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With just four months to go until a new Star Wars JJ Abrams ' closing chapter might have in store.
The latest to do the rounds places the spotlight on the film’s title. The Rise of Skywalker was announced as Episode IX ‘s official name back in April, with the director saying: “The title feels like it’s the right title for this movie and I know that it’s provocative and asks a bunch of questions, but I think when you see the movie, you’ll see how it’s intended and what it means.”
This didn’t stop fans from immediately assuming the Skywalker referred to in the name to be Luke (Mark Hamill). But, a new theory wonders whether the title could be hinting at the return of Anakin Skywalker.
A Reddit user predicts that the deceased Anakin, who went on to become Darth Vader, will return to “fulfil the Chosen One’s prophecy and actually bring balance to the force”. Many people have claimed that Luke, who dies and becomes one with the Force in The Last Jedi , will return in Episode IX as a “Force spirit”, much like a reformed Anakin did at the end of Return of the Jedi .
Show all 35 1 /35Films to watch before you die Films to watch before you die Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) With this update and upgrade of the 1930s serial adventure, Steven Spielberg turns what could have been pastiche into a practically perfect film. Harrison Ford’s daring archaeologist is almost always out of his depth but has impeccable underdog charm, and Douglas Slocombe’s casually stunning cinematography is matched by one of John Williams's finest scores. Indy is ultimately irrelevant to the entire plot, interestingly, but his indefatigable effort to do the right thing still inspires. HO
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Films to watch before you die Spirited Away (2001) Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's films delight kids with their bright colours, imaginative characters and plucky heroines (usually). But there's meat to their bones for adults to digest, especially in this towering fantasy epic. As young Chihiro takes a job in a mysterious bathhouse peopled by spirits in order to save her parents, viewers can explore everything from deeply rooted interpretations of traditional Japanese myth to Miyazaki's fascination with Western filmmaking and the Second World War. And visually it’s unparalleled. HO
Toho
Films to watch before you die Avengers (2012) Yes, but hear us out: Avengers is a grand experimental film. Marvel risked four popular franchises on this superhero throw of the dice, something never attempted in cinema history. They won, and made the fizzing chemistry of the unlikely gang who must save us from aliens look easy. But the failure of every Marvel imitator since makes clear how impressive this billion-dollar gamble really was, and how difficult it is to tell character-driven stories in blockbuster cinema on this scale. And as a bonus, it has a Hulk. HO
Marvel Studios
Films to watch before you die The Shining (1980) Stanley Kubrick’s creep-show classic is remembered for the indelible images of that violent finale chase, but its reputation and influence stem from the slow-winding tension that precedes it. Jack Nicholson is the struggling writer whose sanity frays over a winter season at an isolated and haunted hotel; Shelley Duvall plays his increasingly desperate wife. Touching on questions of domestic violence as well as delivering a ghost story for the ages, this will get under your skin and stay there. HO
Warner Bros/Hawk Films/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
Films to watch before you die Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) One of those remakes that justifies remakes, Philip Kaufman’s beautifully skilful spin on the McCarthy-era alien-clone thriller translates it wickedly to the psychobabble age of the 1970s, with a bit of post-Watergate panic thrown in. Donald Sutherland’s lugubrious health inspector is a nicely grumpy enemy of the pod people, and the hysteria ratchets up masterfully. PS
Films to watch before you die The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Wes Anderson's meticulously mannered and beautifully composed films are not to all tastes, but when combined with a cast of this calibre and a more-than-usually heartfelt script, they are capable of magic. Gene Hackman plays the disgraced patriarch of a family of geniuses, making one last attempt at redemption. With a who’s who of Hollywood in support, it’s a story that is as bizarre, hilarious and moving as family life itself. HO
