- “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” is finally available on Blu-ray.
- Insider went through “The Art of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” out now, which contains information on alternate and deleted scenes and concepts from the many drafts of the film since 2017.
- The book stirs up some more questions than answers and makes fans consider that Lucasfilm and Disney may have been working on too many new “Star Wars” projects (“The Rise of Skywalker,” “Solo,” and “The Mandalorian”) simultaneously.
- Insider gathered together details you may not know about the making of the film from the art book along with what we learned from original interviews with the “Star Wars” visual effects team earlier this year.
- Early versions of the film had Poe getting kidnapped and a deleted scene with a creepy giant alien puppet that Kylo Ren would have spoken to for help.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
“The Rise of Skywalker” went by codename “Trixie.”
The name was made official on October 25, 2017. According to the book, the code-name was chosen because the “ix” in the middle of the word trixie was representative of the Roman numeral for nine. “The Rise of Skywalker” is Episode IX in the Skywalker saga.
Co-screenwriter Chris Terrio said he’s never rewritten a movie as much as “The Rise of Skywalker.”
“I’ve never rewritten a film as much as this one. It’s like a tide. There’s a new script every morning,” said Terrio. “But we just keep going at it and going at it, loosely thinking that it’s not good enough. It’s never good enough.”
“Luckily, the production team is so good that they can shift and adjust,” he continued. “We’re course-correcting as we go – we’re trying things, and some things don’t work and some things aren’t ambitious enough. Some things are overly ambitious. Some things are too dense. Some things are too simple. Some things are too nostalgic. Some things are too out-of-left-field. We’re finding our balance.”
There were many designs for Rey’s outfit in “The Rise of Skywalker,” including one that resembled her “The Last Jedi” look.
Chief costume concept artist Glyn Dillon said director J.J. Abrams, who returned after directing “The Force Awakens,” wanted something that resembled Rey’s look in “TFA” so they moved away from the darker color scheme shown in “TLJ.”
"J.J. definitely liked Rey's 'The Force Awakens' look, that original feel," said Dillon. "It had to be something similar but not the same. So we were playing around with different colors."
They considered giving Finn a jacket embroidered by Rose.
The art book shows four different looks for Finn. Among them is a bright yellow jacket that would have had a significant tie to Rose.
"At one point, we were thinking that Finn might stay in his original costume," said Dillon. "But it was decided that we should explore some more looks. I thought to get back to more of a pilot look, like a Vietnam pilot with that kind of flak jacket with something on the back. I thought maybe Rose could have embroidered it."
The jacket shown in the book is golden with, what looks like a moon with a solid gold stripe through its center.
The costume team instead went with something that felt similar to the color palette they used for Finn in the past. According to costume concept artist Calum Alexander Watt, Finn's shirt and pants were a nod to Gian Maria Volonté's costume from "For a Few Dollars More."
It's explained why Lando Calrissian's daughter was taken away at a young age.
Lando Calrissian has a daughter? Yes.
No, you didn't miss that in "The Rise of Skywalker." It was revealed in a companion visual dictionary for the movie that Calrissian had a daughter who went missing as an infant. It's heavily suggested Jannah may be his long-lost daughter.
In the art book, co-screenwriter Chris Terrio says the First Order targeted leaders of the old Rebellion by taking their children.
"They went for Lando's daughter," said Terrio. "They went for Ben Solo, which begins to make more sense when you look at the wider context of their machinations - the long-game plan."
There were several different ideas for how to put Kylo Ren's mask back together and how it should look.
Originally, they considered making Kylo Ren a new mask inspired by Darth Vader. There are a few high-gloss designs done, but they then decided to rebuild the character's old mask.
"We knew J.J. wanted to bring the helmet back, so we started with the approach that Kylo had built a new helmet," said creature concept designer and senior sculptor Luke Fisher. "I took the current design and began adding more of the Vader aesthetic, as if Kylo were paying homage to his grandfather."
Different versions of the cracks show it welded together with silver and yellow coloring, but director J.J. Abrams pushed for the red coloring.
"The original joins looked a bit like the lava on Mustafar," said Dillon. "In my mind, Kylo would constantly be using the Force to hold his helmet together, like when he used the Force to stop the laser bolt in [Episode] VII. It would always be alive, this molten thing. But they've since gone with a welding idea instead."
Keri Russell's character was originally a giant creature.
"Zorii's design actually evolved from the helmet concepts for her Spice Gang," said Watt. "Originally the leader of the spice runners was to be a huge creature, so we were tasked with designing the gang only."
When the character changed from a creature to the current iteration of Zorii Bliss, Abrams wanted a character who felt like Boba Fett who never took their mask off.
There was a version of the film where Poe would have been captured.
According to the art book, the spice runners would have captured him and taken him to their boss at an abandoned spice quarry. Storyboards show Finn and Rey going after Poe who's trying to bargain for his life.
Kylo Ren could have revisited Coruscant.
In the original November 2017 version of the film's script, Kylo Ren visited Coruscant's abandoned Jedi Temple where he would have taken an elevator down to the temple's deepest level.
