Spoilers for Rogue One follow. Seriously, stop reading if you don’t want to see any. I can’t stress this enough. Okay, fine, you bring this on yourself, pal.
One of the few disappointing bits of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was (what felt like to me) the relative non-use of Saw Gerrera as a character. While he certainly served as a plot point for the story, it felt like he was a bit underutilized, almost like he was glazed over as a plot device as opposed to a fully realized person or character. Portrayed by the ever-wonderful Forest Whitaker, Saw in this cut of Rogue One felt like, well.. wasted potential.
This is something that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy may have felt the same way, as in a chat with Empire, she revealed that he had a much bigger role in Rogue One, and may yet still pop up elsewhere in the greater Star Wars universe.
Specifically, Kennedy said:
With Saw Gerrera, we just became very intrigued with him as a character [from The Clone Wars] and how he fits inside this story… To be honest, we originally thought we were going to develop Saw into something much larger, but we couldn’t accommodate it. So he is not in the movie as much as we would like to have him in the movie, which creates the opportunity to explore his character even further in our future development.
Whitaker also shared his excitement, saying, “I’m curious about what else they’re about to do, because they seem to really like the character, which is great!”
Fans are already aware of the character’s many appearances in the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series, where he quickly emerged as a fan favorite. So the reveal just ahead of Rogue One‘s premiere that Whitaker would be playing Saw was, needless to say, met with much excitement. However, as we’ve come to learn in various trailer vs. movie comparisons, Saw’s role was minimized, with one of the more stirring speeches of the trailer getting cut completely (“What will you become?”).
Reading into Kennedy’s statement, I can’t help but feel that this “exploration” of his character might mean more of a “what was this character’s impact on other (read: alive) characters’ lives” type of thing. I don’t actually expect to see Whitaker hop back into Saw’s armor (as rad as that would be), but at least he’ll be giving voice to the character on Star Wars Rebels. I am pretty stoked to hear more about the character’s life and legend.
(via CBR)
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