10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings You Can No Longer See
9. Jyn & Cassian Run Across Scarif's Beach - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
It's no secret that Rogue One was massively overhauled during post-production, with Disney splashing out on five weeks of reshoots to fix major sequences in the movie - especially its third act.
As a result, numerous scenes from the trailers ended up not appearing in the final film, including a thrilling-looking climax in which Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) sprint across a Scarif beach while being fired upon by AT-ATs.
Ultimately, director Gareth Edwards confirmed that the ending was retooled primarily for pacing reasons.
Originally, Jyn and Cassian had to run across the beach to reach the communications tower where they could transmit the Death Star plans to the Rebels, but to "compress" the finale, the tower was moved into the Empire's main base, negating the need for a mad dash.
In Edwards' own words:
"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."
While Edwards' rationale seems reasonable, it's a shame that the more elongated alternate ending has never been shown outside of the Lucasfilm brain trust, because it looked terrific.