Part 36 of 43 Individual Scenes from ‘Rise of Skywalker’
This marks the final appearance of Kelly Marie Tran’s character Rose Tico, who may as well not appear in this film. No character is required to appear in any film of course, but it must suck to get the script and realise that you’re on rotation with Maz Kanata for being the character who says whatever Leia needs to say but that isn’t on tape. Even the guy from Lord of the Rings who only exists to read from the wiki article has a better role here. Even the giant slug man got to stand on the Millenium Falcon. Instead, Rose Tico gets her only substantial scene here, politely telling John Boyega that Leia thinks it’d be better for her to stay home and work on her Youtube channel. She’s making an hour-long video about rare Star Destroyer designs. It’s only going to get a few hundred views. Her big hit was a few years ago now, a kinda click-baity video about Death Star II titled “They put the trench on the inside?!” with a thumbnail of Sheev falling down a pipe.
Everyone else is getting ready to go on a capital-A Adventure, the looming threat of Palpatine’s infinite fleet not really inspiring much hustle. I guess when you can’t reach the fleet without going on a fetch quest, it’s easy to conclude that the fleet can’t easily get to you. Or if they do, that’s one less job on your plate. C3P0, who is going on the adventure, says goodbye to R2D2 (who isn’t) in such a manner as makes his fake death basically inevitable – ‘you were my best friend’ indeed. Those two tin cans hated each other.
And look, this is the second-to-last time we’ll see Leia here and I’m going to say it again: I think the film would be remembered a lot more fondly if it got out of it’s own way and let the talented younger leads do their thing without being interrupted every five minutes to remind you that Carrie Fisher is in this film, which she isn’t on account of having died several years before it started filming. Because acting is an art-form and compositing archive footage of someone into an unrelated scene simply isn’t good enough. No amount of technical fidelity is going to get past that core lack of the thing that makes acting an interesting thing to do: seeing a real person try to inhabit a role.
“Rey [tape crackle] never be afraid of who you are.”
- Leia Skywalker