han Solo Filming Locations, and ‘Rogue One’ Toys You’ll Never Own
Posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2017 by Jacob Hall
Rogue One is full of easter eggs (including cameos by director Gareth Edwards and Episode 8 director Rian Johnson), but the Radio Times has picked up a few more after perusing the Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide book. It seems that Uptopia star Geraldine James and Yonderland star Simon Farnaby play X-Wing pilots in that final battle scene and that their character names are anagrams of the actors’ names: Jaldine Gerams and Farns Monsbee.
i09 caught up with John Knoll, the ILM renaissance man who served as Rogue One‘s visual effects supervisor and pitched the film’s original story. The topic at hand – who had the final say when it came to including the controversial CGI recreations of original trilogy characters? The answer is fairly straightforward:
Some of it was my just asserting that, “No no no, let’s not pull the [plug] on this, we’re going to get there, this is going to work.” But ultimately the decision was Kathy’s whether she thought it was working well enough to stay close up, full screen, for a duration.
Kathy is, of course, Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm and the woman in charge of the Star Wars universe. Knoll says that there were numerous back-up plans in case the effects didn’t work out and Kennedy requested a different direction.
io9 also spoke with Rogue One animation supervisor Hal Hickel, who explained that the decision to include spaceships from Star Wars Rebels in the new film came out of passion, not a corporate mandate to connect the disparate corners of the franchise:
You see the film and think it’s a kind of corporate synergy. But really it’s just casual and friendly contact between folks at Lucasfilm working on different aspects of the Star Wars universe and going, “This would be super cool. Can we put your ship in our movie?”
For more, including how the Hammerhead Corvette ended up in Rogue One, follow that link above.
Last year, the Disney Infinity video game series was abruptly cancelled and numerous planned figures (collectibles that allowed different characters to be playable) never went into production. Since Disney Infinity 3.0 introduced Star Wars characters into the fold, it should come as no surprise that Rogue One characters were in the pipeline. Artist B Allen has shared has shared a design for a Baze Malbus figure that will never be, one of an entire wave of characters representing the Rogue One cast.
One of my favorite details from Rogue One is that Darth Vader lives in a giant black castle on the lava planet where he was maimed and left for dead. I always knew there was a little bit of Tolkien and a little bit of heavy metal in the Dark Lord of the Sith. Anyway, artist Matt Allsop has shared the original concept art he created for Vader’s homestead it looks fairly close to the final version.
Vaders Tower. A sort of lava Dam. The accumulated lava pool, filters through the base of the Tower, to create an arresting molten waterfall. (makes for great central heating). These were the very first exploratory concepts for the Vadar sequence. I was happy that what you see on screen, is very close to these concepts. #conceptart #rogueone #starwars #vader #sith #tower #dam #lava A photo posted by Matt Allsopp (@cuppasketch) on
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