The Rise of Skywalker has more than just deleted Star Wars footage for Leia

New reports suggest that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has more than one trick up its sleeve when it comes to Leia and her appearance.

Industrial Light and Magic and Lucasfilm have faced challenges with Star Wars special effects and people before. After all, one need not look further than Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. But The Rise of Skywalker has the biggest challenge of them all. This is no mere cameo; this is what’s supposed to be Leia Organa’s film, and yet Carrie Fisher has passed away.

Star Wars News Net has some new insight on that front, however. According to its latest report, the film will be looking to use not just deleted shots from The Force Awakens, but also reusing some footage and touching it up to match the aesthetic of The Rise of Skywalker. In fact, SWNN cites one of the shots of Leia as seemingly already appearing in The Force Awakens, but changed as necessary. As SWNN notes, this greatly expands how much Leia can appear in the movie. The dialogue is still an issue, at least as of now, as SWNN also writes.

However, as we’ve seen with The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens both, Fisher did plenty of facial acting without words, and with a film that promises to be emotional, that only makes sense. After all, depending on what happens with Kylo Ren, this might be an emotional trial for a woman who’s already lost her husband and her brother, and her son looks like he might go the same way. Does she really need words at this point?

Obviously, we don’t think Leia will stay entirely silent in the film. She essentially can’t. However, we expect that the film will use that idea of silence and sound to convey some meaning, not just because of any constraints, but because of what’s being done with the film. Even the trailer uses that briefly, letting everything fade out before that infamous laugh cuts back in. Sure, a trailer doesn’t mean everything, but it could mean something here.

Like SWNN, though, we’re optimistic here.