Carrie Fisher in Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker - Finishing the Film

After having killed off Harrison Ford’s Han Solo and Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker in episodes 7 and 8, the filmmakers wanted Carrie Fisher, to play a large role as Princess Leia/General Organa in episode 9. Sadly, Fisher, 60, died of a sudden cardiac arrest on Dec. 27, 2016. Instead of cutting her out of the film, director J.J. Abrams decided to take unused scenes of Fisher from The Force Awakens to create original scenes that could fit into the new film’s plot. This took a lot of creative thinking on the part of Abrams and co-screenwriter Chris Terrio. Abrams told Vanity Fair, “We started looking at what these shots were; we started writing scenes around these shots, completely new contexts, new locations, new you see Carrie, we completely constructed, lit, and composed the shots around the original pieces that we had.“ A lot of visual effects work was also needed to make the older footage work (one reason among many: Fisher had different hair and costumes in