There, Kylo would have come across giant wolves that took over the city.
The original version of the wayfinders Kylo Ren and Rey need to find looked a lot different.
"The first idea was that the wayfinder was going to be a crystal, with the movement of the crystal acting as a directional arrow," said prop master Jamie Wilkinson. "I had it on a piece of leather, and it almost had its own life force."
There was an idea at one point to have Luke and Leia's lightsaber training montage on a massive skull.
There are eight designs of various skull designs in the art book. Some have brilliant horns and teeth sticking out of the ground.
"My aim was to find an interesting 'terrain' - areas with large open spaces, and more challenging areas with obstacles like tusks or horns, giving opportunity for dynamic fight scenes and interesting camera angles," said Fisher.
He was then going to incorporate those elements into a skull design.
"Both the creature and art departments explored designs, but in the end, J.J. felt the scene wasn't working with the large-scale skull and, instead, decided to have them train on a fallen tree," said Fisher.
Someone designed a tank that looked like a massive BB-8.
"I was just having some fun with this tank," said creature concept designer Jake Lunt Davies. "I'm not sure I would have actually wanted to see it realized in the final film."
You can see the concept art from Davies here on his Instagram.
A deleted scene would have shown Kylo Ren meeting a creature called the Oracle and concept art for it is terrifying.
Kylo Ren was apparently supposed to meet the creature on Mustafar, the lava planet where Darth Vader's fortress was located.
Some designs for the Oracle consisted of a submerged baby head with another being coming out of it or on top of it. The final design had a spider-like creature atop a baby head.
According to creature and droid effects creative supervisor Neal Scanlan, they built a design with nearly 28,000 pounds of silicon. It was a complicated-sounding puppet.
"Two puppeteers will be looking after the eyes and the general rocking motion. And then Derek Arnold, one of our performers, will actually be connected to the Oracle's body, with his hand up inside the head," said Scanlan. "And then there will be six more puppeteers, around that group, who individually move each leg in a little arachnid sequence."
What happened?
Scanlan said the Oracle sequence was cut from the movie then it was put back in. Eventually, it was deleted. It seemed way too creepy and scary for "Star Wars."
"We stopped working on it for four weeks, and then suddenly we found out through the grapevine that it was back in the movie," said Scanlan.
According to the book, the scene was filmed January 24, 2019. You can see a small build of the character, also known as The Eye of Webbish Bog, here.
We could have seen Darth Vader's castle on Mustafar.
Unless you were really familiar with "Star Wars," or a recent VR game, you probably wouldn't have realized that Kylo Ren is on the planet Mustafar at the film's beginning.
It doesn't look like the Mustafar we know from "Revenge of the Sith." The lava is all dried up and plant life is starting to grow somewhat. It seems like Kylo's just on any old planet.
It would have been helpful to understand that Kylo was on Mustafar though since that's where his grandad was holed up for years. It sounds like this was all supposed to be a lot more clear in the final film.
"My challenge, at the moment, is how to evolve Mustafar so that maybe the lava has dried up a bit," said co-production designer Kevin Jenkins. "It's not as volcanic as it was, and there's going to be a broken Vader castle in the background. What's happened to this planet since we've been there?"
Babu Frik's character was originally different and named Babu Zazi.
The character started out as a blind shipbuilder with some connection to Rey when she was a scavenger on Jakku. The character combined with "a pocket-size chef de cuisine" to become Babu Frik.
When he was first added to the film, he was originally 18-inches tall. In the finished film, he's nine inches.
Rose had a larger side quest with Admiral Ackbar's son.
Rose was barely in "The Rise of Skywalker," but could have had a bigger part, according to the art book.
"For a while, we had this whole plot about how the weapon that would undo the First Order was something that had been discovered by a race of aliens that cleaned the engines," said co-screenwriter Chris Terrio. "But that turned out to not be right for this movie."
Ackbar's son, Aftab, would have worked with Rose Tico "to deploy the sabotage device."
There was the possibility of seeing Chewbacca tortured by the First Order.
In "The Rise of Skywalker," we saw Chewie get kidnapped by the First Order.
The art book contains three pieces of concept art showing Chewie chained up. In two of the images, Kylo Ren is in front of him. One of the images is labeled "Torture Device Version 4D."
We're probably better off for not seeing that executed.
In an earlier version of the film, Rey encountered the giant serpent near the film's start at the Rebel base.
"Initially, Rey was to encounter the serpent in the surrounding forest of the rebel base," said Fisher. "Upon presenting a round of designs, J.J. informed us that it was no longer in the script, but he would look at the designs anyway. He really liked the direction I'd taken with serpent designs and joked that maybe they should write it back into the script."
"I presumed that was the last we'd see of the serpent. Sometime later, we got word that it had indeed been written back in, this time in an underground cave system," Fisher added.
The new droid D-O was based around screenwriter Chris Terrio's dog, George.
