“The Dead Speak!” From the opening words of the opening crawl of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” there is a reveal that raises a ton of questions. Palpatine’s back and he’s ready to finally rule the galaxy. But, wait… didn’t he die in ‘Return of the Jedi?’ Like he was shown falling down a shaft and exploding into a burst of blue light, right? Well, unfortunately, ‘Rise’ doesn’t really answer the big question of how instead hoping fans will fill in the blanks for themselves.
And according to a new interview at Huffington Post with ‘Rise’ editor Maryann Brandon, there seems to be an answer to the question of how Palpatine returns in the film, but the folks behind-the-scenes felt it best to leave it ambiguous.
“It was kind of a delicate balance and went back and forth a lot about how much we wanted to reveal,” Brandon said about Palpatine’s return. “Some scenes changed quite a bit, the way that we wanted to present it to the audience. In the end, we ended up showing a lot less of it than we started with.”
The editor explained that earlier versions of the film included more information about how Palpatine is actually alive, but she felt that it made the film “go off topic.”
She added, “There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on. I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know.”
Not to sound a bit frustrated (but after watching the film, “frustration” is the word I’d use to describe the viewing experience), but how a major villain that hasn’t been seen since the sixth film is back without warning does actually feel like something an audience needs to know. But I digress.
As for one of the biggest fan questions that exists — who had sex with Palpatine? (You know, since Rey is somehow his granddaughter.) Well, Brandon is, once again, vague.
“I’m guessing behind every evil emperor there’s a bigger, badder evil empress,” Brandon said.
It’s unclear whether or not that answer alludes to a real person that director JJ Abrams and Brandon know about, or if this is just a version of “Who the hell knows?!” Either way, again, it’s a bit…frustrating.
The interview does go into more detail about some of the other answers that fans were looking for in the film, but honestly, there’s not a whole lot of juicy tidbits. Why did Kylo Ren disappear? What actually killed him? She doesn’t give a real reason. Why does Rose have so little screentime? Too many characters and not enough time to service all of them, apparently.
But hey, she does at least confirm that Lando wasn’t hitting on Jannah in that final scene, which is pretty clear from the film but still raised questions amongst fans.
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” is in theaters now.