Ben Mendelsohn: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story could have been ‘vastly different’

Ben Mendelsohn says ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ could have told a "vastly different" story.
The 47-year-old actor – who plays villain Director Orson Krennic in the spin-off movie to the popular sci-fi franchise – has revealed that many of the scenes in the movie were filmed more than once in order to have "multiple readings" of the plot when going in to the edit room.
He said: "We did have multiple, multiple ways of going at any given scenario, we had multiple readings of it.
"So should they ever decided to, there would be a wealth of ways of approaching these different things.
"And I know from having seen sort of the crucial kind of scenes throughout it, I know there’s vastly different readings of at least four of those scenes."
And Ben claims there was a possibility for "enormous differences" in as many as 30 of the scenes.
When asked if these scenes would create an alternate cut of the entire film, he added: "Absolutely, with enormous differences within I would’ve said 20 or 30 of the scenes.
"There really would be. There would be enormously different renderings."
Upon seeing the finished version of the movie – which stars Felicity Jones as protagonist Jyn Erso – Ben admits he is surprised to see which versions of the scenes director Gareth Edwards decided to use.
He told Collider.com: "There were a couple of times I was like, ‘Oh wow! He went with that. That one, yeah. Ok, I get it.’
"Because there were some scenes that I had seen as we were constructing and thinking about doing it this way or that way, and I had seen various scenes where we would come in and done something.
"And I’d seen the scene and it was cut this particular way and so we did the ADR, and then when I saw it the other day I was like, "Oh wow! That all -Yeah now it goes like this." So there is a bunch."