This is a blog post about not having a movie spoiled for me, so in turn, there aren’t any spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story yet. That being said, what are you waiting for? It’s out on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download now!
About a year and a half ago, I took a trip to Universal Studios (in Orlando, Florida). One of the shows there, and not a ride, was for the movie Terminator 2—it’s full name being, “T2 3-D: Battle Across Time.” Now, I’ve never seen Terminator 2. I’ve seen Terminator and I want to see Terminator 2, but I’ve got a lot of movies I want to see. While waiting for the show to begin, I turned to my friend and said, jokingly, “I hope there aren’t any spoilers!” There were spoilers. For what ends up being a goofy little special effects show, they had to tell us everything that happened in the movie before we were allowed to see it. Complete and unnecessary back story to what was a guy riding a fake motorcycle through some 3D video screens. I know it’s my fault for not having seen the movie yet but it still felt unnecessary to what we were getting. (Side note: spoilers aside, the show also kind of sucked and felt like a huge waste of time.)
Then this past December, thoughts of the Battle Across Time came back to mind when Star Wars Battlefront—a video game beloved by me—announced that a Rogue One expansion was going to be released two weeks before the movie it’s based on would be in theaters. I thought again, to myself, “I hope there aren’t any spoilers!” There weren’t spoilers. Kind of.
The multiplayer mode that the expansion added to the game was a three-part mission:
- A space battle outside the planet Scarif’s energy shield to get the Rebels on to the planet’s surface
- A ground assault to cause a distraction for the Rebels
- A Rebel escape from the planet with the data file
It was the duty of the team playing as the Rebels to make sure all three of those things happened and it was the job of the Empire to keep the Rebels from succeeding in any of those three parts. I thought for sure that something had been spoiled for me. It seemed a little on the nose. However, anyone who’s seen the movie knows that it doesn’t really work out that way.
When I saw the film for the first time, I assumed that the game designers didn’t know how the movie would go and just knew it was “the movie where the Rebels steal the Death Star plans” and made up their own plot. Now, thanks to all the press about it, I know the movie was substantially changed by re-shoots and the trailers contained a lot of cut footage. Meaning that this game mode was—at one time—a HUGE spoiler. Thankfully, video game production takes a long time and they just left the mode unchanged and didn’t spoil Rogue One for anyone.
