Warning. Spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi follow…
It’s almost a year since the passing of Carrie Fisher, and fans can now enjoy her final role as the Rebel hero Leia Organa in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
As those who have seen the movie will know, The Last Jedi did provide Lucasfilm with the opportunity to write the Princess turned General out of the Saga ahead of Episode IX, with Leia sucked out into space after her ship comes under attack from the First Order, only to save herself with the Force.
Speaking to IGN, director Rian Johnson has revealed that there were brief discussions within Lucasfilm about reshooting that particular sequence in order to bring Leia’s story to an end, but ultimately the decision was made to keep her role fully intact.
“After we came back from New Year’s, Kathleen Kennedy and I had a conversation and I felt really strongly that we had a beautiful performance from her,” said Johnson. “Because if we did that, first of all that would feel like a very unsatisfying end to that character, because that moment of her getting blown out was not engineered to be an ending. And second, that would mean we would lose the scene with her and Luke, the scene with her and Rey at the end, the scene with her and Holdo. So much stuff that I feel I wanted to have from Carrie. I didn’t want to lose that. We talked about it briefly but it was something very quickly I decided I didn’t want to do.”
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It’s unfortunate that Leia will now presumably be killed off off-screen during Episode VIII and Episode IX, but as Johnson states, altering The Last Jedi would have meant we missed out on some great scenes. Even the film’s biggest critics will surely admit it was nice seeing the Skywalker twins reuniting for one final time.
Meanwhile, in the same interview, Johnson discussed Leia’s use of the force to save herself, stating that he viewed it as instinctive, rather than the result of her undergoing any Jedi training:
“This is a reflex action on her part. It’s the equivalent in my head of when you hear about parents, toddlers are caught under cars, and they suddenly get Hulk strength and can lift it up. Or a drowning person climbing their way to the surface. It’s instinctual, her use of it. It’s the opposite of when Luke Force-pulls the saber in Hoth. It isn’t like, ‘I’m going to try and do this.’ For her it’s just an instinctual thing of, ‘I’m not done yet. I’m not giving up. I’m pulling myself back in.’”
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In Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Skywalker saga continues as the heroes of The Force Awakens join the galactic legends in an epic adventure that unlocks age-old mysteries of the Force and shocking revelations of the past.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi sees returning cast members Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata), Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Gwendoline Christie (Captain Phasma), Billie Lourd (Lieutenant Connix), Andy Serkis (Supreme Leader Snoke), Peter Mayhew and Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Tim Rose (Admiral Ackbar), Mike Quinn (Nien Nunb) and Warwick Davis joined by new additions Jimmy Vee (Pan) as R2-D2, Kelly Marie Tran (Ladies Like Us) as Rose, Benicio Del Toro (Guardians of the Galaxy) as DJ and Laura Dern (Jurassic Park) as Vice Admiral Holdo.
