#using the disney princess films as a blueprint

[edwardtulanepdf]

she’s a 10 but she has parasocial relationships with disney characters

[synergysilhouette]

Another 10 Disney hot takes/probably unpopular opinions

Not a fan of Meg and Hercules as a couple. I ADORE them having an innocent male lead and a jaded female love interest, but Meg's situation with Hades makes it feel very toxic. The movie is kinda confusing on whether or not she can refuse Hades; one minute he uses incentive to get her to do what she wants (which is bad enough; her freedom for Hercules' death), and then when she tells him the deal's off, he reminds her that she has no say in the matter. Following this, she rejects his deal and he forces her into being exposed so Hercules will make a deal. She does sacrifice herself for him in the end, but it still feels very iffy for me, particularly since the backbone of her resisting him isn't even "I can't let this guy get killed" but instead "I don't wanna fall in love after getting my heart broken and having sold my soul" (which is EXTREMELY valid, but so is the other point). Had Meg been a normal human and made a deal with Hades to save Hercules or help him earlier on during his training, it'd be so much better.

2. Disney needs needs to stop making sequels just because of financial success and actually work to craft a narrative that requires a sequel or two. It's risky (considering the first film could have negative critical or commercial success, as well as take time and resources away from other films at the studio), but would have a better payoff, imo. I enjoyed "Frozen 2" despite it's flaws, but the fact that it felt independent of the first film did make it feel like we could've used an entirely different cast and made the same story.

3. I need more musicals with a male lead--The last one we had was "Tarzan"--or "Hercules," depending on your criteria. The revival era has had female leads for all their musicals, with a male playing as a co-lead or a deuteragonist. I know the girls are MUCH more valuable at Disney due to the Disney princess line and musicals with a male lead may be harder to market (well, not really; "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" were the highest-grossing animated films at one point, and their remakes grossed over $1 billion).

4. "Moana" needed a bigger (main) roster--Something I love is a nice-sized amount of main characters in a movie. "Moana" only had Moana and Maui for most of the movie, and thus it wasn't as enjoyable for me in that respect. "Moana 2" is introducing new characters, so I hope they can hold my interest.

5. Involve the Anderson-Lopez team in more musicals outside of the "Frozen" franchise--they almost got to do this with "Gigantic," but it fell through. Their music has been great, so I really hope to see them in more musicals for Disney outside of Disney's "Frozen."

6. NEVER return to hybrid animation for a feature film--It's too disorienting for me personally, and while the animation for "Wish" wasn't bad, it definitely didn't have the storybook vibe it was going for except with backgrounds. It would look fine if it was a video game, though.

7. "Gigantic" should've been Disney's anniversary film instead of "Wish"-- I already did a post on this, so I'll just leave it at that.

8. Raya is one of the best Disney leads in a while--Granted, her movie could've been much better and I wish the color of her clothes reflected her culture instead of going for neutral colors, but Raya is the blueprint for a great protagonist. It's been mentioned before how she's a feminist icon without having to really show it in ways others have in films, by being a confident warrior with no discussion of marriage or gender inequality brought up in the film. She's also deliciously sassy and quick on her feet. I may have preferred her OG concept of being stoic, but her swagger makes her one of the more engaging Disney leads, particularly as the adorkable trait started to show up. Speaking of...

9. Ariel and Mulan are the best adorkable leads for a Disney protagonist--While I don't have much issue with Anna and Mirabel and don't really find Rapunzel or Moana that adorkable, Ariel and Mulan were the blueprints for a funny female lead, and they felt less forced than later leads.

10. Aladdin is one of the worst Disney princes--DON'T KILL ME! He used to be my favorite Disney prince, until I watched a "therapists react" video to Disney couples and they brought up the fact that Aladdin had lied to Jasmine several times over the course of the movie. Him being insecure is a great character trait (a common one with Disney leads since the 90s, really), but it's poor writing to make his romance with Jasmine be based on a lie. I'd rather he just kept tight-lipped about his identity when Jasmine caught him the first time rather than covering up with another lie.

[weclassybouquetfun]

Lucas Hedges, how many actresses of a certain age are you going to work with?

Hedges: Yes.

We get zero Lucas Hedges for a time and then ALL THE LUCAS HEDGES like when BOY ERASED and BEN IS BACK came out around the same time.

Well, he’s back.

With HBO Max’s LET THEM ALL TALK which is out now starring Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Gemma Chan, and Dianne Weist.