Buena Vista Pictures
Films to watch before you die Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean’s First World War epic about TE Lawrence remains a filmmaking milestone, the movie that Steven Spielberg rewatches before starting each new film. Its genius is to combine huge scale battles – notably the attack on Aqaba – with psychological insight into the toll that the war took on Lawrence’s mind. The white-led casting of Arab characters is appalling to modern eyes, but with its daring, dazzling filmmaking it remains one to watch despite that. HO
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Films to watch before you die Bicycle Thieves (1948) A devastating portrait of the poverty trap, Vittorio De Sica’s neo-realist masterpiece remains all too relevant. Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) is offered a desperately-needed job – but it requires a bicycle, and when his is stolen he and his son resort to desperate measures to get it back. Shot with non-professional actors who lived in circumstances close to that of their characters, this is a study in compassion and empathy. HO
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Films to watch before you die Farewell My Concubine (1993) Spanning five decades of Chinese history, this sprawling epic follows two stars of the Peking Opera from harsh childhood training through the perils of the Second World War, the Communist takeover and the Cultural Revolution. Director Chen Keige drew on his own experience of the Cultural Revolution to shape this groundbreaking, tormented romance both between Zhang Fengyi’s Ziaolou and Leslie Cheng’s Dieyi, and between Ziaolou and his former prostitute wife Juxian (Gong Li). HO
Miramax Films
Films to watch before you die Tokyo Story (1953) Pauline Kael thought that the basic appeal of movies was the “kiss kiss bang bang” of action and romance, but Yasujirō Ozu demonstrates that film is capable of much more in this quiet family drama. It’s a simple story about two elderly parents visiting their adult children, only to find that the younger generation is busy with other things. But it’s also a meditation on the passing of time, and on grief, and on the constant push towards the new that will break your heart every time you watch it. HO
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Films to watch before you die Double Indemnity (1944) If we have learned anything from film noir, it is that murder pacts never work out well for both parties. That’s certainly the lesson when Fred MacMurray’s infatuated salesman offers life insurance to Barbara Stanwyck’s femme fatale Phyllis against her unloved husband. The scheme gives way to a riveting stew of suspicion and paranoia, with Stanwyck’s ruthless determination warping MacMurray’s Neff out of all recognition as director Billy Wilder tightens the screws. HO
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Films to watch before you die Days of Heaven (1978) Terrence Malick’s second, and for many, greatest film is a mesmerisingly gorgeous love triangle set in the Texas Panhandle in 1916, loosely based on an Old Testament parable. Richard Gere and Brooke Adams are the lovers who pose as brother and sister to fool a rich, dying farmer (Sam Shepard). Nestor Almendros’s astounding magic-hour photography rightly won an Oscar, and Linda Manz supplies heartbreaking, plainspoken narration as Gere’s younger sister. PS
Paramount Pictures
Films to watch before you die Citizen Kane (1941) The problem with calling something “the greatest film ever made” is that it begins to sound like homework. Forget that: beyond all the technical dazzle and ground-breaking filmmaking Orson Welles’s masterpiece has red blood in its veins and a huge beating heart. What’s more, its portrait of a thrusting, occasionally demagogic tycoon and the hollowness at the heart of his success remains as relevant as it ever was, and the suggestion that America might be susceptible to media manipulation all too believable. HO
Films to watch before you die Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) Marcel Carné's immortal saga about a 19th-century Parisian theatre company – often called the French Gone with the Wind – has a swooning romanticism but majors in heartbreak, too. Among this ensemble, brilliantly played by some of the best Gallic actors of their day, hopes rise and are shattered, and jealousy mounts among all the acolytes of a courtesan called Garance. It looks back to mime and stagecraft as essential components in the prehistory of cinema, while also being great cinema.
