If you’ve been following the production of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as closely as us here at Collider, your first viewing of the film may have been a bit impeded by trying to figure out which scenes were from the much-discussed reshoots. Indeed, the film underwent extensive additional photography this summer to clear up some story issues, with quite a bit of restructuring taking place for the film’s third act. However, director Gareth Edwards’ finished film is rather seamless aesthetically, so it’s a bit hard to suss out what was from the original shoot and what was captured later.

Luckily, during an extensive interview with Rogue One editors John Gilroy and Colin Goudie, some light has been shed on which scenes were from the reshoots. Goudie was the first editor aboard the film, working alongside Jabez Olssen, and while Gilroy didn’t join the movie until this summer, he received a full editor credit, meaning his work on the pic was extensive.

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Image via Lucasfilm

Speaking with Yahoo! UK, Gilroy revealed that the reshoots were intended to flesh out the film’s ensemble:

“The story was reconceptualised to some degree, there were scenes that were added at the beginning and fleshed out. We wanted to make more of the other characters, like Cassian’s character [Cassian Andor, the Rebel spy played by Diego Luna], and Bodhi’s character [Bodhi Rook, the defected Imperial pilot played by Riz Ahmed].

 

The scene with Cassian’s introduction with the spy, Bodhi traipsing through Jedha on his way to see Saw, these are things that were added. Also Jyn [Jyn Erso, the reluctant leader of the film, played by Felicity Jones], how we set her up and her escape from the transporter, that was all done to set up the story better.”

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Image via Lucasfilm

Indeed, the scenes that find Jyn in a prison cell at the start of the movie were added during reshoots, with Goudie suggesting that in the original version, we cut from young Jyn straight to Jyn in the meeting with the rebellion:

“The point with the opening scenes that John was just describing was that the introductions in the opening scene, in the prologue, was always the same. Jyn’s just a little girl, so when you see her as an adult what you saw initially was her in a meeting. That’s not a nice introduction.

 

So having her in prison and then a prison break out, with Cassian on a mission… everybody was a bit more ballsy, or a bit more exciting, and a bit more interesting.”

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Image via Lucasfilm

And as many have noticed, the film’s third act was significantly reshuffled. Gilroy declined to go into much detail but he did tease the rejiggering of the film’s finale:

“It changed quite a bit. The third act has a lot going on. You have like seven different action venues, the mechanics of the act changed quite a bit in terms of the characters, and I don’t want to go into too much detail about what had been there before, but it was different. We moved some of the things that our heroes did, they were different in the original then they were as it was conceived.”

However, for those holding out hope to see an extended cut of the film that includes the cut scenes, Goudie reveals that the assembly cut wasn’t much longer than the finished film’s running time:

“It was not much longer than the finished film. I think the first assembly was not far off actual release length. Maybe 10 minutes longer? I genuinely can’t remember because that was nearly a year ago now. There’s no mythical four hour cut, it doesn’t exist.”

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Image via Lucasfilm

Goudie and Gilroy both say there are no major deleted scenes left on the cutting room floor—at least ones that would make sense for the movie they crafted with the reshoots—so it sounds like there’s not a ton of extra footage to look forward to on the Blu-ray.

But Goudie did also add that during the editing process, they toyed with using wipe transitions for Rogue One to keep it in line with previous Star Wars films:

“I think we used all those original wipes and we temped [a temporary soundtrack] with John Williams as well, and it would feel right. Like when we did the original story reels, I was using footage from other movies, so having those wipes and having the John Williams score helped with making the hodge podge of shots I’d put together feel like what we were aiming for.

Once we actually got in everything we’d shot, we no longer needed those things and I was initially sad to see the transitions go, but then when I watch the final film, I don’t miss them, because it feels like a different beast.”

The full interview is fascinating and well worth reading, so head on over to Yahoo! to check it out. While three editors may sound like overkill, Rogue One was an incredibly difficult film to put together, and they were working on it right up until the last minute, so it’s a minor miracle the film turned out as well as it did.

For more on Rogue One, peruse our recent coverage below:

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Image via Lucasfilm
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Image via Lucasfilm
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Image via Lucasfilm
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Image via Lucasfilm
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Image via Lucasfilm