Late last week actor Freddie Prinze Jr. indicated in a podcast interview that “Star Wars Rebels” creator and “The Mandalorian” executive producer Dave Filoni was the one to ‘guest direct’ the famous Darth Vader sequence in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”.
In that film, Vader ambushes Rebels trying to escape Scarif – using the Force to body slam them and his red lightsaber to cut a bunch of them down – making the character quite intimidating in a way the prequels failed to achieve in their last few minutes.
Then another source online indicated it was second unit director Simon Crane who actually filmed the scene with Filoni not making his directing debut until “The Mandalorian”. That would fit in with Filoni’s own past comments which indicated he visited the “Rogue One” set but didn’t participate in filming.
Now, the film’s screenwriter Gary Whitta has cleared everything up – going on social media to dismiss all the reports and straight up confirming that it really was Gareth Edwards, the original director of the film, who helmed the scene.
Whitta also references ILM visual effects animator Hal Hickel who claims that he was on set the day the sequence was shot and also confirmed that Edwards was the filmmaker who directed the scene.
The comments also shoot down any talk that the sequence was a creation of “Andor” showrunner Tony Gilroy who handled some of the film’s reshoots – especially in the last act.
Filoni will be directing multiple episodes of the upcoming “The Mandalorian” spin-off “Ahsoka” which is due to premiere on Disney+ later this year.
Source: Twitter
