'Star Wars' Writer Can't Explain Why Rose Got Screwed Over

It's no secret that the character of Rose Tico isn't in Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker all that much. According to somebody who bothered to do the math, actress Kelly Marie Tran has just one minute and sixteen seconds in the new movie. We get more scenes of Poe Dameron unsuccessfully trying to hook up with a female Rocketeer than we do with Rose. Which is surprising for a few reasons. Despite how you may feel about her outing to Space Atlantic City, Rose was a central component of The Last Jedi. You don't get your own John Williams theme unless you're a pretty major Star Wars character.

Even more baffling is the fact that director J.J. Abrams effusively praised Tran during Star Wars Celebration this past spring. Abrams claimed that he was most grateful to The Last Jedi director for "casting Kelly Marie." This is all after fans welcomed Tran with almost a full minute of cheering and clapping likely not realizing that this applause break would come close to equalling the amount of time she would spend on screen in the goddamn movie.

In retrospect, Abrams' comments seem, oh, a tad disingenuous. So with a lot of fans unhappy about Rose's erasure from the film -- and hey, there's the fact that Tran quit Instagram due to harassment from racist dweebs -- The Rise of Skywalker co-writer Chris Terrio hit the interview circuit to, uh, make things way more confusing?

According to Terrio, their intent was never disrespect. Rather, the character of Rose was supposed to be the "anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia". Meaning that instead of going on a fun adventure, Rose had to stay behind to act opposite someone who died three years ago, like some kind of computer-enhanced Weekend at Bernie's. Terrio added that a lot of these moments were cut because their digital resurrection of Carrie Fisher did not "meet the standard of photorealism that we'd hoped for" in every scene.

Because Lucasfilm is terrible at letting things die and not awkwardly bringing them back to life, Terrio later walked back his original comments. In an additional statement, Terrio claimed that those scenes were cut during the "script stage" and was not the fault of the visual effects "wizards at ILM," adding that if they had "chosen to use the scene, ILM would have made it look perfect. They always do." Presumably because ILM has gained Skynet-like sentience and was threatening his family.

Even this seems like BS, because just this past November, Tran gave an interview in which she discussed her excitement about the scenes between Rose and Rey, which were apparently also cut from the movie. Lucasfilm even released a photo from one of these missing scenes as promotion.

Unless J.J. Abrams reveals that Daisy Ridley secretly died years ago, the Rose/Rey stuff would have been cut for entirely different reasons. What the hell happened during the making of this thing? Can Lifetime please produce The Unauthorized Rise of Skywalker Story TV movie immediately?

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