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Films to watch before you die Rear Window (1954) Whether you see it as Alfred Hitchcock’s celebration of voyeurism or simply one of the most nail-biting thrillers ever made, it’s a superb example of the Master of Suspense at work. James Stewart’s photographer, laid up with a broken leg, becomes obsessed with the lives of his neighbours and suspects one of murder. The unusually vulnerable hero – as in Vertigo – increases the stakes and ensures that simple brawn won’t save the day, while Hitchcock ratchets up the tension unbearably by putting Grace Kelly’s plucky girlfriend in the lion’s mouth. HO
Films to watch before you die It Happened One Night (1934) Claudette Colbert's eloping heiress and Clark Gable's hack on his uppers warily team up on a Greyhound bus, only to aggravatingly fall for each other. Frank Capra's evergreen romcom all but invented the love-hate formula that's one model for silver screen chemistry, hoicking up Colbert's skirt to flash a leg when they need to hitch-hike, and dismantling Gable's smarmy defences. The biggest hit of its day for a reason, it was also the first ever film to win the big five at the Oscars. PS
Films to watch before you die Hoop Dreams (1994) The trials of young black basketball hopefuls in Chicago tell us volumes, from their upbringing to all-or-nothing career rimshots, about the opportunities otherwise denied them. For these portraits of inner-city poverty, gliding between frustration and triumph, Steve James’s epic of ghetto realities has been influential on every sports doc that has come in its wake. The Academy’s documentary branch will never quite live down failing to nominate it. PS
Kartemquin Films
Films to watch before you die The Apartment (1960) This blistering Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond script is a demonstration of just how dark a love story can be get without tipping entirely into bitterness, a standing rebuke to every lazy, schmaltzy comedy going. While the entire cast is stellar and Shirley MacLaine was never better, it’s worth ignoring them all and just watching Jack Lemmon’s meek office worker CC Baxter. Every gesture and glance is flawless; he carries entire scenes without a word. HO
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Films to watch before you die Paris, Texas (1984) In Wim Wenders's Palme d'Or winning trek through America's byways, Harry Dean Stanton plays a wreck of a man who's gone missing, found wandering silently through the Texan wilderness. He travels hundreds of miles to reconcile with his ex (Nastassja Kinski), whom he finds, oblivious to who he is, on the other side of a Houston peepshow window. Culminating unforgettably with this long-take tête-a-tête, it's a shattering quest for redemption, eerily scored by Ry Cooder.
Films to watch before you die Before Midnight (2013) Céline (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) have settled down since the two earlier films in Richard Linklater’s essential trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), but the problems in their lives – self-inflicted by now – only keep proliferating. Trenchantly pushing them into full-on battle-of-the-sexes territory, the film squares them off for a bitterly adult dissection of a long-term relationship, asking stark questions about love, compromise and lasting the course. PS
Films to watch before you die Le Mépris (1963) Other Jean-Luc Godard films are punchier, ruder, more experimental. But this is his most lavish, measured, and sad: an elegiac fantasy of filmmaking, as a loose adaptation of the Odyssey grinds to a halt on Capri, with Jack Palance as the brash American producer trying to sell art by the yard. Meanwhile, the screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) and his beautiful, bored wife (Brigitte Bardot) tussle and reconcile in an incessant, pained ballet. PS
Films to watch before you die Casablanca (1942) Some films strain under the weight of greatness; Casablanca’s quality bubbles through. Against the backdrop of the Second World War, two former lovers reunite though everything in the world is pulling them apart. Bogart’s Rick hides a huge heart under a thin veneer of cynicism; opposite him Ingrid Bergman’s luminous Ilsa would melt an iceberg. Packed with quotable lines and brimming over with impeccable cool, here we are, still lookin' at you, kid. HO
Films to watch before you die A Trip to the Moon (1902) Georges Méliès pioneered many of the visual and special effects techniques that have formed the backbone of fantastical filmmaking ever since, and he pushed them all to their limits in this turn-of-the-century tale of a rocket trip to the moon to meet the strange creatures who live upon it. Witty touches and a real sense of story mean that this is still entertaining more than a century later, and if the effects are less awe-inspiring now, they’re still beautifully designed and executed. HO
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Films to watch before you die His Girl Friday (1940) A screwball comedy of substance, Howard Hawks's remake of The Front Page is an objectively odd mix of high stakes and high comedy. Yet it works because the machine-gun dialogue is so quick that there's never a moment to question what’s happening (the great screenwriter Ben Hecht, who co-wrote the original Broadway play, worked on it uncredited). Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, as the warring editor and star-reporter trying to work together long enough to land the story of the year, remain the standard by which all on-screen chemistry should be judged. HO
Films to watch before you die The Conversation (1974) Francis Ford Coppola slipped this paranoid masterpiece in between the first two Godfathers, though it was left to his wizardly editor Walter Murch to resolve the plot in post-production. Gene Hackman, never better, plays Harry Caul, a loner surveillance expert called upon to pry into a situation he doesn't fully understand, and winding up dangerously complicit in murderous malfeasance. No other film managed to foreshadow Watergate quite so uncannily.
