Pablo Hidalgo Clarifies Bits About Rogue One: A Star Wars Story!
This article includes spoilers for Rogue One!
You’ve probably already seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story at least once by now. The movie was released a few days ago in Europe and yesterday in the US. The movie is filled with lots of easter eggs, cameos and other bits that are really hard to spot in your first viewing. Also, there are several story elements in the movie that were a bit confusing and might need some explanation. When it comes to explaining the Star Wars lore, no one is better than Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo himself. Read on for some tweets shared by Pablo that will definitely enhance the movie and make it even better for your next viewing.
First we start with the biggest problem I had with Rogue One – no Moroff (yes I know he had 2 scenes in the background but I don’t count these). Especially considering the big promo push he got in the numerous behind the scenes footage for Rogue One:
Well, it appears some characters didn’t even get to be in the background at all.
@Dreamfinder82 @garywhitta @missingwords No, that would be that black astromech droid, whoever he was.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 16, 2016
So, has anyone spotted the black astromech droid C2-B5 in Rogue One? No? Well, that’s because he was not in the movie at all.
@BrianMSims @missingwords @HolocronKeeper He’s in the citadel. Narrowly avoiding appearing on camera.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 17, 2016
We had a similar situation with Constable Zuvio from The Force Awakens. C2-B5 was present in several promo materials like Moroff about the movie and was first introduced in The Star Wars Show. I doubt his absence will be missed.
If you think you saw Biggs and his moustache during the battle over Scarif, then you’re wrong. That’s Heff Tobber, a Blue Squadron pilot.
@TheBrandonc Nope. You might be thinking of Heff Tobber, a Blue Squadron pilot.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 16, 2016
It seems that we also had some Dornean ships in the battle over Scarif (more on Dornea here). More info to come.
@pablohidalgo is the BC-100x the Ghost? Sorry if you answers this and I missed it. 7days and 2 hours till #rogueOne for my son and I. Pumped pic.twitter.com/a74GRJ4q40
— Jeremy M Sandoval (@JeremyMSandoval) December 8, 2016
@JeremyMSandoval @DJDJ18 It’s the Ghost. And those are Dornean gunships. There’s more info to come.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 16, 2016
Some clarification on a certain line from the Vader comic:
This has come up a couple of times. This line in Vader #1 was never about Rogue One; it was always about A New Hope. pic.twitter.com/QkQvyg7d8D
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 16, 2016
In case there are still people who are confused with the Bothans who were involved with the second Death Star and not the first.
@thatmanwalker waiting to be mentioned in Return of the Jedi.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 16, 2016
An important tidbit in case you’re not reading the Star Wars comics:
@JohnnyCrashMLB This was revealed in a story told in Marvel’s Star Wars ongoing comic as well as Vader comic. Highly recommended.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
Many people have issues with the bit about where the Death Star plans got beamed to:
@ByAaronsBeard only if you think Vader should know better.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
@fooled_trooper Not necessarily.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
While many of us agree that “Anthology” sounds much better than “A Star Wars Story”, we should indeed keep in mind that this is not a very populr word for the general audience.
@druzod1012 no idea. Maybe not enough people know what that word means?
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
Very important fact: the Rogue One re-shoots never changed the ending of the movie.
@CadTheBane the ending never changed.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
The answer to the question why the first Death Star took more than 20 years to get built can be found in the novel Catalyst. That particular problem was solved by Galen Erso.
@RonaldFoose it took 20 years to get it operational. To solve a particular problem. There’s a difference
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
A mysterious tweet:
A line from the end of season one Rebels, so long ago, was designed to point to a world seen in Rogue One. It’s a long game here. 🙂
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 16, 2016
In case you’re wondering, this is the line in question:
And if you’re wondering which planet that is, Pablo directly confirmed that the lava planet from Rogue One is Mustafar. And not only that, but the cloaked figure bowing in front of Vader’s bacta tank is not Snoke but a character named Vanee (more on a character that had a similar name in the Original Trilogy can be found here).
Of course Vader’s castle on Mustafar was inspired by Ralph McQuarrie’s art:
Speaking about Rebels, did you get the Chopper cameo?
