**SPOILERS AHEAD**
In a film filled with massive explosions, lightsaber fights, and space battles, it was a completely silent moment in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” that probably shook audiences the most. The scene in question is the moment when Admiral Holdo, played by the amazing Laura Dern, sacrifices herself and saves the day by executing a lightspeed jump through Snoke’s starship. It was so shocking, with its silence, that some theaters decided to post warnings for audiences that the silent scene was intentional and not a mistake on the part of the theater.
While most of ‘The Last Jedi’ has been debated endlessly, the Holdo sacrifice is seen by almost everyone as one of the best moments in the film. So, how did writer/director Rian Johnson and his team bring that moment to life?
Speaking to VFXBlog, ‘The Last Jedi’ Visual Effects Supervisor Ben Morris detailed all the thought that went into the pivotal scene. “…I sat there and went, ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do? It’s going to be epic! It’s going to be Bayhem! It’s the full works!’ – because it sounded like a huge destruction scene,” said Morris on his initial impressions after reading the script. “Bayhem,” of course, is a reference to the explosions and general loudness associated with Michael Bay films.
Morris continued, “Rian said, ‘This is about sacrifice, this is an incredible moment that one of the key resistance fighters is willing to give her life. I’m thinking of just doing the whole thing in silence.’ At which point I was like, ‘Wow! Okay.’”
Johnson also gave a couple more tips to the crew, saying the collision “cuts like a hot knife in butter” and should be “serenely beautiful.” Morris and the rest of his crew looked at images of particle physics photography in cloud chambers as inspiration.
Other than the silence, the part of the scene that is perhaps most remembered is the flipping of colors. Instead of the ships being these colorful beacons against a black background, for this scene, Morris and company changed it up.
Morris explains, “I think one of the really clever things is, usually with star destroyers in space, we all remember those as black background with white ships, and that tends to be the rule of thumb. What [concept artist] Luis [Guggenberger] did was turn the entire thing on its head. He said, ‘What happens if space is so full of debris and fine particularity that it becomes white and the star destroyers become silhouettes, and backlit?’”
Over the course of the last month, since ‘The Last Jedi’s’ debut, specific scenes and plot points have been dissected by fans. Johnson has taken to Twitter to defend many of his choices to the angry fans who feel like he “ruined” the “Star Wars” franchise. However, after hearing about all the thought and care that went into every detail, you have to pause to understand that while it will still be debated for years, “The Last Jedi” is nothing if not well-crafted and beautiful.
