The Rise Of Skywalker: D23 Special Look

As if a trailer for The Mandalorian and the announcement of an Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+ was not enough Star Wars news to get us all excited, people at D23 were treated over the weekend to a “Special Look” at The Rise of Skywalker. That footage has now been released to the public.

As with all Star Wars trailers, this is a thing of beauty. Given the monumental importance of this film being the end of the “Skywalker Saga”, I love how the first half of the footage is shots from all of the preceding movies with Luke’s voice-over from the teaser trailer.

“We’ve passed on all we know. A thousand generations live in you now. But this is your fight.”

It’s in the second half where things go from just beautiful to also exciting and stunning. We get to see Rey and company on Pasaana, a quick shot of Leia, Resistance fighters and a corvette dropping out of hyperspace with another freighter, hundreds of Star Destroyers, Finn with Jannah in a cockpit, a gold protocol droid that looks to be Threepio with red eyes, a giant weapon hitting a planet, Rey throwing her lightsaber in a forest and pulling it back with the Force, Kylo advancing towards the camera while drawing his lightsaber before fighting Rey on some machine in the middle of an ocean. And then, we hear the familiar voice of Palpatine:

“Your journey nears its end.”

A black screen follows as we ear the sound of Vader’s breathing, then we see Rey in a black cloak unfolding a red double-bladed lightsaber.

Cue the internet going crazy!

So to start with that final shot of Rey, I think that this is a deliberate misdirect, with this either being part of a vision or some sort of test, similar to how Luke faced “Vader” on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back, only to find that it was him. Given the importance that Rey has to young girls, I can’t imagine her being turned to the dark side and I don’t see how they could adequately turn her to the dark side and redeem her in one movie given how The Last Jedi finished.

The fight between Rey and Kylo looks awesome and between this clip and the shots in the Vanity Fair article, I can’t wait to see the scene. Going by the footage in this and the teaser trailer, I imagine that they are fighting on the wreckage of the Death Star that we saw previously. I also think that the shot of an A-wing crashing in the teaser trailer will be during the battle that we see the fighters jumping to in the new footage. I love seeing so many recognisable ships with X-wings, Y-wings, A-wings and B-wings in the group, along with a corvette and what I imagine is the ship Finn is in (the shot of Finn and Jannah does not look like it’s in the Falcon‘s cockpit and the Vanity Fair photos showed him and Poe in the cockpit of a different ship. I’m very excited by the shot of all the Star Destroyers as it looks like we are going to get one of the biggest space battles yet.

Right now, I’m at a stage where I would happily get no more new footage for this film. I know that is highly unlikely, but I really hope that Lucasfilm does not over-market this film with too many spots and that any more footage continues to have very limited context to keep us all guessing.

What did you think of the Special Look?

Thanks for reading. May the Force be with you…