Fire up your lightsabers and get your porgs in a row. We’re celebrating Star Wars Week here at For The Win with some takes for the premiere of The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth episode of the saga.
I cried the first time I saw General Leia in The Force Awakens. Not sobbing, but it was similar to how I tear up watching women in action scenes, like in Wonder Woman or Black Panther. But this was different.
In this moment, Leia isn’t fighting or saving the galaxy. Her life isn’t in immediate danger. She’s actually just standing there, facing Han Solo with a deep longing expression similar to what Star Wars nerds have felt without seeing the Rebel couple on the big screen in years. It’s not so much about what she’s doing in this particular scene, but rather, it’s what her mere presence represents and the feelings it elicits.
Princess Leia, as she was known for so long, is an icon, a legend and a total game-changer.
She’s royalty, and fans’ love for her is largely thanks to the incomparable late Carrie Fisher, who died at the age of 60 almost exactly three years ago. (Fisher is in The Rise of Skywalker, thanks to previously unused footage from the franchise.)
The bravest of princesses, Leia contradicts nearly every previous notion about what someone of nobility should be or how they should act. She’s an admirable princess, one that helps lead a rebellion and battles to save her civilization instead of searching for a prince. She often risks her life for the Rebel cause in which she so deeply believes and never thinks twice about it.
Even when she first meets her soulmate in A New Hope, she remains focused on defeating the Galactic Empire and is totally unfazed by Han, unlike just about every other character’s first encounter with the dreamy but egotistical smuggler. And despite surviving capture by Darth Vader and witnessing him destroy her home planet, she’s still shrewd enough to (humorously) critique Solo and co.’s disorganized escape plan.
And in Empire Strikes Back, she figuratively slaps Han with one of the franchise’s best insults: “Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder!”
Leia fearlessly stands up to her enemies, whether that’s the torturous Vader or Jabba the Hutt, who she strangles for chaining her up as a half-naked slave after she rescues Han. About that scene, Fisher said in 2014, via The Guardian:
“I had a lot of fun killing Jabba the Hutt. They asked me on the day if I wanted to have a stunt double kill Jabba. No! That’s the best time I ever had as an actor. And the only reason to go into acting is if you can kill a giant monster.”
Later in Return of the Jedi, between being shot in the shoulder and taking out two Stormtroopers herself — probably, again, saving Han’s life — he says, “I love you,” and she Solos him right back with the same response he gave her in the previous film.
Leia empowers her fans. She makes you feel like you could do anything, like lead a rebellion of your own. She’s a fierce princess and a courageous general — the kind of character anyone can look up to. And Fisher’s performances enable you to feel every triumph and heartbreak. She’s the best character in the franchise (although my colleagues disagree).
In Fisher’s 2008 memoir, Wishful Drinking, she writes: “George Lucas ruined my life. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.”
She shares several Star Wars stories and details her complicated relationship with the franchise in the book, based on her one-woman Broadway show. No recollection stands out quite like this one, which has little to do with Leia but says more about Fisher and sheds a little light on how she was able to transform the story’s heroine into a cultural icon. Via Vox:
George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes one look at the dress and says, “You can’t wear a bra under that dress.”
So, I say, “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”
And he says, “Because … there’s no underwear in space.”
I promise you this is true, and he says it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and didn’t see any bras or panties or briefs.
Eventually, she wrote, he explained to her why he believed this to be the case. She continues in Wishful Drinking, via Vox:
What happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn’t — so you get strangled by your own bra. …
Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit — so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.
That’s our princess.
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