STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE - New Details on Felicity Jones and Jiang Wen's Characters
Director Gareth Edwards is deep in production on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. There have been a few rumors and some possible leaked info on the film, all of which you can read about here, but for the most part, Lucasfilm and their team have done a great job keeping things under wraps.
The film involves a team of rebels who embark on a dangerous mission to steal the plans for the Death Star. This is a heist movie that takes place shortly before the events in A New Hope. The movie stars Felicity Jones, Donnie Yen, Ben Mendohlson, Mads Mikkelsen, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, and Alan Tudyk and thanks to Making Star Wars we have a few new details on the lead character played by Jones and one of her team members played by Wen.
Earlier this year the name of Jones' character was said to be revealed, then it was debunked. This latest report claims to have the actual name and also offers some background info on the character. They say the name of her character is Jyn, and they explain:
Jyn is the daughter of Galen but their last names are still unknown. It has been said more than once that her name is “something like Jenny or Ginny,” to me and it makes me ponder if there is a more endearing version of the name like “Jynie” for instance?
Galen is being played by Mads Mikkelsen, and here are some older rumored details on his character and how Jones' character plays into it:
Mads Mikkelsen (Galen appears to be his name in the film) is kind of the key to the film in a way. He is a scientist that took over the Geonosian Death Star project. He solved several of the flaws the Empire could not and is sort of a revered person in the Empire for his contributions. However, Mikkelsen’s character is a Robert Oppenheimer-type character. Oppenheimer helped design the atomic bomb only to say, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The guilt “Galen” feels for his contributions to the Empire become too much and he defects, attempting to make things right. In order to do this, he enlists the help of his only daughter….
Felicity Jones’ character has to undo the devastation her family has unleashed onto the galaxy. Early versions of this character had her as a bounty hunter type of mercenary. But with the familial connections it appears as if this idea might not interface with the final stuff for the character so I’m hesitant to say she’s a bounty hunter/mercenary type in the final iterations of the film. I believe she is probably a scientist-type herself in character of the mission to get the plans, aided by bounty hunters, in this final iteration. (But I could be wrong about that part.)
As for Wen's "freedom fighter" character, this is what they've learned;
Wen’s character is the weapons enthusiast of the group. He’s a first-class gun nut. He’s the kind of character that just as you think he’s exhausted his potential for violence, he pulls another weapon out of his boot (for example). He probably has as many concealed weapons as he does overtly visible ones (if not more).
Sounds like my kind of badass Star Wars character! Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is scheduled to be released on December 16th, 2016, and you can expect to see the first trailer sometime in the near future. It's rumored to be attached to Captain America: Civil War.