THE RISE OF SKYWALKER Writer Chris Terrio Explains Why Rose Tico Was Sidelined in the Film
Star Wars writers and directors have a tough job these days. There are so many fans who are critical of each installment for varying reasons, and the blame is usually placed on the directors and/or writers. This latest film is no different, and fans seem to have complaints across the board ranging from storyline to acting and more. One of the buzzed about issues in The Rise of Skywalker is the misuse of the character of Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran.
The character was introduced in The Last Jedi, and though some were critical of her for reasons unknown to me, many were fans of her. We met Rose Tico after the death of her sister, a martyr for the resistance. Rose is a resistance mechanic who is talented and smart, and seemed to have her eye on Finn, with her heart deeply rooted in the cause. After the final film, theverge reported that Rose Tico appeared in the film for a measly 76 seconds only, and fans definitely took notice. So why make the controversial choice to sideline the character?
The film’s co-writer, Chris Terrio, sat down with Awards Daily to talk about the decision. Here’s what he said:
Well, first of all, J.J. and I adore Kelly Marie Tran. One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie [Fisher]’s footage in the way we wanted to. We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film. The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.
That makes sense. So not only is it sad that we didn’t get more Rose, but we were also supposed to get more Leia in the film as well. That’s a bummer. I know some fans won’t be happy with that explanation, because you just can’t please everyone, but I can understand that there were deadlines and timelines and if some of the scenes couldn’t be produced in a beautiful and pristine way, then they had to make the decision to pull them.
It’s just too bad we didn’t get to see more of this great character that was set up for great things. What do you think?