Disney/Lucasfilm
Diego Luna in "Rogue One."
But this latest story may top them all.
i09 talked to screenwriter John Knoll, who is also the senior visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, and got him to open up about one of the endings he came up with in the early development of the script. And we really hope that perhaps this will be used in a future film, because it's very cool.
Knoll explains that in one version, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) was a spy planted by the Empire into the Rebellion. But once he learns that the Death Star is not propaganda but is real and meant for genocide, he switches sides to help the Rebels destroy it.
Here's how the rest of this crazy version goes:
At the end of the movie, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian have the Death Star plans and are being chased through the galaxy by Darth Vader's Star Destroyer. They get word that Princess Leia's ship is nearby and transmit the Death Star plans to her ship since Jyn and Cassian don't think their ship will survive the damage from Vader.
But then Cassian has an idea.
"They've got a carbon freeze bomb on the ship and the idea is that he forces everyone into the airlock, [he says] 'I'm going to set this off and you're all going to survive,'" Knoll said. "He sort of times it with one of the hits from Vader's ship so he blows up the ship and sets off this carbon freeze bomb and everyone is frozen. Then on Vader's ship they detect no life signs and they think everyone's dead. And they're like, 'Where's that ship the plans were transmitted to?' And they go. So I was going to leave our heroes out of the picture. It's why they don't show up in 'Empire' or 'Jedi' - they're stuck in [carbon freeze]."
Now that's an ending! Obviously, as the "Rogue One" story got tweaked, that ending was scrapped. But hopefully we get to see a carbon-freeze bomb one day.