Last year when Bergen posted pictures of Hedges and Streep I honestly thought he just happened to be on the same cruise as they were. 

Although the script is credited to Deborah Eisenberg, the cast says that the script was just a blueprint and the film is mostly improvised.  

Though this film wasn’t shot on an iPhone like director’s Steven Soderbergh’s last two films (Unsane and High Flying Bird),

it wasn’t shot with a traditional camera.  Soderbergh even improvised his tracking method - instead of using dolly tracks, he used a modified wheelchair. 

- Come Friday you can see Streep in the film adaptation of the musical PROM.

I’m not a fan of musicals so I can’t really judge it. I will say that it’s distracting to have a film with people who are just adequate singers (Streep, Nicole Kidman (who breathily sings “Dream a Little Dream of Me” in the opening credits of her just ended HBO series THE UNDOING), Keegan-Michael Key) and then pairing them with actual musical theater highly qualified singers/performers like Andrew Rannells, James Corden and Jo Ann Pellman who has the pristine singing voice of a Disney princess. 

Just because you are the creator of GLEE and a director of a few of its episodes, doesn’t make you a good director of musicals, Ryan Murphy.

Or perhaps it’s the source material to blame when there’s only one (IMO) bonafide standout musical number and that’s Rannell’s “Love Thy Neighbor”.

Next up for Hedges is the film adaptation of the Patrick DeWitt novel FRENCH EXIT 

starring Hedges and Michelle Pfeiffer as mother and son who leaves New York for Paris after they fall into financial straits. Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, the film will have an Oscars qualifying February release. 

[81scorp]

More thoughts on Frozen

(Originally posted as an editorial on Deviantart Apr 18 2015. It has not been changed from how I originally wrote it.)

A while ago I wrote an editorial that I think summed up my thoughts about Frozen nicely and I didn`t think it was necessary to go back and write any more things about it. But then I read some comments and other deviants`s editorials on Frozen that I felt had a point. This lead to some new thoughts, and some old that I had forgotten, popping up in my head. So I figured I`d get these thoughts out as well. Hopefully I wont have to revisit this topic again in the future, but I can`t guarantee anything. SPOILERS never bothered me anyway The good the bad and the subjective A word that I used often in my previous editorial was "like" and words that I tried to use as little as possible was "good" or "bad". If I say that something is good you will have an image in your head of what you think good is and it is likely that it will be different from my defenition of it. Just because something is good it doesn`t mean that everyone likes it and just because you like something it doesn`t mean that it is objectively good, the only thing that you can know for certain is if you like the thing in question or not. Take this for example: I like James Cameron`s Avatar. Hey! Wait! Where are you going? Come back! Anyway. The feeling I remember having when watching Avatar in the cinema (IN 3-D!!) was positive. After a while, people started to point out the movie`s flaws and at closer inspection I realized that they were right. But I can`t deny what I felt when I first saw it, and after repeated viewings, even being aware of it`s flaws, I still like it. Is the story old, borrowed, unoriginal, a bit predictable, going more for emotion than logic and is "Unobtainium" a terribly lazy name for a macguffin? Yes. (Hell, even the first time I watched it I thought it was a stupid name. Here are a few of my own suggestions: Makinium [based on "macguffin"], Onatnium, [based on "unobtainable"] and Xanatnium [based on "Xeno"]). But hey, it has great visuals, and... well... the visuals are nice. That is something that both sides agree on when it comes to Avatar: Weak story, great visuals. Is it great? No. Good? Kinda. Likeable? For some people yes. Did I like it? Yes. Movie Critic Roger Ebert has said that what is worse than a bad movie is a movie that`s bad and boring (those were not his exact words but it is pretty much the gist of it). And to me Avatar was at least entertaining. I think that Frozen works better than Avatar. The tone in Frozen is different so it`s more acceptable for it to rely on emotional stuff than Avatar, a movie that shows a world with a tone closer to our own with more (what is mostly considered to be) mature elements like death, war, blood and getting jiggy with blue cat-aliens. At closer inspection I have to admit that the story of Frozen has a few holes of its own, I will get to them later. So, with that said: I like Frozen. Though not as much as I like Tangled. Conceal don`t feel If you have seen HiSHE`s Frozen video you might remember this and wonder "Good point. Why didn`t her parents teach her to not fear her powers instead of bottling it all up inside?" Well, it must be hard to teach someone to not be afraid of something if you, the teacher, are afraid of it. It`s hard to learn to not be afraid of a big spider if you notice that your cognitive behavioral therapist is also afraid of it.  And no, I don`t mean that they were afraid of Elsa, but, if not her powers per se, then at least the potential for harm that her powers had. "Conceal don`t feel" was, I admit, not a good idea but hopefully it was only gonna be temporary till they could come up with someting better. I would also like to point out that it was the trolls themselves that told the parents and Elsa that Elsa should hide her powers, so it`s not all the parents`s fault. But, yes, I agree, they could have handled this better. Characters VS story I remember watching an episode of Sibling Rivalry on Channel Awesome where Doug and Rob Walker talked about the new Cinderella movie and at one point compaired it to the old, animated version. They said that even if the animated one had a very dated portrayal of women they (Doug and Rob) were at least emotionally invested in the characters. They felt bad for Cinderella when the stepsisters tore apart her dress but not so much when it happened in the live action version. That is probably the reason for this movie`s popularity. The story, while trying something new at some places (like sister saving sister), has a few flaws (like the earlier mentioned "conceal don`t feel"). But part of the appeal is the characters. We have the optimistic and determined Anna, who`s not gonna let a snowstorm stop her from talking to her sister. Kristoff, an antisocial loner who later turns out to be very reliable and a loyal friend. The innocent, dimwitted, kind and wellmeaning Olaf, and Elsa, sophisticated, calm and reserved but deep down, a tragic, hurting woobie. Then there`s Hans. And no, I`m not saying that he`s likeable like the other characters, but you can like him for being an interesting bad guy, kinda like how people like the Joker. He is (for Disney at least) a new, subtle kind of bad guy who`s really good at what he`s doing. I`m not saying that it`s A OK to have characters work as a crutch for the story (like the CGI did in the Star Wars prequels) because it`s not.   But with this blueprint of how the chararacters behave, we fans can take them and make our own, more complex stories where we explore and take these characters in different directions while still being true to their core. Good characters in a story with a few flaws are still good characters. The Actual flaws

