Chris Terrio Wanted The Rise Of Skywalker Split Into 2 Films

Love or hate ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,’ it is easy to feel that J.J. Abrams packed quite a bit into the movie. So much that it felt that as viewers, we were lightspeed skipping through the plot the same way Poe was escaping the First Order at the start of the film. Now, co-writer Chris Terrio is shedding some light on why the pacing felt so quick.

Much like the Sith’s Rule of Two where “Two there should be. No more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it,” it seems like Terrio wanted this final installment to be two films. While I’m usually annoyed when a franchise splits their last movie into two parts, the final chapter of the Skywalker Saga may have benefited from it. There was so much going on at such a fast pace that much of it could easily have been missed or faded into the background as the next piece of plot momentum kicked in.

 

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According to Terrio from an interview at Awards Daily:

“I wish we could have done that. There is a lot of plot in [The Rise of Skywalker], and as a writer, you always want scenes to let the plot breathe more. If there were a way of doing it, splitting it would have been my dream. We could have written these characters forever. There was so much backstory that had to be left by the wayside. I wish that we could have that, but George always said it was nine movies. That was the natural size of the saga, and so, other than a few initial discussions, we never really advanced that conversation. Of course, as a writer, it breaks your heart to leave stuff on the table that you think would have given the story more depth and nuance and give the characters more to do. Speaking for myself and not on the part of the studio, I do wish there could have been a Part 1 and a Part 2.”

While I like the initial sound of this, I’m also not sure I can fully agree with where Terrio would have gone with this. He also recently did an interview with IndieWire where he shared:

“We probably could have written a whole movie that was just a lead up to Kylo Ren going to get the wayfinders, Kylo Ren trying to take on a Henry the Fifth story, right? Where he now is the king, and he had to sort of earn the throne. And now, how will he perform as Supreme Leader? … At the beginning of the film, yes, he’s out to destroy any threat to his power. He’s searching for this legendary world that might be the source of the voice, but quite literally, the galaxy hears a broadcast, which is the voice of Palpatine, and then in the course of the first scene, we learn that Kylo Ren literally has heard in his head the same thing. If you look back at the scenes in ‘Episode 7,’ where Kylo Ren is sort of fetishizing the [Darth Vader] mask and stuff, you think slightly differently about those on re-watch after learning that Palpatine has been every voice Kylo Ren has ever heard.”

If they had gone this route, this story could easily have made up most of Kylo Ren‘s appearances in the first movie.

Would you have been thrilled with ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ to have been split into two films, or are you glad that this part of the “Star Wars” story is now done? Was the pacing just right for the final chapter, or would this have benefitted from more stories being told? Share your thoughts in the comments below!