Just when I think I will be able to get off my Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker rage train, something happens that makes me have to get back on, the latest example being a ridiculous statement by the film’s co-writer, Chris Terrio (who also wrote the screenplay for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), about the lack of Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico being due to Carrie Fisher’s passing.
Yup.
In an interview with Awards Daily, via Entertainment Weekly, the writer said that he and director J.J. Abrams “adore” Rose and that she originally had a bigger role, but they ran into complications having her interact with CGI Leia and Leia’s scenes.
“One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie Fisher’s footage in the way we wanted to,” Terrio told Awards Daily. “We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together … As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes, unfortunately, fell out of the film.”
Yeah, here’s the thing: Carrie Fisher passed away December 27th, 2016, before anything was put to paper about The Rise of Skywalker. She passed before The Last Jedi came out. Why were they writing scenes for Rose to interact with a character who she had little to no interaction with in the previous film? Especially when there were already so many limitations they were are already dealing with, and Leia’s story arc with her son and Rey that still needed to be played out?
Terrio added that the last thing they want is for people to think they intentionally sidelined Rose when they “adore the character, and we adore Kelly — so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.”
Again, I understand why they would want to do this, and I am going to give them the good faith to say that they really wanted to build a relationship between those two characters. But Carrie Fisher was long passed on, and to sort of couch the reason for sidelining Rose on her feels gross and disrespectful—especially since Fisher was one of the best script doctors in the game and could have certainly punched up that script if she was there.
The one reason why this really bothers me is that this sequel series, other than making Leia a general, really pays her and Carrie Fisher dirt. She goes into Odin Sleep during The Last Jedi (that’s on you, RJ), and I’ll never forgive them in The Force Awakens for asking her to lose more than 35 pounds for the role. With all we know about Carrie Fisher and how candid she had been about her health and mental illness and body image, that they asked her to do that … ugh, it makes me so angry.
They knew what they had when cobbling together the end of Leia’s chapter in Star Wars; the absolute first thing should have been to see what could work and what couldn’t. I may not feel like her sendoff in Rise of Skywalker did her much justice, but at least it felt like something. Rose’s character could change and evolve as they saw fit, but the bottom line is that they didn’t, and there isn’t anyone else to blame but Terrio and Abrams.
But you know … gotta fit in Dominic Monaghan because of a bet!
(via Entertainment Weekly, image: Lucasfilm/Disney)
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