NOT the actual flaws In my previous editorial I wrote why I didn´t think Frozen was "Teh Greatest Disneymovie Evar". I feel that my arguments to why I felt the way I did were lazily written so I decided to revisit and elaborate them more here. What I wrote was more a criticism of the hype than the movie itself. This is not a change of opinion, like I said: I like Frozen. These are just my old thoughts better explained. The things that seem new but have been done before, both by Disney and other animation studios: girl doesn´t need to end up with a man: Mulan. "You can`t marry a guy you just met!": Enchanted."But Enchanted isn`t Disney animated canon." you say. True, but it has fairytale-ish elements and a female lead, is a musical and is at least partly animated. This, plus being made under Disney`s roof, technically makes it a Disney movie that can be compaired to Frozen. (Heck, there was even talk about making Giselle a Disney princess, the reason it didn`t happen was because Disney didn`t want to pay royalties to Amy Adams for using her likeness.) However: Enchanted was more of an open subversion (You could tell from the trailer that they were gonna take some liberties with the Disney formula.) while Frozen was an animated Disney movie played straight... with subversions. And unlike Mulan it is the deuteragonist that stays single instead of the protagonist. But I digress. Is my definition of a Disney movie a little broad? Maybe, but still, it bugs me a little when I hear "This is the first time that a Disney movie has the message that you can`t fall in love with a guy you`ve just met." when Enchanted is not exactly an obscure movie. So, Frozen was not the first Disney movie with these two twists but does that make it less good? No. Toy Story was not first with the "Toys coming to life when you`re not looking" thing (The Christmas Toy came out 1986) but it was still a great movie. (And Frozen didn`t borrow a basic idea, at least not from these two movies, just a few tropes. The basic idea was borrowed from Wicked.) What makes Frozen good is not that it uses these two twists, but that it is (to my knowledge) the first movie in the Disney animated canon to use them and a couple of other new twists to the classic Disney formula in one and the same film. Using the old classical Disney tropes: Why did I bring this up? Tangled is just as guilty of using them and not all the tropes in the Disney formula are inherently bad and can be good if used correctly. And technically it didn`t make the movie worse.The parents dying. Formulaic? Sure, but at least it helped move the plot forward. Coming back to life thanks to the power of love. Done before, yes, but this time it was done with sibling love for a change and not the big romantic love that we`ve seen so many times before. And like Tangled, where it is established that Rapunzel has healing powers, it makes sense that Elsa, with her ice powers, was the one to save Anna from her icy fate. So why did I bring this up? When I kept hearing "It`s so different from other Disney movies", it made me think that it was gonna be more different than it actually was. With that expectation I held it to a different standard and it made the old Disney tropes stick out even more for me everytime I saw them. Sometimes I wish I could`ve gone into the movie a little bit more blind.

