Despite all it’s numerous controversies, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker is still set to make *checks notes* all the money in this and many far, far away galaxies. Despite mixed reviews and reception, the movie is still Star Wars, and people still love Star Wars, and love to hate it.
Still, certain aspects of the movie just won’t go away, such as the decision to feature as little of Kelly’ Tran as Rose. This seems to be the biggest concession to Star Wars’ worst fans impulse, and there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it; Rose was clearly being set up to feature prominently in the next entry at The Last Jedi. They even set her up as a love interest for Finn!
But fear not! One of the writer’s of the Rise of Skywalker has shown up to…well, quite frankly, to give about as big a bullshit answer as you can give without actually standing in front of a cow’s asshole.
From io9;
“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, via Entertainment Weekly. “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.”
It’s interesting that one of the ways Disney is trying to spin the exclusion of Tran from the bulk of the movie is that they didn’t want her to hang out with the people she had built relationships with, but instead wanted her to act opposite someone who is dead, and then were “saddened” they couldn’t cut around the deleted scenes in a way to make the movie make sense. A good way to avoid that would’ve been to, I dunno, just have Rose go on the fucking adventure with everyone else and maybe not try to shoehorn Carrie Fisher into the movie so damn much, we all know she’s passed away. Throwing a dead woman under the bus just isn’t a good look.
A much better way to handle this situation would be…well, 1.) to just give Rose her own Star Wars series on Disney+, and 2.) to fucking apologize. Rise of Skywalker is a severe course correction after Disney and J.J Abrams interpreted the cries of a loud but vocal few as the thoughts and feelings of the rest of, and it’d be nice if someone came out and said “We’re proud of what we accomplished, but maybe not so proud of removing a woman who was harassed for little reason other than ‘they didn’t like the Canto Bight scenes in a movie about space wizards and laser swords’, we apologize and we need to do better by her.”
Saying “sorry” never hurt anyone. Do better, Disney, do better.
Pretty sure the real reason is because Disney had two directors fighting over the direction the trilogy should go and never bothered to plot it out beforehand.
I’m also sure it’s partially because they wanted everything as platonic as possible so as not to ruin anyones fanfic. Other than the one gay kiss, and the kiss between the main character and a guy who murdered billions, I’m pretty sure the closest thing to romance was Finn about to tell Rey something before they got sucked under the sand.
That aside, I’m a poor judge on this because I didn’t like her character but felt it was about the 68th worst thing about the TLJ so it didn’t bother me. It was also a good filter for telling who didn’t like the movie for actual reasons and who didn’t like it because “SJW BETAS RUINING STARWARS!!!”. There were so many bigger things to have opinions on in that movie that fixating on her was a pretty big tell. Either that or she threatened someones shipping.
…inclined to agree about the directorial in-fighting combining with a head-up-ass interpretation of the previous film’s “reception” to produce both the character’s absence & the crap excuse
…it seems like the extent to which they had the last part thought out was that it was going to be “the Leia one” but then they had no Leia & had to re-orient without the time they appear to have needed to do so with much grace
…it was a Star Wars movie right enough – & they’ve always had a few “huh?” moments if you haven’t switched off the right bits of your brain – but there were moments that felt unduly petty on the part of the director & began to make me wonder how much could be explained by pique
…which, as in the end I think may well be true for a majority of the franchise entries at this point, left me wanting to like it rather than actually liking it
…the literal side-lining of Rose was certainly one of the things that made that hard but the list wasn’t exactly short?
I wasn’t a fan of the character because her plot didn’t make that much sense (outside of the best lightsabre fight ever, not much of Last Jedi did IMO.) I also didn’t get Star Wars crybaby fans who felt the need to attack the actor all over social media. Not her fault at all.
This seems more how the Lucasfilm Execs shoved Jar Jar aside after the outcry 20 years ago over him. Again, not a Jar Jar fan but I wasn’t shrieking over it on the internets either back then. The interview of Ahmed Best and the reaction he got from Star Wars fans gave me pause. My blame for how Jar Jar was done lies completely at the feet of George Lucas and Lucasfilm execs.
To be honest, I kind of realized that the Star Wars films weren’t aimed at me as I was a sort of grown up by then. I don’t mind the newer Diznee movies, but more as a cultural touchstone than a lifestyle.
Me? I’m more excited the Expanse 4th season was released.
Having been a lifelong Star Wars fan I was trying to decide which to binge today – Star Wars or the Expanse? Chose the Expanse, but then found a Firefly marathon – after a couple of episodes of twangy dialogue that I used to love – moving on to my original plan. Nothing beats The Expanse.
Avasarala is arguably even more sweary-ly wonderful in the books but I think mos may be my favorite on screen & on the page…
…little worried what that says about me, to be honest