Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, receiving praise from many outlets including our own, has by this point been known to be filled to the brim with easter eggs, cameos, and references to the older films. Director Gareth Edwards talks about one of the most interesting surprises in the movie that may have gone under the radar: never before seen original footage from the old trilogy.
Spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Below:
In an interview with Radio Times, Edwards talks about Red Leader and Gold Leader as they appear seamlessly in Rogue One. The two actors, Drewe Henley and Angus MacInnes were actually from the original movie. Not only were the actors from the original film, but so was the footage.
Edwards talks about going to Skywalker ranch and seeing all the sights and activities there was to do there, but once he saw some old cans of film, he asked what they were. Apparently, they were the raw footage of A New Hope and hadn't been fully digitized yet. They went through them and sure enough, they found some never-before-seen footage of the two leader pilots.
"We got the neg documents and found the clips from A New Hope that hadn't been used. And there's pilot photography and lines that were never featured in [the film.] Through the magic of [vfx studio] ILM they cut round them and manipulated them and stuck them into our cockpits."
For those who haven't seen, the moments with these pilots were seamless. Digitally altered to fit perfectly with the new lighting and resolution of today's movie shots. It really is a feat that's even more impressive if you don't realize it until after the fact, with the digital recreation of Grand Moff Tarkin being a more obvious magic trick.
Rogue One had made $155 million so far since its release on Thursday and is now the second biggest December opener of all time, right behind another familiar movie.