The ACTUAL flaws So while Frozen undeniably does use some of the old Disney tropes they are not really the actual flaws. And yes, it`s not all because of me having high expectations, Frozen DOES have a few actual flaws and they lie in the narrative flow. The backstory is a little rushed and not well thought out. Most of the songs are used up in the first act leaving us with only three in the second act, and only one of those three songs helps move the plot forward (The reprise of "For the first time in forever") the two others are just musical deadweight. Elsa and Anna`s relationship is the most interesting part of the movie but more screentime is spent on Anna`s relationship with Kristoff who, while still likable, is not as interesting as Elsa. The sequel So... they`re making a sequel to Frozen. My feelings? Cautious optimism. It may not be as successful in the box office as the first. Sure, people are still gonna see it because it`s frickin Frozen (kinda like with Phantom Menace), but it still may not be as successful, and it may not be as good as the first one either (quality doesn`t necessarily follow popularity after all), even if the team that made the first one is involved in it. The keyword here is may. It could be good. Does Frozen have material for a sequel? Well, the original fairytale had a woman of royalty who represented cold, winter and ice and was an important part of the story. Frozen, even if it has been changed a bit, still have those elements, so, yeah it could work. Unlike Tangled which was based on the fairytale "Rapunzel" where the plot is built on a woman with insanely long hair. Because of how well it did in the box office there were thoughts of a sequel, but when the writers and directors got together to develop one they realized: "She cut her hair... it`s over." When Lasseter started to work on Disney animation, things were changed so it is the filmmakers who decide wether they are ready to make a sequel, not marketing or merchandizing. And I like that decision, only continue the story if there is a story to tell. So what more kind of stories can you tell with Frozen? Maybe the origin of Elsa`s powers? Maybe she`s adopted? Personally I don`t need an explanation for it. The supernatural stuff that happened in old Twilight Zone episodes sometimes just happened because the universe liked to screw with people. Or you can do some kind of "mutant thing", I mean, Disney and Marvel after all. But I like the adoption angle now that I think about it. Elsa`s search to find out more about her past can lead to a journey with adventures. It can also have the message that family isn`t just the people you`re biologically related to. This still doesn`t change my views on ElsAnna shipping though. (Unless of course it`s platonic.) Should Elsa be paired up with someone in the sequel? No, I don`t think so. Like I said in my earlier editorial: by having  two heroines Disney could have it`s cake and eat it too. If one of the girls is a princess who ends up with a romantic, opposite sex love interest in the end, there`s no reason why the other can`t be a queen and single (...and possibly [but not necessarily] a lesbian). I just hope that, when it is nominated at a future academy award, the jury members take their job seriously and actually look at it and the other nominees before they give the Oscar to Frozen 2 simply because it`s Disney. Speaking of more Frozen movies: My thoughts on Frozen fever? It sounds cute. Like the kind of small project you`d do between bigger projects. I haven`t actually seen it. To do that I´d have to go and see that live-action Cinderella movie, and I don`t feel like it. Small constructive critcism Like I mentioned earlier it has a few flaws. It`s a bit of a fixer upper. Conceal don`t feel/ Elsa`s childhood In a way I defended this earlier (mostly because I couldn`t come up with a better idea myself) but I think I have an idea now on how it could have been done differently. The whole "Conceal don`t feel" could be something that Elsa herself came up with in her grown up years. Her parents could try to teach her to use it responsibly instead of bottling it all up. In the scene where Elsa is given her gloves they could first be lying on a book. Elsa`s fathers hands picks them up and we see that the book the gloves were lying on is called "The magic feather" (a subtle reference to Dumbo, hinting that the gloves are just placebos). and then later in "Do you want to build a snowman": The King is looking out through a window, rubbing his hand as if it is hurt, worrying about Elsa. The Queen is looking through a book and reacts as if she`s found the answer. She shows the book to the king. Both of them have expressions of joy in their faces. (she found the solution to Elsa`s problem in an ancient text in the book, which leads to them going away on a travel to find it which leads to their ship capsizing in the storm). Later in the movie, before she wakes up in her cell in Arendelle, Elsa could have a flashback to a day where she was 12-years old. Her father is touching the palm of her hand with his own as a form of trust exercise. Ice starts forming on his hand. He keeps holding on as a way to say: "It`s just ice, there`s nothing wrong with your gift, it`s not evil." Elsa allows herself to smile. Then she has a moment of doubt, her ice gets colder, it`s hurting her father but he refuses to let go and says in a calm voice:"It`s OK Elsa, don`t be afraid. You can control it". But the cold becomes too strong and he pulls back his hand in pain. The Queen wants to comfort Elsa but Elsa is afraid and distances herself from her, fearing that she`ll hurt her. Still wanting to comfort her daughter the Queen tells Elsa: "It`s not your fault." But Elsa is too afraid, too afraid of her own powers and backs into the shadows (figuratively AND literally). Their parents dying may be sad but seeing them trying their hardest to help her before they die would be even sadder. It`s the Joss Whedon method: make us emotionally invested in the characters before they`re killed off. On the fence: The yoiking Here`s another thing mentioned in the HiSHE video. "This style of music doesn`t fit anywhere else in the movie." That kind of music is called Yoiking and is common in the Sami culture. Sami people live in the most northern part of Sweden, Norway and Finland, and since the movie takes place in an scandinavian-ish country I can see what the film makers were thinking. However, I saw much more 19th century western-european scandinavian style and culture than Sami culture. And you only hear the yoik two times: opening credits and end credits. Lion King had at least one african choir song in the movie itself (when Simba is running back to his homeland for example). They could have shown more Sami culture and/or have at least one yoiking song within the movie itself. (Like when Kristoff is riding on Sven back to Arendelle with a sick Anna in his arms there could be some dramatic, ominous yoiking.) Sami culture is not completely absent from this movie though. Kristoff shows signs of it by being a man who spends a lot of time in out in the nature with his trusty reindeer. Not much but it`s more than nothing. On the fence: Lack of music in the last part Fellow deviant Rabbette pointed out that there was no more musical numbers in the last quarter of the movie. Aladdin ended with a short reprise of "A whole new world", Beauty and the beast ended with a short reprise of "Beauty and the beast", so it could have been nice if this movie ended with Elsa and Anna singing a short reprise of "For the first time in forever" as they are ice skating around together. Just sayin`. Fan art In my previous editorial I wrote: "I like it, I`m just not onboard the hype-train" It means that I don`t think it`s "The greatest Disney movie EVAR!" It doesn`t mean that I`m not gonna do fan art of it. Because like I said: I like the characters, and I see opportunities for some fan spoofs that are too good to pass up. Most of them involve chocolate.        