Paramount Pictures
Films to watch before you die Blow Out (1981) John Travolta's Z-movie sound man, out recording one night, accidentally tapes what turns out to be a political assassination. Brian De Palma hit peak ingenuity and gut-punch profundity with this stunning conspiracy thriller, mounted with a showman's élan but also harrowing emotional voltage from its star. It’s one of the most delirious thrillers of the 1980s, with a bitterly ironic pay-off that’s played for keeps. PS
Filmways Pictures
Films to watch before you die City of God (2002) There’s a deep contradiction at the heart of this acid-bright portrait of the violence in Rio’s favelas. On one hand these child hustlers and teen gangsters have an intense lust for life, an exuberance displayed in dance and play and love; on the other, they value life cheaply and take it without a qualm. Director Fernando Meirelles and co-director Kátia Lund cast a talented band of local kids to give it authenticity and then punctuated their story with Scorsese-esque violence that still shocks. HO
Films to watch before you die Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) The diverging romantic fortunes of Hannah (Mia Farrow), Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest, who won an Oscar, as did Michael Caine) provide an ideal structure for Woody Allen to check in on a midway state of adulthood, when there's already a sense of disappointment about squandered promise, but still much to play for. It hits the miraculous sweet spot between all Allen’s modes and tones. PS
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Films to watch before you die Raising Arizona (1987) The Coen Brothers had already established a ghoulish signature style with Blood Simple, but here they showed us how funny they could be, in a zig-zagging kidnap farce which manages the difficult feat of being both zany and adorable. Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter are the unlikely couple whose abduction of a spare newborn quintuplet, Nathan Jr, causes all hell to break loose. PS
20th Century Fox
Films to watch before you die Caché (2005) This looks and acts like a thriller, but in reality Michael Haneke’s exploration of colonialism, guilt, paranoia and privacy cares more about subtext than about scares or mystery. A well-to-do Parisian family are tormented by the arrival of surveillance tapes of their lives, but it’s not clear who could be sending them or why, leading patriarch Georges (Daniel Auteuil, never better) to confront his own past sins. As a subversion of genre and viewer expectation, there are few to match it. HO
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Films to watch before you die The General (1926) Orson Welles suggested that Buster Keaton’s silent Civil War comedy might be the greatest film ever made, and who are we to argue? Keaton’s Johnny Gray is a key figure on the railroads of the Confederacy, but he and his engine, The General, must go above and beyond to defeat a Union spy. Ignore the dodgy politics and focus on the sublime physical comedy of Keaton’s beautifully composed routines. You’ll come out wondering if movies even need sound. HO
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Films to watch before you die The Babadook (2014) The Babadook is a black, hunched pop-up book monster who raps on your door three times before paying a visit. And you can’t get rid of him. Widowed mum Amelia (brilliant Essie Davis) can’t remember reading his book to her emotionally disturbed misfit of a son (Noah Wiseman) before. Jennifer Kent’s thoughtful Australian chamber shocker, a feast of inventive design, claws its way into you and leaves scratch marks. PS
Films to watch before you die When Harry Met Sally (1989) Is it impossible for men and women to be purely platonic? It is according to Harry, in this beautiful, brainy comedy about two neurotic New Yorkers who become friends and then more. Directed by Rob Reiner and written by wonderful Nora Ephron, it's a paean of sorts to Woody Allen's early films, with razor-sharp observations about sex and dating ("I'll have what she's having"). It's still the pinnacle of both Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan's careers.
Columbia Pictures
Films to watch before you die Inside Out (2015) Toy Story revolutionised animation; Up and Wall-E vie for the best opening of any film this century, but for sheer audacity Pete Docter’s head-trip must prevail. As a little girl struggles to adapt following a family move across country, her emotions go on a madcap adventure through the mind itself. What’s dazzling here is that two completely separate films unfold at once. Kids watch brightly coloured sprites on a quest; adults watch a psychologically dense depiction of how we think and feel. It’s wonderful.