@OwenCLatham look again
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
Good explanation on the skin color of Admiral Raddus and the rest of the Mon Calamari from Rogue One:
@Phroosh77 they turn red when you boil them. No, not really. Just come from different seas.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
Many of you heard the name of General Syndulla mentioned during Rogue One. We assume this is the now promoted Hera Syndulla from Star Wars: Rebels, but it also could be her father Cham Syndulla who is indeed a general:
@Nay_214 you definitely heard a familiar name
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
Explanation on why C-3PO act like he doesn’t know who Leia is in A New Hope:
Some bits on how Rogue One came to be:
In case you had issues with the continuity regarding the end of Rogue One and the beginning of A New Hope, you should  read this:
There’s been a lot of talk about the color of the lightsabers based on the kyber crystals. Now Pablo speaks about the Deah Star beam color:
Finally, there were many fans asking Pablo about certain scenes from the trailers that didn’t end up in the final cut. Hidalgo said that he will talk about these in a few weeks time after most of the people have seen the movie.
@jonas1015119 Ask me again in about a week.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 15, 2016
@JoeWest49585101 ask me in a week
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 16, 2016
After all these cool clarifications Pablo decided to  avoid tweeting more about the movie until more people see it. He changed his name to “See Ya Next Year”, so we should get some more answers next month hopefully.
To give everyone a chance to see #RogueOne, gonna avoid tweeting about it till January. This account is now devoted to Hummel figurines.
— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) December 17, 2016
Stay tuned later today for our article explaining all the cameos from Rogue One.
Founder of SWNN, MNN and The Cantina forums.
Born on April 24, 1980.
Mustafar? Damn, I was hoping it was Vjun from the old EU though Bast Castle was clearly inspired by that McQuarrie art.
Assuming spoilers are okay here but I really liked how how bulky Vader moved. I was scared they would turn him into Maul but it makes sense he would move that way considering he’d be just as slow with Obi-Wan a few days later. I’m assuming he didn’t do all those force moves with him because he wanted to toy with him like he did with Luke or he was able to block them.
He was just playing chess with Kenobi.
That’s a nice way of looking at it/putting it.
Which shows you how well Edwards gets the character. Not one moment of Vader was wasted onscreen. He even got a funny one liner in. He hasn’t been better since Empire.
Re: Obi-Wan v Vader / “he wanted to toy with him”
In fairness to Obi-Wan, he had kicked Vader’s a$$ last time they’d met/fought.
“high ground!” 😉
Yeah, He was probably a little skittish as a result of that and was probably more humble against him as a result.
Nah, the Mustafar connection is great.
It’s okay bit it doesn’t look much like Mustafar. More like Sullust. His castle was awesome though.
Mustafar is a big planet. Lava changes the landscape and it’s been 20 years since we last saw it (unless Rebels showed it… can’t remember).
I guees we only saw it at nghtt in III? I just figured it was so dark due to all the volcanic ash.
I don’t remember seeing anything of the ‘space monkey” character who appeared on stage at celebration and in the accompanying ‘making of’ type feature.
he was in the gunship
yeah? that’s good then. It must have been so fleeting that I missed it. They just seemed to make a big song and dance about the character at Celebration.
And of course, the article already mentioned the Moroff character which hardly made an appearance.
Space monkey took out an AT-ACT’s leg and it collapsed.
Ok cool, but still sounds like about 10 seconds of screen time if that.
He was also in the group round the table on Yavin.
Space Monkey is dead.
Yeah, i missed him the first time. So much to look at it!
Why didn’t Galen just give the plans to Bodhi instead of that hologram message?
Because the only remaining copy was on Scarif. The Empire didn’t want the plans accessible to hackers so they deleted them. I imaging the only reason they kept a copy around was so they could build more Death Stars.
Good explanation. I thought of something similar. The lack of explanation didn’t bother me at all but a friend of mine thought it was stupid. Trying to convince him.
I’d also assumed a tiny holo message was easier to record/hide than downloading the entire schematic. Clearly they were all being monitored pretty closely. Especially in regards to accessing that particular data.
Also, Galen didn’t build the Death Star. He only worked on the super laser. He never had plans for the entire station, but he was able to leave a weakness in the reactor as it was directly connected to his work on the weapon itself.
Paralleling Wernher von Braun, naturally.
