It’s hardly unexpected that the castmates of the late, great Carrie Fisher would enthusiastically praise her performance in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. For starters, she’s a legendary icon in the Star Wars franchise and, secondly, she sadly and suddenly passed away shortly after completing her scenes for the film. Indeed, all those involved with the production have been heard to wax lyrical about her work in the project, ever since the news of her death was announced. The difference now is that the cast have officially watched the final cut of the pic, and so are now speaking from an audience-based perspective.
Chatting with Yahoo Entertainment after attending an advance screening of the film, fellow Star Wars icon Mark Hamill expressed the mixture of emotions that seeing Carrie Fisher’s performance evoked.
“She’s wonderful in the movie. It’s a tremendous loss, there’s no way to sugarcoat it and put a happy face on it. Although I can tell you, she would want us to be laughing and having fun. She wouldn’t want us to be all morose and down. She’d be moved by how missed she is. But you’re going to love her in the movie.”
For those who are relative newcomers to the cast of the space saga, the experience was evidently equally intense – with Daisy Ridley highlighting the fact that her loss really magnifies the emotional content of the story.
“And it’s weird, because so much of what happens in the film, it would’ve been emotional anyway. But there is real unplanned poignancy, it’s an emotional one.”
John Boyega took time to draw attention to Fisher’s technique in the movie – praising her ability to convey a great deal within layers of subtlety.
“It definitely pulls on your heartstrings, it definitely does. There’s no way to separate [it]… And she as an actress does a phenomenal job. The performance is subtle, but her eyes say the most, and that’s the best kind.”
For generations of Star Wars fans, too, the watching of The Last Jedi will be a highly emotional experience since, as John Boyega says, “there’s no way to separate it.” We know, going in, that we are watching the final Star Wars appearance of Leia Organa. On a practical level, though, Mark Hamill explains the devastating missed opportunity that is now apparent, as a result of Fisher’s passing.
“The shame is because Harrison was more prominent in [Episode] VII [The Force Awakens], I’m more prominent in VIII, she was meant to be more prominent in IX.”
There is a dark, unsettling irony to the fact that making us wait so long for a Star Wars film to be truly focused on the single female character of note from the original trilogy has meant that Lucasfilm is simply too late. Thankfully, we have Leia Organa’s five past Star Wars appearances to hold on to for posterity – and one more about to arrive.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi lands in theatres on December 15th.
