There's a lot riding on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It's the end of the new Star Wars trilogy and it's the end of the nine movie Skywalker Saga. Fans are going to be looking for this final film to fulfill all sorts of expectations, but the good news is that Daisy Ridley says the movie should make a lot of people happy in at least one key aspect, it will contain an "epic" lightsaber battle.
One of the more interesting elements of the new Star Wars trilogy has been the unusual relationship between Daisy Rideley's Rey and Adam Driver's Kylo Ren. The pair are clearly enemies, but they also have a connection. Recently, when Daisy Ridley was asked by the Happy Sad Confused podcast about working with Driver in The Rise of Skywalker, she mentioned that the pair are going to have an amazing battle in the new film. According to Ridley...
We have a great fight. A great fight. And I was really happy that the Vanity Fair pictures did show a bit of it. It’s a great fight. Like I’ve become such a better fighter and they made the lightsabers lighter, so it actually looks like we’re swinging light and not like heavy, heavy [swords].
Daisy Ridley mentions the Vanity Fair photos that came out several weeks back. In cases like that it can be difficult to know how much of what we're seeing is actually part of the movie and how much is simply a staged photoshoot, but it seems that the picture of Rey and Kylo Ren, surrounded by water with lightsabers drawn, is something we will see in the movie. The fact that the photo even exists is likely the reason Ridley is willing to even mention the scene.
While the lightsaber battle between Rey and Kylo Ren may look amazing, filming it was apparently quite difficult. Ridley says the two of them just had water being thrown at them over and over again, though she was able to make it through like a champ.
This fight, we did, it was November, we had water being thrown at us, and I got a great deal of respect because I did not, I was ‘I’m not gonna complain about the cold, I’m just not gonna do it (laughs)—so it was like a real thing of stamina. It feels really epic, and it felt epic even at the time. Imagine, we had the waves like this, and they’re gonna make the waves bigger, and one can only imagine what it’s gonna look like.
The lightsaber battle in Star Wars: The Last Jedi is one of the bigger fight scenes that the franchise has ever seen, but everything in The Rise of Skywalker is going to need to be bigger than what came before it, because it's the end. Listening to what Daisy Ridley has to say, it might very well be everything fans are hoping for.
We'll find out when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrives this December.