Getty
Films to watch before you die True Romance (1993) Disinterred from a script Tarantino wrote in the mid-Eighties called The Open Road – the same screenplay that also spawned Natural Born Killers – Tony Scott's True Romance is a pulpy, hyperviolent twist on a damsel-in-distress fairytale, with a plinky-plonky score that is based on Badlands. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are the lovers on the lam, chased by Christopher Walken's suave mafioso. Bombastic, brash – and totally brilliant.
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New book The Secrets of the Jedi
What’s to stop Anakin from returning again now that Luke has become one of these Force spirits?
Let’s not forget, Hayden Christensen – who played Anakin in the prequel trilogy – attended this year’s Star Wars Celebration . Has the reveal been hiding in plain sight the whole time?
Inverse Star Wars actor was delivering “a career best” performance. Sure, this could mean Daisy Ridley or John Boyega , but Christensen received quite a bit of criticism for his previous performances – and his quote made it seem as if it was somebody more unexpected.
“[It’s] somebody I’ve seen in these movies before,” he said, adding: “I rolled a tear, it was so darn powerful.”
Show all 11 1 /11Star Wars films – ranked worst to best Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 11. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) The prequel trilogy has lived on in infamy, but the true low point of this low point in the Star Wars franchise must be Attack of the Clones, the dry, crusted middle of the cinematic sandwich. While Revenge of the Sith has some sense of completion and The Phantom Menace has some sense of wonder, all Attack of the Clones has is a CGI Yoda bopping about the screen like an unswattable fly while battling Christopher Lee’s Count Dooku. It’s a film driven by unnecessary desires: from the space politics, to Boba Fett’s backstory, to Padmé and Anakin’s romance. The latter is the most insufferable, since George Lucas never had much of an ear for dialogue, as notoriously pointed out by Harrison Ford when he declared on set: “George, you can type this s***, but you sure as hell can’t say it.” Which leads us to one of the worst line readings in cinematic history, when Hayden Christensen’s Anakin laments: “I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating – and it gets everywhere.”
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 10. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) Hollywood has increasingly made the assumption that “darker” means better when it comes to cinema – it explains why the Harry Potter films look like they were made while someone gradually turned down the dimmer switch on the studio lights. Of course, audiences know that “darker” sometimes means that your protagonist-turned-villain becomes a “youngling”-murdering, amateur street magician-looking sourpuss. Anakin’s arc here comes to a whimper of an ending, underlined by the much-derided decision to have Darth Vader’s first moments onscreen involve him howling “Noooooo!” up to the sky like a mournful hound. That said, Ewan McGregor confirms here that he managed to escape the franchise largely unscathed, as this instalment sees him have the most fun with the clunky dialogue (see: “Hello there!” and “I have the high ground!”).
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 9. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) The Phantom Menace escapes slightly ahead of the rest of the prequel trilogy, if only for the fact it remembers these films are meant to be fun once in a while. The pod race – it’s a good scene! Darth Maul is all looks, zero follow through – it’s embarrassing to act like you’ve won, only to be cut in half and sent hurtling down an exhaust pipe – but his inclusion in the film did introduce one of the best musical themes in Star Wars history, John Williams’s “Duel of the Fates”. However, the space politics are a particular drag here, with all the talk of trade disputes, and, of course, it's obligatory to mention the terror that is Jar Jar Binks.
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 8. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) Although it’s the weakest of the new generation of Star Wars films, Solo still holds up as a fun romp worthy of Han Solo’s rascal reputation. Alden Ehrenreich picks up on enough of Harrison Ford’s mannerisms to sell the character without sliding into imitation, while Donald Glover is a scene stealer from the very moment he walks on screen as Lando Calrissian. It’s a lost opportunity, then, that the film is otherwise slowed down by an impulse to offer backstory to as many aspects of Han’s character as possible. Did we really need to know how we got the name “Solo”? Really?
