Meet Rose. You don’t know her yet, of course, but she’s the “biggest new part” of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. That’s according to director Rian Johnson, who spoke at the film’s uproarious panel at the ongoing Celebration event in Orlando, Florida.
Played by Kelly Marie Tran, Rose works as a maintenance engineer for the Resistance, and will seemingly be plucked out of her 9-to-5 and thrust into a galactic adventure – not unlike a certain Luke Skywalker 40 years ago. Joined by Rian Johnson, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Kathleen Kennedy and host Josh Gad (and BB-8!), Marie Tran touched base on her newcomer, before Rian Johnson zeroed in on what makes Rose so special in the first place.
She’s not a Jedi, nor is she playing a relative to one of the franchise’s greatest icons (that we know of), so you may be thinking: what’s the big deal? Well, according to the director, Rose is in many ways the “unlikely hero” of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and her character can be viewed as something of an audience surrogate ahead of the film’s December release.
For me, growing up as a kid in Colorado [and] watching these movies, seeing Luke get plucked out to become an unlikely hero. She’s not a soldier. She’s not a hero. But she gets pulled out into an adventure with Finn. And Kelly just embodies that for me.
Building on the excitement from yesterday’s heartfelt presentation, Star Wars pandemonium has swept across the four corners of the Internet, and fans are no doubt pouring over each and every frame of that blistering teaser trailer in anticipation of December. Channeling the spirit of Empire, it’s much darker when compared to The Force Awakens, with Mark Hamill’s all-powerful Luke Skywalker seemingly hinting at the end of the Jedi. I guess that title is really plural, after all?
On December 15th, Star Wars: The Last Jedi will bring about the defining next chapter in the Skywalker saga – and there’s a cracking new poster to prove it.
