Minor spoilers ahead forStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
If you were a fan ofStar Wars: The Last Jedi, you were probably bummed to see that Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) is barely inThe Rise of Skywalker. A major character in the previous film, Rose now has about as much to do as an unnamed Resistance technician played byDominic Monaghan. So what happened? Why did writersJ.J. AbramsandChris Terrioseverely diminish Rose’s role?
According to Terrio, that wasn’t their intent and they were hampered by technical difficulties. Speaking toAwards Daily[viaThe Playlist], Terrio explained, ““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’s footage in the way we wanted to. 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.”
Terrio continued, “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. The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.”
While this seems well-intentioned, you have to keep in mind thatCarrie Fisherpassed away before filming onThe Rise of Skywalkereven commenced, so they knew it would be a gamble to try and bring Leia into the movie at all even with the leftover footage they had fromThe Force Awakens. It boils down to the same problem that they didn’t think Rose was an essential character because they knew that even if the Leia stuff didn’t work, it wouldn’t be a loss to the overall narrative to lose Rose as well.
Personally, I think that’s a major miscalculation on their part. For starters, if your Leia issue hinges on tech, then it would have been wiser to stick her with Maz Kanata, who is tuned into the Force things that Leia does in this film. Second, imagine if afterEmpire Strikes Backthey had decided that Lando only needed to be inReturn of the Jedifor less than two minutes. That’s basically what happened here with Rose.
I believe Terrio that they didn’t deliberately sideline Rose and that there’s no malice towards the character or Tran. But I also believe that they put the character in a disposable position becauseRise of Skywalkeris constantly trying to ignoreThe Last Jedi. For more on that,click here.
