We have another instance how Disney has ruined Star Wars forever as Admiral Ackbar actor Tim Rose recollects how they disrespected him, the character and the fans while filming The Last Jedi.
Tim Rose was the Ackbar puppeteer for the original Star Wars movies and provided the lines while filming took place, and when he returned for the new Disney Star Wars films, he says he was so emotional over how Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy mishandled Ackbar’s death in The Last Jedi, that it took him a half hour to recover, as they made it a big joke.
Speaking with the Jamie Stangroom YouTube channel, Tim Rose first reveals that J.J. Abrams cut a lot of Admiral Ackbar footage in The Force Awakens, which made Rose look even more forward to his return for The Last Jedi.
“After The Force Awakens – for whatever reason, length of picture, whatever – it all got cut out. So after waiting 30 years to reprise Admiral Ackbar, I was a little disappointed with Ackbar’s role in that picture,” Rose said. “So in The Last Jedi, I was quite looking forward to maybe them giving him something more juicy. We were only given the script on the day when we were shooting that piece of script, so each day I would come to work going, ‘Is today the day when Ackbar gets something a bit more involving?’ And I looked at my script and I went, ‘Oh, Ackbar’s going out of the window. Well, that’s that then!’”
Rose continued recalling how Rian Johnson had him film the last Ackbar scene in The Last Jedi which was a big joke for everyone involved, but him.
“I wasn’t quite dead yet,” Rose said. “We finished all of our bit, and they asked me to come down to the camera. I thought, ‘Oh well, maybe they are going to say thank you for being one of the heritage characters and giving 30 years and all that,’ but what they did was, they gave me a Millennium Falcon sign that had the day and the date on it, the scene number, and they said, ‘Could you look into the camera and just say It’s a Wrap because that would be really funny.’ Ackbar looked into the camera and said, ‘It’s a wrap!’
Tim Rose reveals the scene put him into tears.
“I was actually in tears in the suit after everything, after hoping there would be something, after knowing there wasn’t going to be anything else, Ackbar’s final moment before he went into the box was a big joke about it, ‘It’s a wrap,’ Rose said. “They just thought ‘wouldn’t that be funny’ and that was the sum total of my [laughter] life as Ackbar. Oh yeah, [it was quite emotional]. I disappeared down the back and couldn’t come out for a good 30 minutes after that.”
Tim Rose further reveals they filmed a “spectacular” death scene for Admiral Ackbar in The Last Jedi involving men in fireproof suits that involved an explosion and being pulled out the window through the use of lines, but the scene was cut, and instead, Admiral Ackbar received an off-camera death.
Tim Rose isn’t alone in his disappointment of how Admiral Ackbar was handled in The Last Jedi as voice actor Tom Kane revealed at the recent Star Wars Celebration how he didn’t like how Ackbar was replaced by General Holdo, a character that no one knew anything about or cared for.
Disney, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson’s handling of Admiral Ackbar in The Last Jedi also seems similar to a scene that Mark Hamill recently spoke about in regards to Luke and C-3PO. Hamill recalled how Rian Johnson didn’t care what Luke did in a scene involving Luke seeing C-3PO for the first time in a long time, so Mark Hamill had to mention and point it out, with Johnson telling him to do whatever.
While The Last Jedi was a huge train wreck, the good news is that apparently, Rian Johnson’s new Star Wars trilogy looks to have been canceled. Kathleen Kennedy will also hopefully be done with Star Wars after her latest contract expires in a couple of years.