[cryptodictation]

Disney + surprises you with many good animal documentaries for the whole family

Everyone is talking about MCU or from Starwars, from The Mandalorian or from the Disney princesses: One topic at Disney + has a lot to offer for the whole family. National Geographic is not as public as the big, sounding franchise names, but is worth more than a look for those interested in unique documentaries and series about life on our planet.

Are you interested in one Disney + subscription ? Then click on the link, find out more and sign up for a subscription: By completing a subscription via this affiliate link, you support Moviepilot. This has no effect on the price. Moviepilot also gives you an overview of the complete streaming program, you can do it all Film at Disney + as well as all Series at Disney + filter. Have fun!

The program from

National Geographic is extremely diverse. At the start of the new streaming service, we recommend animal documentaries that you can discover with your family – suitable for the times of Corona crisis and quarantine timein which we are not allowed to travel the world. But you can discover them on the sofa at home.

Disney's first long documentary – The Desert Lives

The desert is alive will soon be 70 years old. It is the first full-length nature film from Disney and was immediately awarded an Oscar. What may seem dead nature to the inadequate human eye comes to life in front of the camera.

© Walt Disney Pictures

The desert is alive

Today the documentation would probably no longer exist, but in 1953 it caused a stir and became the blueprint for numerous subsequent animal documentaries. This also shows some features of later films, for example the humanization of animals.

Instead of desert now

the rocky mountains

 –

Prairie miracle

The great success made it possible: the Disney documentary appeared in 1954 Prairie miracle, also by the filmmaker James Algar. Again there was an Oscar and critics particularly praised the patience with which the filmmaker watched the animals.

