“So much is still being worked on.
It’s literally a practical race to get it finished.”
If that admission sounds worrisome, hold your fire on those tweets.
“We had more reshoots onEpisode VIIthan this one,” Abrams says.
“We had more story adjustments onVIIthan this one.
There were a lot of things we didn’t know.
But the ambition of this movie is far greater thanForce Awakens.
What we set out to do was far more challenging.
Everything is exponentially larger on this.”
For example: Disney has released three trailers forThe Rise of Skywalker.
Plus, those bewildering teases of Rey turning to the Dark Side and teaming up with Kylo.
Yet Abrams says fans still don’t really know anything.
The First Order has decimated the Resistance.
Rey has been training to use the Force.
“They’re trying to put bandaids on this leaking ship of the Resistance,” Isaac says.
“We’re not just a ragtag group of people who have been thrown together,” Isaac says.
“We’ve actually had time to train.
There are some really great sequences with the three of us in infiltrating spaces.”
Both Isaac and Boyega say they had their character wishes granted for the final film.
“I definitely wanted more afterEpisode VIII,” Boyega says.
“[Rise of Skywalker] makes Finn’sEpisode VIIIarc make more sense.
We got to bring out a side of Finn we haven’t seen.”
“J.J. came back with a new energy and new vibe,” Boyega says.
“He wanted dialogue to be messy and natural, and that got all of us really excited.”
“I think it really captures the spirit of the original trilogy,” Isaac adds.
Rey has… what?
“Rey is driving her own thing,” Ridley says.
“She’s not doing what other people are telling her to do.”
The heroine has since made progress in her Jedi training.
Yet Rey will use more than her Force powers in the new film.
“It’s a heavy story for Rey,” Ridley says.
Part of Rey’s journey involves solving the mystery of her identity.
(“Classified?”
Rey echoed back to BB-8 during her debut sequence.
Big secret.")
“The parents thing is not satisfied for her and for the audience,” Ridley says.
“That’s something she’s still trying to figure out where does she come from?”
Either way, wasn’t theEpisode VIIIscene supposed to be sincere?
Naturally, Kylo’s destiny will lead to at least one lightsaber clash with Rey.
For his part, Driver rejects any labels for the Rey-Kylo relationship.
“I don’t think it’s all one thing,” he says.
“Part of the fun of playing it is the boundaries of it keep changing.
At times it’s more intimate, sometimes less intimate.
Sometimes it’s codependent.
And then it’s, obviously, adversarial.”
Of course, there’s another original trilogy fallen icon in the film too.
Fisher died after filmingThe Last Jedi.
“Then I remembered we had these scenes that we hadn’t used fromEpisode VII.
It was like finding this impossible answer to this impossible question.
Suddenly we had classic Carrie in these amazing moments.
So when you see in the movie, it’s her, she’s there.
It’s not like there’s some crazy digital trickery.
She’s just in the movie.”
“The wholeStar Warsexperience feels like it never goes away; it’s always there,” Williams says.
They go down deep into ancient Star Wars and came up with something refreshingly new."
Joining Threepio in the metal headgear club is newcomer to the sagaKeri Russell.
“I can see everyone and no one can see me.
“I was just gobsmacked,” Ackie says of the experience.
While the film is introducing new characters, Abrams insistsRise of Skywalkerwon’t set up a future story.
He’s not leaving loose threads for Disney to hang another trilogy directly onto the back of this one.
“It’s a very good ending, and a good ending feels right,” Daniels says simply.
He was referring to its high-stakes story line, but the same could also be said about the franchise.
Speaking of: There’s at least one key player we haven’t discussed.
Palpatine’s return may be the most closely guarded story line in the film.
“It’s an amazing thing to see that really come to the forefront.”
The Rise of Skywalkermight very well turn out to be a full-fledged reunion special of Force ghosts.
And what are the rules that govern the Jedi and Sith spirit realm anyway?
Obi-Wan Kenobi said inEmpire Strikes Backthat he “cannot interfere” with Luke’s fight with Vader.
But inThe Last Jedi, Yoda suddenly called down a lightning strike.
What can Force ghosts do and not do in our world?
Abrams' reply to that key question is pretty much what you’d expect.
“That’s probably best answered,” the director says, “by not answering it.”
