Luke Skywalker wasn’t the only one who perished during the throes of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, you know; another key member of the Resistance fell at the hands of the First Order.
His name? Admiral ‘it’s a trap!’ Ackbar, though it’s fair to say that a number of Star Wars fans felt Ackbar was given short shrift, and was ultimately brushed aside without much care and consideration. Turns out they’re not alone, as Tim Rose himself felt somewhat disappointed by his send-off from The Last Jedi, recalling the moment when he was actually in tears following his final scene in the Ackbar suit, only to be undermined by Rian Johnson.
In a candid chat with Jamie Stangroom (h/t EpicStream), Rose shared the following:
We finished all of our bits and they asked me to come down to camera. And I thought, ‘Oh well, maybe they’re going to say thank you for being one of the heritage characters and giving 30 years and all that.’ But what they did was, they gave me a Millennium Falcon sign that had the day and the date on it, the scene number, and they said, ‘Can you look at camera and say “It’s a wrap?” Because that would be really funny.’
Let’s not forget that Rose had been attached to the Ackbar character since 1983, when he quite literally pulled the strings on the set of Jedi. So it’s small wonder why he was emotional during his final moments on The Last Jedi – a movie in which his Resistance commander was killed off without much fanfare. He didn’t even get a ‘moment’, really, and that’s what disappoints Rose the most; that his iconic Star Wars character unfairly brushed aside during The Last Jedi, and therefore didn’t get a chance to properly connect with the franchise’s younger fanbase.
He concluded:
After everything, after hoping there’d be something, after knowing there wasn’t going to be anything else, Ackbar’s final moment before he went into the box was a big joke about ‘It’s a wrap.’ They just thought ‘Wouldn’t it be funny?’ And that was the sum total of my life as Ackbar.
The Skywalker Saga reaches its thrilling conclusion in December when Lucasfilm and director J.J. Abrams will release Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker into the world.
