SPOILERS: The Rise of Skywalker originally went deeper into Palpatine’s story.
Did you also find it a little vague how Emperor Palpatine was suddenly so powerful at the beginning of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker? You’re not the only one. That is not surprising, because the film does not really explain very well how he came to power again. But that was originally the intention …
This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. If you haven’t seen it yet, here are 5 reasons why you should see the movie!
Since the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the film has been talked about a lot, and as expected, opinions are quite divided. One of the problems many people have with the film is the sudden appearance of Emperor Palpatine, the great enemy of the first two trilogies who was eventually defeated in Return of the Jedi by none other than his apprentice Darth Vader.
Or maybe not, because in The Rise of Skywalker he’s just back, with the largest fleet we’ve ever seen in Star Wars. But how then, we may have wondered in the cinema. At the beginning of the movie, as well as at the end of the movie. Because a clear explanation of why Palpatine has become so powerful again – and is alive at all – we never really got. Now, Maryann Brandon, an editor of the film, has revealed that they originally planned to delve deeper into the backstory of the mighty Sith Lord, but ended up cutting it from the movie.
It was kind of a delicate balance and went back and forth a lot about how much we wanted to reveal. Some scenes changed quite a bit, the way that we wanted to present it to the audience. In the end, we ended up showing a lot less of it than we started with.
But why? According to Maryann, the film was already full enough, something we can all agree on, no doubt.
There was originally a little more information about it, what was keeping alive. it seemed to go off topic. There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on. I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know.
However, a lack of time is not a good reason for not properly explaining a crucial part of the film, but that is clearly not how JJ Abrams and his crew saw it. And when she says ‘things you didn’t need to know’ … Opinions differ about what we don’t want to know, apparently!
During the same interview, Maryann talks about some other last-minute changes. For a long time they didn’t know if Rey and Kylo Ren would kiss:
I always said, ‘The movie will tell us whether they should kiss or not. We will know by the time we get to the end of our process, if it should happen. ‘ And I felt it should, and agreed with me, and other people who saw the film agreed.
JJ Abrams thought it was anything but simple to make The Rise of Skywalker. Especially the fate of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi was ‘a challenge’. Later this year we can be part of all the movies from the Skywalker saga, with this LEGO Star Wars game.
