Rogue One Director Gareth Edwards Talks Jedha

Entertainment Weekly have posted a nice article with Rogue One director Gareth Edwards in which he describes what the planet Jedha is like.

“The Force is basically in Star Wars like a religion, and they’re losing their faith in the period that we start the movie,” says Gareth Edwards, director of the story that’s set just prior to the events of 1977’s original Star Wars.

“We were trying to find a physical location we could go to that would speak to the themes of losing your faith and the choice between letting the Empire win, or evil win, and good prevailing,” he says. “It got embodied in this place we called Jedha.”

With its narrow market alleyways, desert sands, and Ottoman-inspired architecture, Jedha has obvious Middle Eastern influences, but it could be any place where far-flung followers would gather to pray, reflect, or meditate – Mecca, Jerusalem, Canterbury, Bodh Gaya…

“It’s a place where people who believe in the Force would go on a pilgrimage,” Edwards says. “It was essentially taken over by the Empire. It’s an occupied territory… for reasons we probably can’t reveal.”

Pressed for a little more detail about why the Empire would send its military to dominate this world of worship, Edwards says, “There’s something very important in Jedha that serves both the Jedi and the Empire. It felt very much like something we could relate to in the real world.”

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