If you’re a Star Wars fan, today is a big day. Later, during Monday Night Football, we will finally get a full trailer for The Rise of Skywalker. Likewise, tickets for the final act of the Skywalker saga go on sale immediately thereafter. With the trailer though, we will also get our first, truly comprehensive look at the final, episodic Star Wars film with which director J.J. Abrams declares he’s “not screwing around.”

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The opening crawl as it appeared in Star Wars in 1977. (Image: Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Star Wars began forty-two years ago in 1977. Since then George Lucas’ space opera has grown from a ground-breaking film to a multi-billion dollar industry. It’s safe to say that no film, or any Star Wars production, for that matter, will face as much scrutiny as The Rise of Skywalker. The task of bringing an entire, over-arching story to a nine-film close with Episode IX is nothing if not daunting. Even Abrams can appreciate that notion, declaring that, for him, “[e]ndings are the thing that scare me the most.”

The Rise of Skywalker: concluding a four-decade era

Skywalker Saga
How the Skywalker Saga began a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
(Image: Lucasfilm Ltd)

Abrams recently spoke with EW about ending perhaps the greatest saga in film, ever. The pressure rests with ensuring that The Rise of Skywalker somehow encapsulates over forty years of Star Wars history:

This is about bringing this thing to a close in a way that is emotional and meaningful and also satisfying in terms of actually answering [as many] questions as possible. So if years from now, someone’s watching these movies, all nine of them, they’re watching a story that is as cohesive as possible.”

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JJ Abrams directs the Knights of Ren on the set of The Rise of Skywalker.
(Image: Annie Liebotwiz for Vanity Fair)

Even Abrams has admitted that producing The Rise of Skywalker was even more difficult in the wake of The Last Jedi. Still, despite what Rian Johnson did with Episode VIII, Abrams doesn’t feel constrained with Episode IX. For Abrams:

[It] doesn’t mean that there’s a list of payoffs that we have to do because of setups. But we also were very much aware this is the end of the trilogy and it needs to satisfy. We went into this thing knowing it has to be an ending. We’re not screwing around.”

With any luck, tonight’s trailer will reinforce Abrams’ words.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters December 20th. 

Source: EW