As we’ve reported in the past, Rogue One went through a lot of reshoots. While the film is fairly seamless (although the plot kind of stutters through the first and third acts), you need look no further than the trailers to see how much had changed. The first teaser trailer for Rogue One was released in April, and it’s crazy to see how much has changed in terms of dialogue, shots, and even what the outcome of the movie might be. Hopefully, one day someone will ask director Gareth Edwards about these changes, but until then, we can only look at what was altered from the trailers.

Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen Rogue One as we’ll be pointing out all of the stuff that’s in the trailers that didn’t make the final cut.

Teaser Trailer

This is the one that’s the most different. There’s no reading off of Jyn’s lists of crimes. Also, when Mon Mothma says, “On your own from the age of 15,” that doesn’t line up with the final film because we learn that Saw and Jyn parted ways when she was 16. What’s even more noticeable is that her “money line” is absent. At no point in the movie does say Jyn say, “This is a rebellion, isn’t it? I rebel.” However, the footage of Jyn beating up stormtroopers remains, as does most of the big CGI scenes like the Death Star being assembled.

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But moving back to the dialogue, a lot has changed. Mon Mothma says, “A major weapons test is imminent and we need to know what it is and how to destroy it.” In the finished film, Jyn’s mission is to establish contact with Saw so that they can meet up with Imperial defector, Bodhi Rook. It’s possible that this dialogue was recorded just for the trailer since it makes it easier to understand the plot than the complicated path the film devises.

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We then get a handful of shots that are still in the movie, including the stormtroopers and handcuffed rebels in the marketplace, Krennic in front of a viewscreen. Then, we come to young Saw, who we only see in two shots in the finished film: one is on a viewscreen talking to Jyn’s mother, and the other is when he rescues Jyn from her hiding place. The shots of young Saw in this teaser trailer are not in the final film.

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What’s also missing is Saw’s dialogue: “What will you do when they catch you? What will they do if they break you? If you continue to fight, what will you become?” It’s possible that these could have been part of a second flashback time period to when Saw was raising Jyn as a rebel.

Two other revealing pieces of missing footage are the scene where Jyn, Cassian, and K-2SO running from stormtroopers on in Scarif and the shot of Jyn and Cassian running headlong into the AT-ACT firing squad on the beach. Both of these scenes are notable because they show Jyn carrying the drive with the Death Star plans, pointing to major reshoots in the third act. Also gone is the cool shot of Krennic walking across the water, and shots of Jyn and Cassian running on the beach. It’s possible that in the original cut, they got the plans, but the method of delivery was different or more difficult, and it caused the rebels to run through various locations rather than transmitting via uplink tower.

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The movie also doesn’t have this trailer’s final shot of Jyn in Imperial armor with lights turning on around her, with Saw's overlapping dialogue "What will you do if they catch you? What will you do if they break you? If you continue to fight, what will you become?". All of this adds up to big questions about the film’s original intent. Was Jyn eventually meant to go over to the dark side? Was this all a feint? It’s young Saw speaking that line of dialogue, so what was it in reference to? Was it part of a montage involving young Jyn and her training to be a freedom fighter? The teaser trailer raises so many questions.

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First Trailer

We got our first full trailer for Rogue One in August

In terms of footage and dialogue, most of what opens this trailer is in the finished film, until we once again comes to Mon Mothma’s line of dialogue about the weapon test. Again, it’s possible that this line was just recorded for the trailer and was never intended to be in the finished film. When Cassian says, “If you’re really doing this, I want to help,” is a bit of a misdirect. The trailer makes it look like he’s pitching in on the mission Jyn’s just been assigned, but really this comes at the beginning of the third act when Jyn decides to go to Scarif to retrieve the plans. It's also paired with a brief piece of cut footage featuring an ambiguous exchange between Cassian and Jyn, most likely cut from some point later in the film when they start seeing eye-to-eye.

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We then get more footage and dialogue that’s in the film with regards to Baze and Chirrut making their introductions. Including a cut line from Baze, yelling "You destroyed our home!" as he fires on the Empire. And while K-2SO has a number of snarky lines and plenty of attitude towards Jyn in the final cut, he never says “The captain says you are a friend. I will not kill you.”

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Additionally, most of the action scenes that are in the trailer are in the finished film, which makes sense. These are pre-vized and take the most time to finish the visual effects, so it’s unlikely they would end up on the cutting room floor as opposed to dialogue scenes. However, K-2SO is a motion capture character, and his bit about “There is a 97.6% chance of failure,” is not in the finished film.

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The other major change is that while there is the shot of Jyn walking across the catwalk, there is no TIE Fighter at the end of it waiting for her. There’s nothing. She goes across the catwalk to establish the uplink to the rebel ships. I’m not sure why they cut out the TIE Fighter (it’s a very cool shot), but as we saw from the teaser trailer, the third act appears to have been significantly reworked and it’s not there.

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Also missing is the shot of Darth Vader looking at the red schematics. There are only two scenes of Vader in the finished film: His conversation with Krennic and him cutting down the rebel troops.

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Image via Lucasfilm

Second Trailer

The second and final full trailer for Rogue One was released in October, and, unsurprisingly, it bears the closest resemblance to the finished film. The opening of this trailer is a condensed version of the opening of the film. However, there are still some shots that didn’t make it into the finished film. While there’s a cool shot of the fallen Jedi statue from Jedha, the shot that’s in the trailer isn’t it. It looks like the editors chose to go with a different shot for the finished film. There’s also a shot of Baze and Chirrut almost being trampled by an AT-AT that’s gone.

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The only major cut is another scene between Vader and Krennic, in which the ambitious Director of Advanced Weapons Research boasts about the tremendous power of the Death Star.

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Image via Lucasfilm

 You’ll also note that Mothma’s line about the weapon’s test is gone, and instead it’s Cassian asking about the last time Jyn was in contact with her father. From there, it’s mostly clips and dialogue that reached the final film. Bodhi giving the callsign as “Rogue One”, Krennic telling Vader that the power of the Death Star is “immeasurable” and Jyn’s line that “Rebellions are built on hope,” are all present in the finished movie.

Basically, if you only saw the second trailer and you saw the movie, you wouldn’t notice any major changes.

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