Rogue One [Official Info] Ben Mendelsohn (Director Orson Krennic) in Rogue One

I love Krennic as a character. He’s so ambitious and committed and yet he really is as high as he can climb but he refuses to accept that he won’t move up further.

It’s still so strange to me how troubled that set was because it doesn’t come through on screen at all. Tony Gilroy is a legend for saving the potential of what was there in the script.

Why isn’t Gilroy being offered more material?

 

Was the "set" troubled? Sounds like everyone got along to me, it was more just that the script needed some punching up to be better. First I've heard of actual tension/troubles outside of fixing the script and some of Gareth's handheld cam stuff being a headache for the ILM guys.

 

A headache, but one that made the film feel incredibly realistic. He was a visionary, and sure that made things tough on the CGI guys. But I’ll take that over a safe, cookie-cutter approach. VFX should accommodate the director’s vision. Not the other way around.

 

Yeah. I'm not a fan of the shakey-cam stuff in general, tends to really bug me with the Russos movies (though they pleasantly reigned it in a bit with Infinity War which was welcome, expect they probably will with Endgame too), but it worked well for that sense of immediacy in Rogue One.

And Gareth always seemed to still be in the good graces with Lucasfilm in general. This tension/trouble seems overstated. Beyond the experimenting with the photography/effects not entirely panning out in a practical sense for ILM, it sounds more just like the company wasn't entirely 100% happy with the emotional stakes with the script. But given Gareth co-operated and was fine with bringing someone else in to help, they were all cool by the end.

*Shrugs* That's filmmaking.

 

I could kinda take or leave Krennic being a part of the Cassian show, didn't exactly seem like they'd crossed paths personally.

But sure, if we're going to see the character again, this'll probably be the only project set in that post-Rebels/pre-Rogue One time period we'll get for a while. Doesn't seem out of the question.

 

The director was essentially fired from the movie.

 

Except he, you know, wasn't.

He was told they wanted to bring people in other people to help, and unlike Lord & Miller he accepted. Sounds like Gareth was still involved in post-production to the end, he just wasn't the sole tip of the spear anymore. That's moviemaking, happens all the time. Sometimes with hostility and others amicably, all things with Rogue One point to the latter.

 

Gareth wasn’t fired, but that will not stop people from saying he was. We live in a post-truth world.

 

That does not happen all the time. It is atypical for a director to be replaced during editing and reshoots which is exactly what reportedly happened.

 

Ben Mendelssohn is superb in the new HBO mini-series, The Outsider, based on the novel by Stephen King. For once, he plays a good guy.

 

I like Director Krennic. Ben Mendelsohn did an excellent job.

 

The movie worked on his achievement, not Tarkin's.

 

But Krennic was modeled on Tarkin’s achievement, not his!

 

That was easier to achieve due to not having any actual force-users as heroes though. Setting a non force-sensitive villain against a force-using hero would probably be a whole lot harder to accomplish. When such a hero is around, you are mostly down to either needing a force-using sidekick to the villain, or such overwhelming odds for the villains that the end battle isn't a personal one but a huge battle instead.

 

I guess, but it could be fine as long as the force users aren’t portrayed as too OP. The villain just needs enough of an organization around them to not square off against the hero one on one. Which is fine.

 

Since he was a previous employee who just took an extended vacation I assume they had all of his background information and with their vast resource of spies and whatnot were eventually able to track him down from there. He was as careful as possible but things like buying seeds for his farm are going to leave a trail no matter what you do.

 

I really liked the performance and character since I first saw R1 and hope we see more of him.

 

It's rather obvious I think he was a quite remarkable character! He had degrees of subtlety and depth - isolated and insecure, a self-made man despised by the Imperial officer class, seeking to project an image of power and authority yet never succeeding, all too often falling into rage or vindictiveness, a remarkably thoughtful man with a great degree of pathos. It's quite rare to see tailoring, staging and acting to come together in any character so well, and especially as he fulfils the role of antagonist (though I would never call him, or Governor Tarkin for that matter, a villain).

Incidentally, though this may belong elsewhere, is anyone aware of the procedure to request an autograph? I have my eye on a signed piece of notepaper with Peter Cushing's signature and it would be an honour to have Mr. Mendelsohn's.

 

I love his performance too - a lot of subtlety under that boiling exterior. Though I think Ben Mendelsohn was one of the first to call him, unequivocally, a villain.

 

Ever eager to be corrected, and, on thought, he is quite right. My notes are amateur's work and the actor is the character, and so is all. Have you got a source interview for my hard drive?

He is, morally, a deplorable man who invites parallels with war criminals throughout history (his exhausted impatience with Lyra actually called up a far darker idea - I can't remember if it's genuine, but I faintly recall that a German war criminal of the last World War actually complained of the administrative tedium of his work), but complex. I suppose I think of a film villain as Nogbad the Bad or Sir Jasper, cackling as he ties the love-interest to the railroad tracks.

I fear in the complexity, in the humanness, I forget just how callous, cruel, ambitious - villainous - he is. It's actually rather disturbing how much I can grow to sympathise with a war criminal once I start to examine their psyche. I find genuine pathos.

Likewise, Governor Tarkin is gracious, courteous and polite, refined and courtly, a born gentleman, but again quite ruthless. Our selective blind spots are interesting and mildly disturbing.