STAR WARS AFICIONADO WEBSITE: CARRIE FISHER: REMEMBERING 'ROYALTY'

Wednesday 20 December 2017

CARRIE FISHER: REMEMBERING 'ROYALTY' - PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE...

To us, she will always be royalty. Art by Joe Corroney.

BEWARE: SPOILERS!

Next week (the 27th December, 2017) sees the first year of our Star Wars life without Carrie Fisher's incredible presence, and her tragic passing still feels like a raw and very open wound for all of us emotionally. Thankfully, we have her terrific performance as General Leia Organa in The Last Jedi to savour, and we can enjoy Leia/Fisher's legacy for years, decades, to come- their work not just to be enjoyed by the current generations of fans, but by the many more generations who will watch it on Blu-ray, HD, streaming, VR, or on TV screens- and be equally smitten, influenced and enthused by a character and actress so formidably fused together and integral to the franchise's success and legacy.

There are no plans to have a CGI version of Fisher/Leia with the upcoming EPISODE IX, despite the character's ultimately successful youthful CGI appearance pre-EP IV in Rogue One, a scenario approved of by Carrie Fisher, which happened amidst still continuing controversial debate about the use of CGI likenesses in Hollywood - especially those of film star icons no longer with us, of which Miss Fisher had only just passed away with Rogue's release- a tragic situation that then added further fuel to the fire in the war against CGI which Lucasfilm and ILM were caught up in. Yes, Leia can now be effectively written out of the saga with the way that writer/director Rian Johnson has forged the ending of The Last Jedi- indeed, she can be elsewhere when the final battle between the Resistance and the First Order plays out, but I think that it's unfair to fans of Leia, fans of Carrie, and fans of the Classic Trilogy in general, to end it that way full stop- that Leia will not have a part to play somewhere, even if briefly, in ending the First Order with the Resistance she so so vitally set-up to fight it.

I can't believe that the brilliant technicians at ILM can't find outtake filming footage from the past two Star Wars films and put her in IX somewhere (even if on a viewscreen to talk to the other Resistance heroes, for one last important moment and/or farewell scene). With so much recorded talk with Carrie over the years, the idea that sound design talents like Matthew Wood and his team can't get some dialogue together, alongside mild CGI lip movement superimposition, seems crazy in this kind of film-making technological age that George Lucas and STAR WARS helped revolutionize. The work done by Sony to put the late Paul Walker into the seventh The Fast and the Furious film proved nothing short of brilliant. I can't believe that Lucasfilm/Disney can't do the same for one final cameo appearance for Leia/Fisher.

STAR WARS AFICIONADO asks Disney, Kathleen Kennedy, and J.J. Abrams to reconsider their decision of not having Leia in the sequel trilogy finale, so as to give the character and Miss Fisher's contribution a more unique and special final send-off to fans. One that will end the Skywalker family plotline more efficiently whilst also being even more emotionally satisfying for 2019.