Rogue One A Star Wars Story Archive: Storming the beach

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Description: Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor lead the charge across the beach to reach the communications tower where they can then hopefully upload and transmit the Death Star plans.

Notes: In the original cut of the film the building containing the data vault and the communications tower were two separate locations with a large stretch of beach in-between.

Notes: Jyn is seen carrying the data disc throughout.

Notes: Baze Malbus and Chirrut Îmwe can be seen towards the back of the group running through the water in the first shots.

Notes: K-2SO can be seen running through the water and on the beach.

From ew.com - Gareth Edwards - “The original version was that they stole the plans, tried to get back to the ship and on their way, it all went wrong,” Edwards says. “They were forced to go to the transmission tower and send them to the Rebels. It was too long. We tried to compress things. One of the obvious solutions to compress the time was to put the transmission tower at the base [where they steal the data tapes.]”

“They no longer have to go on a journey across the beach, and some of those decisions can be heartbreaking because I loved a lot of the material we got from that moment,” Edwards says. “The film as a whole always wins. We needed to keep the duration down to two hours. No matter how well you’re doing in a movie there’s always the point where the audience gets a bit antsy. You don’t want people to have that feeling in a Star Wars film.”

From slashfilm.com - Gareth Edwards - "I think the main thing that changed at the end...what used to happen, and you can get a sense of this in the early trailers, the transmission tower for the plans was separate from the main base on Scarif. To transmit the plans, they had to escape and run along the beach and go up the tower. In cutting the film, it just felt too long. We had to find ways to compress the third act, which was quite long as it was. And one real, fast, brutal solution was to put the tower in the base, so they don't have to run across the beach and do all of that stuff to get there. That became a decision that eliminated the shots you see in the trailer of the back of Cassian and Jyn and the AT-ATs. That was some of the reinvention that happened. It was all to do with compression.

As cool as many things are, and they really are, you can't outstay your welcome. We've all done it. We've all sat in a movie and even if you love a film, there's that moment where you want to look at your watch, or you feel like "Okay, I hope it ends soon." You don't want the audience thinking that. You don't want them to lag. If you feel that when you watch something back, you need to find a way to tighten it somewhere. That was a big win for a compression.

Speculation: I have no idea how these scenes originally played out, of if the order of images represent how the it would have worked. Did Jyn, Cassian and K-2SO exit the data vault building and immediately meet up with Baze and Chirrut? Or did Baze and Chirrut meet them along the way to the communications tower?