Laughter on a film set can be contagious. And it can be a disaster. Good takes get ruined constantly by co-stars cracking up, and it gets harder and harder to keep a straight face when the actor with which you share a scene is hysterical. Usually, these chuckles are then saved for a mid-credits montage. Sometimes, though, as in the case of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the blooper is kept in the final film.
This is a finished scene from Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which shows Alan Tudyk's wry droid K-2SO pretending to transport his colleagues, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) to a nearby prison. K-2SO has to pretend to still be a Galactic Empire droid, so he decides to amp up the theater by slapping Cassiasn in the face. Only, I learned while attending a press day at ILM for Rogue One, that Diego Luna didn't really know that the slap was coming, and Tudyk's improv made him laugh... then cover his face so as not to blow the take with his humorous response.
Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel, whose primary responsibility on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was bringing K-2SO to life, made this reveal during an enlightening and educational session on the work that went into putting a towering droid on screen. Alan Tudyk acted in all of his scenes alongside his Rogue One co-stars, wearing stilts built into his boots as well as a full-bodied motion-capture suit so that the ILM wizards could fully animate him later on in post-production.
What's most surprising is that Gareth Edwards and his editors left the blooper in. I mean, you can clearly see Diego Luna hiding a smile behind his gloved hand. He had no clue that Alan Tudyk was going to try the slap, and he found it very funny, especially when his co-stars adds the line, "And there's a fresh one if you mouth off again." But shooting with a droid in the scene can get expensive, and Luna likely knew that if he couldn't save this shot, they'd waste time and money having to redo it. So, now you know of a little Easter Egg blooper that was left in the final cut of the latest Star Wars movie.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the first of several planned solo spinoff movies, telling tales that are disconnected (in a way) from the main Saga story being told in the trilogies. The next will be the as-yet-untitled Han Solo film, starring Alden Ehrenreich as the rogue smuggler. As for Rogue One, the movie is out on Digital HD on March 28th and will reach Blu-ray shelves on April 4th. And for more information on release dates of Upcoming Star Wars movies, click those words.
