Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ended up as a bit of a damp squib. Spooked by the reaction to The Last Jedi, Disney and Lucasfilm made the disastrous decision to walk back the major character and thematic elements of the previous movie. This resulted in a confusing, poorly plotted film that felt like it was going out of its way to pander to what they assumed fans want.
One of the biggest casualties in this was Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico. She was one of the major players in The Last Jedi, with a future romance with Finn heavily telegraphed. However, when our heroes invited her on the adventure, she explained that she had the space fantasy equivalent of homework to do, studying the plans of Star Destroyers. She then proceeded to practically vanish from the movie, only popping up for a couple of shots in the final battle. So, why did they do this?
Well, The Rise of Skywalker‘s editor, Maryann Brandon has the official word:
“Our story is so chock-full of everyone and we have so many great characters, and [Rose Tico] included, and I don’t know if we could have jammed anything else, any more into the film. I mean, it would’ve been nice, but, at some point, we say, ‘Do we really want a three-hour film, or do we want an adventure and get out before we’re over-saturated with it? … I mean, what would you have given up to put in, you know? Poe, Finn, Rey on an adventure, that makes sense. And then the two droids. You just start thinking about how many characters you’d be carrying constantly. Everything would dissipate. “You couldn’t give enough equal time to everyone. Something has to give.”
And it’s very curious that what “had to give” was one of the main targets of fan hatred in The Last Jedi. But hey, maybe there really wasn’t time enough to explore Rose in the movie. After all, with compelling new characters like Zori Bliss (does nothing, disappears at the end) and Resistance fighter Beaumont Kim (all his scenes could have been played by Rose), who can blame them for not finding enough space for her?
That said, we’ve heard that there were extensive scenes with Rose shot and the party line is that many of these were intended to feature more of her but they simply couldn’t make the editing work with the pre-existing footage of Carrie Fisher. It’s not like Rose Tico was the most amazing character, but she was still interesting and Tran was great in the role. As such, I’d have liked to have seen more of her in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
