A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Gareth Edwards' blockbuster Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a film that boasts many "firsts" in the history of the 40-year-old franchise created by George Lucas. It is the first stand-alone Star Wars film that's not centered on the Skywalker family It is the first Star Wars film that focuses on ordinary beings from various parts of the galaxy that aren't Jedi or Force users It is the first Star Wars film to identify most of the planets with onscreen tags It is the first Star Wars film with no title crawl, no transitional "wipes," and only the second to use a pan-up establishing shot (the other being Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones It is the first live-action Star Wars film without a musical score composed and conducted by John Williams Lucasfilm President (and Rogue One producer) Kathleen Kennedy and her creative team pulled all the stops to make Rogue One: A Star Wars Story a separate part of the Star Wars universe yet faithful...

(C) 2016 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. Jacket design by Scott Biel On November 15, 2016, Del Rey Books, an imprint of Random House, published Star Wars: Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel. Written by James Luceno ( Star Wars: Cloak of Deception and Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader ), this 352-page book is the exciting prequel to director Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm's first film of its stand-alone Star Wars Anthology series.  Released a month before the theatrical debut of Edwards' film and Alexander Freed's novelization (also published by Del Rey), Star Wars: Catalyst - A Rogue One Novel tells how Galen Erso, a brilliant research scientist, is recruited by his friend, Lt. Cmdr. Orson Krennic, to work on Celestial Power, a top secret project for the Galactic Republic.  It is a time of turmoil in the galaxy. As the Clone Wars flare up across thousands of planetary systems, Erso, a polymath with a special interest in the mysterious and po...

(C) 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Buena Vista Home Entertainment On Tuesday, April 4, Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) - Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio's home media division - released the Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy three-disc set of director Gareth Edwards' blockbuster hit  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. This home media debut of the first in a series of Star Wars Anthology stand-alone films comes less than four months after its theatrical premiere and almost one year after the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Blu-ray and DVD.  Although BVHE offers various "exclusive" editions for specific sellers (such as the "SteelBook" edition for Target), most Star Wars fans will probably buy the set that I bought from the Disney Store - the three-disc edition with two Blu-ray discs (BDs), one DVD, and the code for a digital download (which expires after April 4, 2022).  In many respects, BVHE'sBD/DVD/HD Digital Copy Rogue One  combo package resemb...

We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope. - Jyn Erso Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  is the eighth live-action feature film in the Star Wars saga and a direct prequel to George Lucas's original Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. Directed by Gareth Edwards (who also directed 2014's Godzilla ) and written by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy (from an original story by John Knoll and Gary Whitta), Rogue One is the first in a series of stand-alone Star Wars Anthology movies produced by Lucasfilm Limited and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Rogue One was conceived by John Knoll, the chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and supervisor of visual effects for Lucas's Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. He came up with the concept of making a movie that explained the back story of A New Hope's famous opening crawl 10 years before Lucasfilm's new chairman, Kathleen Kennedy, approved it.  This crawl, in a nutshell, is the genesis of Rogu...