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 7. Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker Director JJ Abrams, like the hero of an ancient prophecy, was destined to make both enemies and allies with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. There will be arguments. And there will be arguments about the arguments. There will be obsessive deconstructions and over-interpretations of each frame and intake of breath. But, at the end of the day, this is still a Star Wars film in its very bones, muscle, and sinew. Whatever controversy Abrams might have brewed up with his artistic choices, he still captures magnificently the soul of this series: that unwavering hope that the powerless can win, despite the odds.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 6. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) There’s a lot to wrap up in the concluding chapter of the original trilogy. The result is a few odd turns for the sake of plot convenience. What does one do with a character as enigmatic as Boba Fett? Why, have him topple into the Sarlacc pit within the first 20 minutes! How does one put to rest the love triangle hinted at in A New Hope? Why, insert a revelation that Luke and Leia are, in fact, brother and sister! Even the second Death Star oddly feels sillier than The Force Awakens and its third attempt at a giant ball in space, since The First Order at least had the excuse that their obsessive admiration of the Empire may have clouded their judgement. That said, there’s still plenty of charm to be found here and the Ewoks aren’t all that bad. Before you dismiss them as irritating merchandise opportunities, it’s worth remembering that they have absolutely no qualms about killing and eating people.
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 5. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) If Rogue One is any indication of Disney’s plans for the franchise and its future, then there’s no cause for concern. The first of the “A Star Wars Story” spin-offs, it shifts into gear with ease, soothing audiences by not straying too far from the familiar timeline while introducing a full set of new characters and a grittier tone. Stylistically, it feels more like a Vietnam War movie and is proof of how far a gifted director like Gareth Edwards can stray from the franchise’s usual formula and still feel grounded in the same world. Plus, you have to admire the guts it takes to deliver an ending like that…
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 4. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) Disney made a very smart move with The Force Awakens. As the first Star Wars film of a new generation, it not only had to make its own mark, but feel familiar enough that it welcomed fans back with open arms. The balance is hit perfectly here. That’s largely due to the film’s new trio of central heroes, who radiate the same kind of warmth, bravery, and spirit that carved a special place in people’s hearts when they were first introduced to the franchise’s original stars. Daisy Ridley’s Rey, John Boyega’s Finn, and Oscar Isaac’s Poe honour Star Wars's past while striding into its unknown future. It also helps that the film has landed on a villain like Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), whose drive and complexity may see him surpass even Darth Vader by the end of his story in Episode IX.
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 3. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) Any divisiveness the film attracted certainly proved one thing: here’s a Star Wars film that actually took a creative risk. And what a bold, ambitious, and ultimately beautiful risk that was. Director Rian Johnson took the cinematic legacy presented before him and added a new richness to its textures. He allowed heroism to go beyond the clean divide between good and evil; through Luke and Rey, we were taught not to be ashamed of our doubts but to grow stronger because of them. We were taught not to use destiny as a crutch, but to know when to forge our own paths. The Last Jedi is a soulful film told through some of the most striking cinematography of the entire franchise.
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 2. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) It’s the place where it all began. The Star Wars franchise has only become the success it is today because of how purely revolutionary the first instalment was as a piece of Hollywood filmmaking. It is, to this day, one of the most successful examples of the modern epic, endlessly imitated but so rarely with the same heart or ambition. George Lucas tapped into one of the most timeless qualities of storytelling: its ability to let us see and understand our own world through the eyes of another. Star Wars has become so iconic because, even on such a grand scale, we know and relate to the emotions at hand – fear, love, or a desire to do what’s right.
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Star Wars films – ranked worst to best 1. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) The Empire Strikes Back is remarkable in its ability to pursue real emotional stakes. Its closing moments, the final note to its symphony of sacrifice and tragedy, leaves us with the single, delicate emotion that is hope, blooming in the darkness as our heroes set out to save Han and restore the Rebel Alliance. What A New Hope built up by making us fall in love with these characters, The Empire Strikes Back recouped in sharing with us their pain and their fears. Darth Vader’s reveal that he’s Luke’s father has, of course, found its place in history, but there’s an equal sense of emotional resonance in the moment Leia and Han depart, moments before he’s trapped in carbonite. When Leia’s “I love you” is returned by Han’s “I know” – a line written by Harrison Ford himself – we’re reminded of how magical Star Wars’s sense of storytelling can be, condensing everything that these two characters feel for each other into five simple words.
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Abrams prevented Smith from looking at the film’s “mind-meltingly huge” final shot during the visit, claiming he’s “going to want to see [it] with an audience in the cinema”.
One character who’s definitely returning in Episode IX is Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), with one theory questioning if he ever really left the franchise at all .
Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker is released 16 December.
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