A month after the release of The Last Jedi, fans of the franchise have wondered why no adjustments were made for scenes feating the late, great Carrie Fisher. Rain Johnson recently appeared on the Bullseye podcast with Jesse Thorn, and Johnson revealed the earliest discussions with Lucasfilm included considering potential changes to the plot of the film in order to write her out of the franchise,
“It’s impossible not to change watching it, the filter you watch it through and all of her scenes just become a lot more complicated watching them back. Absolutely it did,” said Johnson. “And then, obviously, her scene with Luke [Skywalker], suddenly it becomes a goodbye scene in a much more profound way than it was before.
“She passed away around New Year’s. We got back after the holiday break and went in the edit room and looked through all of her scenes and had a conversation with [Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy] and the question briefly arose, ‘Do we try and do something? Do we try and manufacture an ending for the character or something?’ I felt strongly and we decided pretty quickly no, we’re gonna let this performance stand.”
“And also because her performance, I thought, was beautiful and I thought that if we did that, we’d have to lose some element of it,” Johnson said. “Whether it was the scene with Luke or the scene at the end with her and Daisy [Ridley] in the Falcon. I want, especially now, I want to leave the movie with Carrie Fisher having told me the words of hope at the end of this movie. I wanted the world to have this performance of hers.”
I, for one agree with Johnson in regards to the performance factor that came in to play. As a big fan of the film, Fishers performance is one of the many bright spots in the film.
