… but I cannot help but think Gareth Edwards was paying MAJOR homage to Spaceballs with Rogue One. There are so many callbacks its hard to count them all. From the obvious like the planet shield and shieldgate to more subtle elements like the shield code scene (I was on the edge of my seat waiting for “1-2-3-4-5”). There’s more, but I have to go back and think again.
So I might have exaggerated juuusst a bit on my assessment of how many Spaceballs callbacks there were. I went back and re-watched the movie again and in addition to the two major (and very obvious) callbacks mentioned above, I identified the following:
- At 00:22:50 - Responding to Krennic, Tarkin says “When has become now, Director Krennic…”
- At 1:36:57 - Cassian says “This is not working, K!” to which K-2SO responds “Right Hand” followed by Cassian and Jyn manhandling a limp hand onto a handprint identification scanner to gain access to the file vault.
I’m pretty sure Gareth Edwards is a pretty big Spaceballs fan.