The people's princess: why Carrie Fisher is at the heart of The Rise of Skywalker

The Star Wars film-makers’ well-crafted workaround, following the actor’s death in 2016, keeps Leia where she belongs in the ranks of the saga’s greatest heroes

Spoiler alert: this article reveals major plot details

If Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is to be remembered for anything other than its mediocre reviews (the poorest for a live-action Star Wars film since the abominable Phantom Menace), it will probably be as an exercise in corporate box-ticking and fan service. Round off the latest trilogy in the long-running space saga with a satisfying final instalment: check. Reintroduce one of the original trilogy’s most liked faces in Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian: check. Establish a credible character arc for the new movies’ key antagonists: Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren/Ben Solo: check (just about).

Director JJ Abrams must be given credit for pulling off such a storytelling endeavour, even if the result feels clunky and a little lifeless at times. But the film-maker’s toughest task – and the one that may ultimately have damaged The Rise of Skywalker’s chances of standing with the saga’s greatest instalments – was to ensure that Carrie Fisher’s Leia retained her position at the heart of the movie, despite the actor having died in 2016 before filming began.

His task was made even more difficult when Disney bosses briefed journalists in the wake of Fisher’s death to the effect that the studio would not be using the mo-cap “ghosting” tech that was successfully but controversially used to revive Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One. Instead, Leia was restored to life with the use of previously shot footage from Abrams’ The Force Awakens.

She is at the peak of her Jedi powers in The Rise of Skywalker, a side of her we have only glimpsed in previous episodes. We see a flashback to her training – the only instance in which CGI is used to show us a younger version of the character. And back in the main timeline, Leia’s scenes are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the story. She embraces Rey, talks to a multitude of other characters, and seems to be positioned right at the beating heart of the tale. She even makes a major intervention in the climactic battle between Rey and Ren, distracting her son from across the vast swathes of space with the use of Jedi powers, in order to allow the grand-daughter of Palpatine to achieve victory and begin turning Ren to the light. This is a fitting last hurrah for one of Star Wars’ most emblematic figures: a final sacrifice, that sees her written out of the saga in hugely satisfying fashion.

The problem is that we know, deep down – and can tell when watching – that Fisher’s appearance is not really a tangible performance at all, but rather a spectacularly well crafted assembly of out-takes that has had a story built around it for convenience’s sake – like a “new single” from a long lost pop star, which everyone knows was previously unreleased because it didn’t quite cut the mustard at the time of recording. The result is just about acceptable, but we cannot know how The Rise of Skywalker would have turned out had Fisher been alive to shoot new scenes for it.

The idea is that Leia is completing Rey’s training in the Jedi arts, yet Fisher’s turn here seems woolly in the extreme, next to Mark Hamill’s blistering return as Luke in The Last Jedi, or Frank Oz’s magnificent debut as Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back – the two previous instances in Star Wars in which we have seen an elder master teach a young apprentice.

There is no blame to be apportioned here, merely a comment on the available facts. Had Fisher lived, The Rise of Skywalker might have been the movie that gave Leia her place as an equal in the Jedi ranks to Luke and Yoda. In the end, she is a pale facsimile of what might have been – yet that seems a cruel verdict for obvious reasons.

After all, imagine for a moment the other available alternative: a final episode in the sprawling nine-movie saga in which Fisher did not appear at all, leaving a gaping hole in both narrative terms and in the hearts of Star Wars fans. Somehow it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Contributor

Ben Child

The GuardianTramp

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