A first look at the new Star Wars film, titled The Rise of Skywalker, has aired at the annual Star Wars Celebration in Chicago.
A teaser trailer and a series of stills, introduced by director JJ Abrams, producer Kathleen Kennedy and key cast members, offered a glimpse at one of the year’s most anticipated movies, which will bring to a close the nine-film saga about the intergalactic adventures of the Skywalker clan.
While The Force Awakens (2015), featured the death of Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford, the following film, The Last Jedi (2017), closed with the death of Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.
Scenes featuring Carrie Fisher – who died in 2016 – as Princess Leia in this film, were created using discarded footage and outtakes shot for the first two films. “Princess Leia lives in a way in this film that is kind of mind-blowing to me,” said Abrams.
He continued: “You don’t recast that part and you don’t suddenly have her disappear. The idea of having a CGI character was off the table. So we said ‘What if we could write scenes about her so it’s her performance?’
“Every day it hits me that she’s not here. It’s so surreal because we are working with her still, if that makes sense. She’s in scenes. She’s alive in scenes.”
Abrams confirmed that the film unfolds after the events of The Last Jedi: “Some time has gone by. This is an adventure that the group goes on together. It’s a story that I think is one of the great things about the movie – the dynamic between the characters. They are just the most wonderful together.”
Stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Lupita Nyong’o and Domhnall Gleeson return, alongside Billy Dee Williams, Richard E Grant and Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd.
Footage in the trailer showed Ridley’s character hugging Fisher’s, as well as wielding a lightsaber, dodging explosions and being told by Hamill’s gravelly voiceover that the future rests on her shoulders and that “no one is really gone”.
Regular cast member Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3PO, was welcomed on stage in Chicago by host Stephen Colbert, as were other key cast members, including robots R2-D2, BB8 and latest droid addition D-0.
The audience sang happy birthday to Ridley, who turned 27 on Friday. Ridley is one of a substantial British contingent involved with the film, along with fellow cast members Daniels, Boyega, Grant and newcomer Naomi Ackie. The three most recent films were primarily shot at Pinewood studios, just outside London.
The loudest cheers at the panel were reserved for Kelly Marie Tran, whose introduction in The Last Jedi earned the actor – who is the first woman of colour to take a leading role in the series – a substantial amount of racist abuse online.
A pro-“straight white male hero” group took credit for the harassment as they continued to rally against “forced diversity”. The same group also launched an unsuccessful campaign against Black Panther. Both films have made more than $1.3bn each to date.
The film will bring to a close the third trilogy of films which began in 1977, recommenced in 1999 with George Lucas’s prequels and then again, in 2015, with The Force Awakens.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Disney boss Bob Iger said after the release of The Last Jedi: “We will take a pause, some time, and reset, because the Skywalker saga comes to an end with this ninth movie.
“There will be other Star Wars movies, but there will be a bit of a hiatus. We have not announced any specific plans for movies thereafter. There are movies in development, but we have not announced them.”
Box office receipts for Star Wars spin-offs Rogue One (2016) and Solo (2018), which told the story of the young Han Solo, were generally disappointing.
Hamill recently conceded that he, too, had experienced Star Wars fatigue. “I’ve experienced it, to a certain degree,” he said, “but [Disney] never listen to my ideas anyway, so who needs ‘em?!”
The film will be released in the UK on 19 December and the US a day later.
• This article was amended on 17 April 2019. A sentence said that the third trilogy of films “recommenced in 1997 with George Lucas’s prequels”. That should have been 1999.
