Rogue One used unseen Star Wars footage for X-Wing assault

It was manipulated to fit seamlessly in the new movie

Rogue One has a number of tricks up its sleeve when it comes to paying homage to the original Star Wars films that follow it in the timeline, but this one you might have missed.

*Very mild spoilers if you’ve yet to see the film*

It goes to great lengths to achieve visuals in keeping with the 1977 movie, not just through costume, lighting etc but by using actual footage from the original shoot.

“We went to Skywalker ranch, and there’s the archives there,” Edwards told the Radio Times.

“And as we’re walking around, and doing all the cool things and looking at the Millennium Falcon and trying on Han Solo’s jacket and things like that, in the back at the bottom was all these cans of film. And we said ‘what are they?’ and they said ‘Oh, it’s Star Wars.’

“And you go… ‘has someone gone through all this? And it’s like ‘not really, they’re not fully like digitised at all.’”

The cans turned out to be a treasure trove, containing unused shots from the infamous Rebel squadron call sign scene ahead of the Death Star assault.

“We got the neg documents and found the clips from A New Hope that hadn’t been used,” Edwards explained. “And there’s pilot photography and lines that were never featured in A New Hope."

The visual effects team were able to use these clips in the film’s very own X-Wing attack scene near its climax.

“Through the magic of ILM [special effect studio Industrial Light and Magic] they cut round them and manipulated them and stuck them into our cockpits,” Edwards added.

“It’s the sort of thing you think, ‘how many people will notice?’ Do you know what I mean? It’s like, is this a lot of effort for very little reward?”

“At the world premiere in LA, there was this massive cheer at a particular point in the film [there was at the screening I went to also]. “It was the only time during the premiere where I actually punched the air.”

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is now in cinemas.