© Walt Disney Pictures

Prairie miracle

Wonder of the prairie is also considered the forerunner of animal documentaries, of which the new streaming service Disney + has a lot to offer. In addition to the relevance of film history, technical gadgets such as slow-motion pictures are also very interesting.

The life of the lioness Mara – in the realm of the big cats

In the realm of the big cats takes us to the Masai Mara steppe in Kenya. This is one of the last places in Africa where lions, cheetahs and leopards still live together in one area. The documentation from 2011 tries to find the middle ground between documentation and drama.

© Walt Disney Pictures

In the realm of the big cats

The scenes that take place every day in the wild could not be more excitingly staged by a script. Still, the work on the film took over two years, as the team usually had to wait patiently for the natural course of events to create spectacular scenes.

The three-year Oscar becomes an orphan – chimpanzee

The Disney nature documentary Chimpanzee follows a family of chimpanzees through the jungle of Uganda. An accident happens because the three-year-old Oscar loses his mother. As an orphan, he is now on his own and must find a way to survive.

© Walt Disney Pictures

Chimpanzee

The story of this Disney nature documentary is very similar to the previous one in the realm of the big cats, it also tells of a boy who has to make it through. It's no wonder, because the filmmaker is at both Alastair Fothergill involved as a director and producer.

Disney's Natural Documentary Born in China

Born in China also shows us the wonders of flora and fauna, this time in Central Asia. Again, it's the young animals that the filmmakers' attention is focused on. A clumsy panda daughter, a snow leopard offspring, a gold-nosed proboscis monkey and a herd of Chiru antelopes all play a role.

© Walt Disney Pictures

Born in China

Born in China is particularly suitable for children, because the animal documentary focuses on many cozy moments. There is also a lot of interesting information about the course of life. The film was a complete success in China: it grossed $ 10 million.

Are you interested in animal or nature documentaries?

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[ramialkarmi]

The alternate ending of 'Rogue One' reveals who would have survived

Movies go though a lot of changes, but any changes made to a "Star Wars" movie are always fun to delve into, and "Rogue One" has a lot of them.

Leading up to its release and following it, the changes that were made during the film's reshoots were reported at a rapid pace.  

Now, with its Blu-ray release on April 4, there's been another press tour by the creatives behind the movie, and Entertainment Weekly got one of the screenwriters to dish a little about one of its endings in the early days of developing "Rogue One," specifically how it would have ended if Disney wouldn't have let them kill off the entire cast.

The ending that director Gareth Edwards, Disney, and Lucasfilm decided on was one where Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), K-2SO (Alan Tudky) and the rest of their rag-tag group steal the plans for the Death Star while on the tropical planet Scarif, eventually relaying the blueprints to the Rebel Alliance but ultimately perishing in the process.

“The original instinct was that they should all die,” screenwriter Gary Whitta told EW. “It’s worth it. If you’re going to give your life for anything, give your life for this, to destroy a weapon that's going to kill you all anyway. That’s what we always wanted to do. But we never explored it because we were afraid that Disney might not let us do it, that Disney might think it’s too dark for a Star Wars movie or for their brand.”

So before Whitta and John Knoll — another "Rogue One" screenwriter in the early days — talked to Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy about the need for an ending where no one survived, they came up with a "happy ending."

According to Whitt, in an early version, the ending had Jyn and Cassian escape Scarif with the Death Star plans as a rebel ship picks them up while they are on the beach. As the ship carrying Jyn and Cassian is being chased by Darth Vader's Star Destroyer, the plans are transferred to Princess Leia's ship. Vader eventually destroys the Jyn/Cassian ship and then chases Leia's ship, which is where "Star Wars: A New Hope" opens.

But then we discover that Jyn and Cassian were able to get away in an escape pod just before Vader destroyed the ship they were on.

However, no one liked this ending.

“The fact that we had to jump through so many hoops to keep them alive was the writing gods telling us that if they were meant to live it wouldn’t be this difficult,” said Whitta. “We decided they should die on the surface [of Scarif,] and that was the way it ended. We were constantly trying to make all the pieces fit together. We tried every single idea. Eventually, through endless development you get through an evolutionary process where the best version rises to the top.”

And if the "happy ending" was used, we would have never gotten that great Darth Vader fight scene at the end.

SEE ALSO: Every HBO show ranked from worst to best, according to critics

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