The question on the Death Star beam colour I just assumed the kyber crystals powered the laser which was always green… but using a kyber crystal in a lightsabre would be for the use of focusing and tuning the blade by the Jedi hence the different colours.
lol at Hummel Figurines.
Man R1 sure was special. Dethroned ROTJ’s fleet battle IMO.
Definitely at least as enjoyable as ROTJ’s Battle of Endor. I’ll have to watch it again to be sure though!
Close but “it’s a trap!”, Lando, and the Death Star firing on the fleet with the Emperor on board still gives ROTJ the edge for me.
The ending of Rogue One certainly ramps up Princess Leia’s sass levels in ANH. It’s like she’s just been pulled over by the cops for speeding but she feigns not realising just how fast she was going.
I must have heard a few dozen people over the past few days insist that the “original” ending, before the reshoots, had Jyn and Cassian survive. I’m SO glad that’s been put to rest – because, really, how and why would they have?
Most people don’t have a clue what really happened.
To make little Reys of sunshine.
How? They steal a Tie Fighter and fly to safety. Why? Why not?
The unfinished Utapau arc in TCW has a large kyber crystal, and both the
animations and concept art show it to already be green. Then in Rebels,
when the Ghost crew blows up an Imperial kyber shipment, the explosion is the same colour as the Death Star laser beam. I would assume these crystals weren’t yet modified by Galen Erso considering the circumstances in which they appear, but they must have gotten their green colour from somewhere if indeed they do naturally lack colour. It’s certainly not a story-breaking issue, but I do think the idea of Force users imparting colour on their crystals created some continuity conflicts.
oooor…
gasoline fumes are invisable, add a spark and they burst into orange flames
shine white light into a clear prysm and you get a rainbow
throw energy at a kyber crystal and more energy gets released, as light and heat, than the amount of energy you put in. perhaps green. perhaps in other colors depending on that particular crystal.
death star laser is red yellow and green… explosion… red yellow green… lightsabers red yellow green, blue, purple… seems like teh real question is where the blue and purple went
give a force user a kyber crystal and let them fiddle with the crystals internal structure and the kind of light and energy is changed slightly, or not at all
from the new cannon books and rogue one we know that 99% of kyber crystals are harvested from jedi temples and other sights frequented by force sensitive individuals. who is to say the very few crystals we have seen are infact already attuned
anything’s possible
I think it would have been clearer if the crystals had color like they do in canon. A green crystal would have stood out better around Jyn’s neck and tied it more to the death star laser color, instead of just looking like a random rock.
I think in the first version, before the reshots, the giant antenna, which our heroes use to beam up the plans, wasn’t the part of the Scarif Citadel, but were in another building. Maybe there wasn’t any citadel at all. Notice in the end of the first teaser trailer, when the rebels run towards the AT-ACT-s there is the antenna in the background but it’s in the top of a much tinner building. So after they acquired the plans they had to fight through the whole beach. Some BTS stuff includes scenes with Jyn and Cassian fighting in the beach (already having the plans), but these scenes doesn’t made sense after they changed the location of the antenna so they were cut, probably because the whole battle sequence was too long in that way. And I think that’s why we didn’t see Krennic and his cape walking in the war torn beach.
The shot with Krennic walking through the water post-battle too has him approaching that lone antenna relay. It seems where ever they had downloaded the plans to the first time before the re shoots, they did have to run across the battlefield to beam out the signal.
Good eye.
This is true. They originally had to leave the building and race across the battlefield to the antena, where Krennic followed them and had his little face off.
question: if the rebels stole the only version of the plans the empire had, how did the empire build the second DS? or was the empire already building it by this time?
It was just a copy. You can steal a video game or CD by making a copy. That’s the way I look at i t.
which would be fine if Tarkin didn’t nuke the archives on scarif.
No way they built it with only one set of plans.
May be when finished they decided to remove all them… a thing is true the Death Star needs plans itself, so another set should be there.
The research facility was destroyed when they tried to rescue/kill Garen Erso. A set of Plans should have been there as they are supposed to be the “engineers”.
Finnally not only the Plans, the important thing was to know that the Death Star was made in an intentional way so it could be destroyed.
fair points, but we’re also seen else where in canon where the empire was killing off any witnesses to its construction. to me at least it would make less sense to have multiple copies on multiple planets.
