Scarif, one of the new environments that will appear in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was based on “paradise,” director Gareth Edwards announced.
During a panel for the upcoming stand-alone Star Wars movie at Star Wars Celebration in London, Edwards said they flew to Maldives to shoot some of the movie’s new battle sequences. The new environment, which can be seen in the original trailer, is called Scarif, and Edwards said it took them traveling quite a bit to film it.
“Scarif is based on a paradise world, so we had to go to paradise to film it,” Edwards said during the panel. The director added that they enlisted the help of some Maldivian soldiers to take on the role of stormtroopers. Edwards said that, when he asked them if they were excited about being in Rogue One, they couldn’t care less.
“As we’re filming it, we go up to them and ask them if they’re excited they got to play stormtroopers,” Edwards said. “They’re like, ‘no.’ So we asked them, ‘Do you know about Star Wars?’ and they said, ‘No.’ So we asked them if they felt like idiots and they said, ‘Yes.'”
The new environment can be seen in the image above. Star Wars Celebration will be happening all weekend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXEMO_Zv_gQ