Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a movie which very nearly became mired in controversy at one point, but people quickly moved on from those troubling rumours about reshoots, something which was no doubt helped by the impressive sizzle reel Disney released this past weekend during Star Wars Celebration in London.
One of the highlights from that footage was seeing more of the sinister Director Krennic’s Deathtroopers in action. Relatively little is known about them at this point, but Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards has now shed some light on how they were conceived for the upcoming anthology movie.
“The whole day goes like this, where you go through every single object you can think of. And then at the very back of the room are all of these drawers that are full of the Joe Johnston and Ralph McQuarrie originals. The original actual paintings that they showed the studio to get Star Wars made. And on some of those images, there were these Stormtroopers that were really tall and thin and they looked so cool and athletic. When you put armor on a Stormtrooper, they look like NFL players. They were sleek and S.A.S. looking Stormtroopers. So we thought let’s try to find some six, seven foot tall people who are really thin and try to figure out a new Stormtrooper that can actually hit its target with guns. And they became, eventually, the Death Troopers.”
That’s actually really interesting, and it’s going to be great to see these guys in action. Assuming that they’re a very small team of Stormtroopers assembled by Krennic, them not factoring into the original trilogy actually makes sense, because you otherwise have to ask yourself why we’ve never heard of these guys before.
The cast of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story includes Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Forest Whitaker, Diego Luna and Riz Ahmed. The movie will be released on December 16th, and while there’s still no sign of that new trailer, don’t be surprised to see it online soon enough.