Well, right, even as we see in Rogue One the Empire even kills the engineers.
Answering your question, probably a new Death Star had its own new plans, and the function problem solved by Garen Erso would be knowledge of the Empire, as he said in the movie, sooner or later someone from the Empire would have done his job…
The plans were probably elsewhere as well. A military archive without other off-site backups does no one much good if it goes up in flame or laserblast. Maybe Scarif was the easiest shot, or the only one for certain.
i’m going to need to watch it again, but it really seemed like this was the one shot for the rebels. also tarkin didn’t seem to care if he destroyed the plans since they already finished the death star.
He also apparently doesn’t care that he destroyed the plans for every other thing the Empire ever built or was planning.
Well, to be fair, we don’t know if those were the only copies. My guess is that it is a record depository for all the projects to house them in one place rather than scattered all over at the project sites. Say… planet A has Death Star plans, while planet B has project XXX plans… but Scarif is where they keep ALL the plans together. So now that Scarif is gone, the Empire has to build a new depository and have all the plans transfered there. There’s also the likely possibility with the Death Star that they would keep all the plans there, but obviously the Rogues couldn’t get onto the DS.
Maybe they were just copies. Or he uploaded to Death Star.
possible. i hope we get a follow up book about the fallout of the death star’s destruction and the building of the second.
What about a sequel about stealing the plans for the SECOND death star! Lol
i would love that, but lucasfilm doesn’t seem too keen at the moment.
I don’t believe they were the only plans. Wasn’t Scarif where they were building the DS?
i think scarif was just the archive for top secret intel. the DS itself was built in orbit of geonosis.
I know it started there but i thought i read they finished somewhere else.
you’re right, it was. i misremembered.
I’ll keep an ear open on my second viewing. It may have been Jedha where it was being constructed, too. Based on the art of RO book I think the idea was that difference pieces were built at different places because there are images of the dish being built in a crater and lifted into space, but they decided to cut that.
Oooooh!
I thought he was Biggs…
What a delusion :q
The film would have worked better with the crawl. I mean they put it on every lesser entity from games to animated series, so I see no reason why It wouldn’t have worked here. And the location titles…we don’t need to be told which planet we’re on in a frickn Star Wars movie.
I think they are not using the Crawl because the movie have big temporal jumps and some flash backs.
The crawl I believe is eficient when all the movie happen in the same period of time.
Remember the movie starts more or less when SW III ends, and then they jump 15 years… so about what time should talk a crawl?
I believe that is the reason.
ROTS had dreams, TFA had forcebacks and forwards… just to play devil’s advocate.
Also Episode 8 starts on the heels of Episode 7, should it have a crawl?
Is it confirmed Ep VIII will start where/when VII finished?
I saw the video about them filming in the same place the same scene…
Well, the fact is that tense moment needs an explanation.
Alls Star Wars movies in the trilogies have time jumps and start in the space, so lets see if it is going to be exceptional about that.
That´s the thing, if a movie starts when and where the movie before ended… what´s the reason for a crawl, it is not going to give more information.
It’s been confirmed the scene picks up right where it left off. But my guess is it’s not the first scene. Probably the movie starts with First Order stuff… maybe Kylo arriving to see Snoke with Hux?
Maybe they will go slightly back and pick up with the Falcon arriving at Atch-to again.
Mmmm I see…
Even in that circumstance, what would be the Crawl telling us?
“In a Far Far away galaxy things are like we left them in TFA…”
May be it is a flash back, in some moment of the movie.
Or maybe they were playing us… all it is possible.
This is regarding me how we started to build TFA with the Teasers and Trailers scenes, trying to order it temporaly.
I disagree about the crawl, but it should have had the big SW title fade off into the distance. Something akin to what the Clone Wars tv show did would have been cool, too.
It almost seemed like they had a crawl and then at the last minute pulled it and couldn’t think of anything else to replace it with.
No doubt, there’ll be alternate versions.
Actually, I doubt it very much. I don’t think Disney nor LFL is interested in doing that, nor do they have time given they have to churn one of these out every year now.
