Princess-turned-General Leia is still a force inStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, even as the movie premieres three years after the death of star Carrie Fisher.
“We all just loved her,” says director J.J. Abrams inPEOPLE’s commemorative issue,Star Wars: The Essential Guide toThe Rise of Skywalker. “You don’t recast that part, and you don’t have her disappear.”
Fans have speculated that this new movie, Episode IX in the Skywalker saga, was meant to focus on Leia, just as Episode VII,The Force Awakens, centered on Harrison Ford’s Han Solo and Episode VIII,The Last Jedi, featured Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker. But Fisher’s death of cardiac arrest at age 60 disrupted that plan.
Fisher was only 19 when she first starred as Princess Leia in 1977’sStar Wars,cast in part because of her confident presence as the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds.
She subverted the “damsel in distress” role, as Leia took over her own rescue in that movie with now famous lines including, “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”, “Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” and “Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.”
David James/©2017Lucasfilm Ltd.
Leia’s otherworldly hair styles (giant cinnamon buns?) and costumes (from white dress to gold bikini) also became iconic. Fisher once joked to PEOPLE that if she revealed anyStar Warssecrets, “I would have been sentenced to wear that awful hairstyle from the first film.”
The secret now is, how exactly has Abrams brought her back for Episode IX? The director actually went back to unused footage of her that he shot for Episode VII and reworked the storyline. He did so with the blessing of Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, who has also appeared in every movie of the new trilogy.
Daisy Ridley (L) and Carrie Fisher inStar Wars:The Rise of Skywalker.Lucasfilm Ltd.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalkeropens Dec. 20.
source: people.com
