If there’s one thing even haters can’t complain about Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the spine-chilling, heart racing Throne Room scene. Not only do we see Anakin Skywalker’s grandson kill Supreme Leader Snoke, we then see him momentarily team up with Rey in a fantastically choreographed, intense fight scene against the Praetorian Guard. It’s a moment that will no doubt go down as one of the great, if not the greatest fight sequence in all of Star Wars.
In an interview with the Happy Sad Confused podacst, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey in the sequel trilogy spoke about her experience shooting the Throne Room scene.
“[The Throne Room fight] felt pretty cool, and also that was really hard because everything had to match up. There’s like a dolly shot coming through and it ends with me and I think I was fighting James at the time, who’s the stuntman with the two swords. It was so tiring. We did like 25 takes because if one thing was off we had to keep going. But I was really proud of that fight. This fight, it was November, we had water being thrown at us—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 felt really epic, and it felt epic even at the time. One can only imagine what it’s gonna look like.”
But it looks like JJ Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker may actually one-up the Throne Room sequence from The Last Jedi, considering Ridley went on to use the word “great” about 423 times when talking about the highly anticipated rematch between Kylo Ren and Rey.
“I just think they’ve done a great job with all the relationships. With the fun friendships, and with the sort of strange thing with Rey and Kylo… also 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 [swords].”
This, of course, gets me even more excited than I already am for the final chapter of the Skywalker Saga. And if the lightsaber battle does end up being as spectacular as Daisy Ridley made it out to be, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. The lightsaber battle between Rey and Ren in The Force Awakens, which was also helmed by JJ Abrams, was nothing short of goosebumps-inducing. With The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams introduced a style of lightsaber fights that combined the grit and storytelling elements of the original trilogy with a tinge of the stylised choreography that we saw in the prequel trilogy.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will be hitting Malaysian cinemas 19 December 2019.
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