That time 'Rogue One' almost brought its villain back from the dead

Another day, another alternate ending to Rogue One.

As Disney and Lucasfilm ramp up to the release of the Star Wars standalone movie on digital platforms Friday, we're getting more and more insight into the writing process. Perhaps in a bid to make up for the lack of deleted scenes in that release, these insights include a lot of theoretical ways the movie could have ended.

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So following The One Where Vader Didn't Kick Ass and The One Where Jyn and Cassian Survive in an Escape Pod, here comes The One Where Vader Killed Orson Krennic.

Director Krennic, played with spitting fury and caped glory by Ben Mendelsohn, has almost as tragic a story arc in the movie as the Rebel heroes.

He hopes to gain credit with the Emperor for building the Death Star, only to find that Governor Tarkin has taken over the battle station. Darth Vader almost chokes him over a security breach. Trying to clean up his mess at the tropical records office on Scarif, he runs right into a Rebel assault -- and to add insult to injury, gets annihilated by the Death Star itself.

Krennic, like Rodney Dangerfield, don't get no respect.

But writers Gary Whitta and Chris Weitz, who took early drafts of the film, told EW that wasn't the end for Krennic in one version of the script. The Director was to be brought back from the dead on Scarif in order to suffer yet more ignominy.

“They tore him out of the rubble and they brought him back,” Whitta told the magazine. “When they [the Empire] are going over the ruins, he somehow survived."

Why bring him back? So that he could choke on his aspirations, courtesy of Darth Vader and his magic strangulation trick. No respect!

This ending was nixed because, in Whitta's words, "it's a bit of a reach." You had to believe that Krennic survived the equivalent of a multiple hydrogen bomb blast -- which may call back memories of when Indiana Jones did that in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by hiding in a Frigidaire, leading to the now-common pejorative "nuking the fridge."

Krennic certainly has plenty of fans who wouldn't mind seeing him rise again -- but maybe a little earlier in his career.