The Rise of Skywalkeris so close to being upon us you can almost hear the mixture of cheering and moaning that is sure to follow. With the film under so much pressure to bring the decade-spanning Skywalker saga to an end, one of the biggest challenges going into the movie was dealing with the death of the series' staple, Luke Skywalker.
Sacrificing himself at the end of director Rian Johnson’s divisiveThe Last Jedi, the Academy Award-nominated editor, Maryann Brandon, has been discussing the problems that Luke’s death caused, particularly when combined with the real-life tragic death of actress Carrie Fisher.
“All I can say about that is that The Last Jedi, I really enjoyed, but I will say it did present a lot of challenges in terms of where Episode IX had to go to finish the saga. In other words, unfortunately Carrie died… She’s a character that had to be figured out, and that was a huge challenge…Luke died, which was a problem. So we had those two opposing problems, so I think what you’re seeing trend is that the setup was difficult to deal with.”
It sounds like there was a real struggle to try to pick up the pieces left by both what happened at the end ofThe Last Jedi, and due toCarrie Fisher’s death, and put them together in a way that would make sense for the story and provide audiences with the satisfying finale that they are crying out for. In the same discussion, Brandon then went on to praise both director J.J. Abrams and writer Chris Terrio for the way they have handled these deaths in the movie, and dispelled any rumours of thecast and crew being dissatisfied with The Last Jedi.
“I think [The Last Jedi director] Rian Johnson is an amazing filmmaker, and I just think that when you’re doing a trilogy, you can’t just abandon a story. So whatever he chose to put in that film, those things that are dangling have to be dealt with.”
She also seems to put to bed the idea that Abrams and his crew will beattempting to undo everything that Rian Johnson didprior, and by the sounds of it they will not be abandoning anything in order to retconThe Last Jedi, despite this being what many fans want.
Picking up a year after the events ofThe Last Jedi, the last remnants of the Resistance face off against the First Order once again - while reckoning with the past and their own inner turmoil. Meanwhile, the ancient conflict between the Jedi and the Sith reaches its epic climax, asThe Rise of Skywalkerbrings the saga to a definitive end.The Rise of Skywalkeris scheduled to be released theatrically on December 20. This comes fromAwards Daily.
