With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker being the final film in the Skywalker saga, J.J. Abrams and his creative team had to squeeze a lot of story into two hours. So, with the story being stuffed with so much stuff, it’s not surprising that it felt rushed. It never really gives the audience a chance to fully resonate with what’s going on in the movie.
The film’s co-writer Chris Terrio is very aware of the rush, and if he could have had a choice in how this story was told, he would have split the story into two movies. During an interview with Awards Daily, Terrio was asked whether there was any talk about splitting this final chapter into two movies and this is what he said:
“I wish we could have done that. There is a lot of plot in the movie, and as a writer, you always want scenes to let the plot breathe more. If there were a way of doing it, splitting it would have been my dream. We could have written these characters forever. There was so much backstory that had to be left by the wayside. I wish that we could have that, but George always said it was nine movies. That was the natural size of the saga, and so, other than a few initial discussions, we never really advanced that conversation. Of course, as a writer, it breaks your heart to leave stuff on the table that you think would have given the story more depth and nuance and give the characters more to do. Speaking for myself and not on the part of the studio, I do wish there could have been a Part 1 and a Part 2.”
I think it’s funny that Lucasfilm pretty much ditched all of Lucas’s original ideas for the story the films would tell, but the one thing they wanted to stand by was his original vision for it being nine movies. If you’re wondering how Terrio would have split the movie, in a separate interview with IndieWire, Terrio thought the first films could have focused on Kylo Ren finding the wayfinder:
“We probably could have written a whole movie that was just a lead up to Kylo Ren going to get the wayfinders, Kylo Ren trying to take on a Henry the Fifth story, right? Where he now is the king, and he had to sort of earn the throne. And now, how will he perform as Supreme Leader? … At the beginning of the film, yes, he’s out to destroy any threat to his power. He’s searching for this legendary world that might be the source of the voice, but quite literally, the galaxy hears a broadcast, which is the voice of Palpatine, and then in the course of the first scene, we learn that Kylo Ren literally has heard in his head the same thing. If you look back at the scenes in ‘Episode 7,’ where Kylo Ren is sort of fetishizing the [Darth Vader] mask and stuff, you think slightly differently about those on re-watch after learning that Palpatine has been every voice Kylo Ren has ever heard.”
I would have been cool with that. It could have offered a lot more background and allowed us to get caught up with the characters a bit more before thrusting them into their final adventure. Oh, well. I think Disney and Lucasfilm just wanted to end this thing so they could start fresh with their future plans. In the end, they should have just planned out the story for the trilogy a lot better.
Regardless of some of the issues I have with the movie, I still enjoyed it for what it was and had a blast watching it. What do you think about What Terrio had to say about splitting the final story into two films? Do you think it would have helped?