"My other dog is Charles... But George had a really rough life at a shelter in Arkansas. So he literally repeats everything Charles does," said Terrio. "He just follows him around. When I found George, he had a chain around his neck and was outdoors, soaking wet in the rain. And he didn't even know how to accept kindness. When they find D-O aboard Ochi's ship, he's like that."
"Then he comes out and wants to imitate everything that his big brother BB-8 does," he added.
There are four pages of designs of D-O in the art book showcasing his inspiration from the look of a duckling and different color designs. Ultimately, they landed on the green color because they believe it complemented both BB-8 and R2-D2.
They came up with more backstory for Leia's character, which is pretty heartbreaking.
In a 2014 Lucasfilm's Intellectual Property Development Group meeting, Lucasfilm senior vice president of development Kiri Hart mentioned that screenwriter Michael Arndt developed more of a story for Leia after "Return of the Jedi."
"She had worked really hard to rebuild the Republic after 'Episode VI' and at a certain point was discredited because it was revealed that she was Darth Vader's daughter," said Hart in that 2014 meeting. "Cast out of the thing that she cared about the most - reestablishing the Republic - Leia is then at a loss as to what her role should be."
That would have been a very interesting avenue to explore with Leia's character.
Rey's staff is the hilt of her new lightsaber.
"That was the concept," "TROS" visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett told Insider of the inspiration behind using Rey's staff as a part of her lightsaber.
"The art production design and the art department, we all contribute to the designs of various things... [director] J.J. [Abrams] just thought it was logical that she had the staff, and, therefore, the saber should somehow be linked to that," Guyett added.
What's more frustrating is that it was left unclear whether or not Rey's lightsaber was double-bladed. Concept art in the book shows Rey with a double-bladed lightsaber made out of her staff early in the film.
The visual effects team refers to the color of Rey's new lightsaber as "yellow optimism."
Guyett told Insider they discussed and ran tests on what color Rey's lightsaber at the film's end should be before landing on the yellow-orange hue we see on screen.
Guyett and ILM visual effects supervisor Patrick Tubach both described optimism as an inspiration behind the yellow color we see.
"I'm going to paint my house 'yellow optimism,'" joked creature and makeup effects creative supervisor Neal Scanlan.
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) visual effects supervisor Patrick Tubach confirmed to Insider that Rey's lightsaber contains a yellow kyber crystal.
General Leia Organa was brought to life by having Carrie Fisher's face placed on a digital character.
"When you see Leia in 'Episode IX,' basically it's a live-action element of her face with a completely digital character," said Guyett of how Carrie Fisher is in "TROS."
This was done because they wanted to ensure Leia had a distinctly new look from the previous two films.
"The reality of doing this is that you want her to have a new costume," said Guyett. "It would be weird if she just looked like she did in 'Episode VII' or 'Episode VIII.' You want her to have a new hairstyle because she's very specifically part of 'IX.' So we knew that we were going to have to do all of that."
The ILM team faced a number of challenges in bringing Leia to life, including a limited amount of dialogue they could play with. You can read more about the process of adding Fisher to "TROS" here.
Carrie Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd, plays her mother in the flashback scene with Luke Skywalker.
In a small moment, a young Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, trains his sister as a Jedi.
Tubach told Yahoo Entertainment Leia is a combination of Carrie Fisher images from "Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi" and Fisher's daughter Lourd.
"It was a poignant thing, and something that nobody took lightly - that she was willing to stand in for her mom," said Tubach.
There's a moment from the first "Star Wars" movie referenced near the film's end.
"One small nugget that somebody may not have picked up on is that as you fly up through that giant lightning tree and you get up to that top of the tree and she hears the voices of the Jedi, that starfield you're looking at is exactly the 'Episode IV' starfield," visual effects supervisor Patrick Tubach told Insider of the moment right before Rey hears the voices of the Jedi.
"That was very important to J.J. [Abrams]," he added. "He really wanted to have that moment harking back to the very beginning of 'Star Wars,' and that I think was bringing it all back together. Seeing those stars and seeing them look exactly that way. It does rotate, but what you end up on is in the beginning of 'Episode IV.'"
Mark Hamill had a secret second role in the film that not even Scanlan knew about.
Boolio sacrifices his life to give important information to the Rebel Alliance. Shortly afterward, we see his head on a table in front of the First Order. You may not have realized Hamill voiced the character. In the film's credits, he's credited by his pseudonym, Patrick Williams.
"That was a secret," Scanlan told Insider of Hamill's second "TROS" role. "We had no idea. When we did that character on set, one of our puppeteers who operates the animatronic facial features voiced that line. And we had no idea that Mark was gonna play that until I went to the movies."
Emperor Palpatine could have looked even more "horrific" in the film.
"To be honest, we went to almost the horrific, as you always do," Scanlan told Insider of creating the character's new look. "You kind of push the goalposts either direction, and we looked at the idea of him being dismembered or disjointed."
They wound up going with something to honor his look in the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
"What we very quickly realized is that what we wanted to do was to be very, very respectful, and very truthful to the makeup that [makeup effects artist] Nick Dudman had done in the original film," Scanlan said.
