Gareth Edwards Explains How He Picked The Cameos For Rogue One

Gareth Edward's Rogue One was a successful Star Wars spinoff that received positive remarks from fans and critics. Not only did the film manage to show the grit of battle and bring war to Star Wars, it also featured a number of great classic character cameos, making Rebels fans light up in surprise after hearing Hera's name being paged in Yavin IV and then raising the roof by making Vader slice his way through a hall lined with rebel soldiers.

Now, in an interview with RadioTimes, Edwards explains how he picked out the classic Star Wars characters that would appear in his film. Apparently the director had a pretty solid systematic method of selecting the characters, explaining that he had to choose the appearances wisely.

"On day one, one of the first things I did was take out a chart of every character that could potentially be in our film," Edwards told RadioTimes.com. "If you look at those charts with all the toys in then you'd think there are thousands of characters in Stars Wars, but it wasn't as big as you'd have thought."

"One of the greatest things about Star Wars is the scope of the universe: it's so epic," he explained. "If you start bringing everyone in the film that just happens to be down the road on another planet then it starts to make the universe feel small. And that should limit the characters you can use."

The director also revealed a few old Star Wars favorites who's appearances were almost cut from the final film.

"There's people that just about made it in, like the alien from the cantina who says ‘he doesn't like you' / ‘I don't like you' [the pig-nosed crook that approaches Luke Skywalker at the Mos Eisley Cantina]. When we re-shot it for a while he wasn't in, then he was in, then he wasn't in. I'm glad he made it in the film, but it was a change we made about the last week of post-production."

While a few fans have been complaining that the Cantina alien's didn't really need to get a cameo (most were upset that they didn't get to see Admiral Ackbar), the cameo was a lovely nod to the funky Cantina sequence of A New Hope. Hearing how meticulously Edwards planned the cameos, it's pretty safe to say that the director didn't just have the characters come in and make an appearance without a good reason for it. Which Rogue One cameo was your favorite? Let us know in the comment section below.

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