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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Writer On Bringing New Force Powers To Film (SPOILERS)

December 31, 2019 | Posted by Joseph Lee
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker screenwriter Chris Terrio spoke about bringing force healing to the series. Here are highlights:

On force healing appearing in The Mandalorian and The Rise of Skywalker: “We had discussions within Lucasfilm about various Force powers, and Force-healing, which is something that’s been mentioned in various extended universe stories, was an idea that both Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau and we, over on the film side, thought was a really interesting thing to explore. It might not have been completely planned at the beginning, but once we realized that we were both coming upon this new expression of Force power, we then worked with that in mind, knowing that this was a thing that would be seen at different times in different parts of the galaxy at roughly the same time [of release].”

On the audio for the Leia scenes: “As far as the audio goes, every word that she says in the movie she’s said as Leia in Star Wars. I’d have to talk to Skywalker Sound about which bits were usable exactly as they were and which bits were cobbled together with different audio tracks. We had all the audio that Leia says at our disposal, and of course, every word that she says on camera is really Carrie. We also had access to the dailies from the original trilogy, and in the flashback of Luke and Leia, that image of Carrie comes from Return of the Jedi. So, we had access to everything in the archive, which turned out to be super helpful. So, yeah, the original trilogy was on our table for the flashback and for audio. That said, Leia was a very different person in the new trilogy, and I’m not sure that we would’ve used any audio from the original trilogy. Her voice had changed, and obviously, she was older, wiser and had a different quality to her performance. So, I’m not sure we ended up using any audio from the original trilogy, and we tried to stay true to Carrie’s acting intentions as much as we could.”

On only Leia and Luke’s ghosts showing up at the end: “We absolutely discussed who would be there at the end. It’s not as though those Force ghosts will never appear to Rey now that she really is the first of the new Jedi. I think she has all of those Jedi behind her. J.J. was pretty clear about the idea that he didn’t want to take away from the moment of Leia finally appearing as a Force ghost and the twins finally being together. This might be in the novelization, but we talked a lot about how Leia lost her home. Alderaan is gone. So, she could never take Luke to see where she grew up as a princess, but Luke could’ve taken Leia to see where he grew up as a farmer. But, the twins never got to Tatooine together (to visit Luke’s childhood farm). So, the idea of seeing the twins together after the sabers are laid to rest felt like it was something that was very moving to me and J.J.”