Fan film editors not included…
Okay so one of the coolest ironic and tragic things about R1 is that Vader lives in Mustafar..that is so awesome. And this whole situation where Vader said that several beams were transmitted to this ship can easily be seen as true since the plans did get beamed a couple of times. From Scarif to the captain of the Mon Calamari ship to the ship holding the Tantive IV to then being transferred to the Tantive IV via disk. And who knows maybe they tried beaming it directly to the Tantive IV several times but couldn’t do it, so that’s why they had to result to doing it manually. But really? Why are people making a fuss? Lol
I agree about the whole “plans” thing. Vader knew they were transmitted, he may not have known they were on those discs being passed by the Rebels, maybe he didn’t see them?
The opening crawl in ANH says though the rebels had just won their first major victory against the EmpÃre. To me at least, the Battle of Scarif was hardly a victory.
Obtaining the plans and exploiting the weakness of the super weapon the Empire was building is a total victory..it changed the playing field. Had the plans never been obtained, it would have been the end of the rebellion for sure.
Brilliant article, thanks so much! Very interesting reading!
Were people actually expecting Moroff to have a legitimate role? I mean, personally I remember seeing him in the promotional/behind the scenes material and thinking, ‘Hey, that’s a neat background character,’ but never though he would be anything more than a Bobbajo in TFA-type character. In fact, I was surprised he showed up as much as he did.
No, but I thought he would be involved in the Scarfi battle in the background. The Art of RO book shows that some of Saw’s fighters (with the exception of Saw, of course) made it off Jedha before the blast overtook them in their black and white xwings. I assume they made it to Yavin 4 and then joined up in the beach battle.
Update: apparently the Partisan Warrick Davis played does show up in the background later on in the Yavin Base scenes. I’m 99% sure when they reshot the ending Moroff and some of the others go lost in the shuffle. It was a little chaotic… and who was this sudden “merrick” or whatever they kept calling for to help them out… like where did he come from all of a sudden?
Still enjoyed the movie!
Now that you mention it, the black and white Partisan X-wings are nowhere to be seen as far as I can remember.
theres one crashed in the background down an alley during the hovertank ambush. Baze i think is standing watch over it. No explanation why it is there.
I smell reshoots. It seems that the ending is the section that got them the worst.
There is one shot during the evacuation of the Jedha Rebel stronghold where you see a part of the X-Wing you’re talking about.
Kren Blista-Vanee looks like Ben Mendelsohn.
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/b/b1/KrenBlista-Vanee.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130519181624
Kren — Krennic..
Absurd theories inbound !!
WHERE WAS WEDGE?? Did Dennis Lawson give them trouble about using his likeness. I heard he was a pain about it and being involved with SW. Hence, no TFA appearance.
He said it would be boring to him. My guess is that sitting in a moving cockpit while saying some standard lines isn’t all that challenging for an actor..
However, they got Wedge’s voice actor to give some background lines.
His bitterness goes back a long ways. I guess he doesn’t feel like he was paid enough considering how popular his character became and how much they used him and his likeness in the EU (which it looks like they are moving away from now… or maybe just FOR NOW).
It would have been nice to hear his name in Rogue One spoke and then have someone with his voice say something back. “Like, watch out Wedge.” “And then, I’m on it!”.
But as to being bored, what else does he have to do? And they could have just reused his image, but maybe a legal thing kept them from it.
“Very important fact: the Rogue One re-shoots never changed the ending of the movie.”
Well considering that Jyn was running all over the beach with the Plans in hand, but then wasn’t in the final movie, the only possible explanation is *gasp* Lucasfilm LIED to us! What a surprise.
“from a certain point of view…” 😉
Nah – go over to the Reddit SW Leaks site – Edwards explains how he didn’t think they’d get away w/ killing everyone, and shot a ‘Disney’ ending, where Jyn & Cassian get away before getting the OK from K. Kennedy to ‘go for it’ & kill ’em all…
He didn’t shootand ending where they lived, that was early story concept
The only relevant question is if the hooded figure on Mustafar is Snoke.
Which it isn’t.
Important question. Why wasn’t the most interesting scenes from the trailer in the movie?? 🙂
Referring to 1. Krennick saying “the power we are dealing with here, is immeasurable” and 2. Jyn at the top of the tower at the end walking towards a tie fighter slowly ascending in front of her.
I was very intrigued by these two particular scenes, and they were nowhere to be seen in the final cut :/