Star Wars family pulls out all the stops to celebrate its Princess
It was a big enough deal that George Lucas was here. The media-shy filmmaker, who sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, didn't even show up to the premiere of Rogue One, a film he loved.
But he made a surprise appearance at Star Wars Celebration in Orlando, Florida simply to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his little space movie — or so we thought.
Lucas' appearance took an unexpected turn when, at the end of his on-stage interview, he stood with his hand-picked successor, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, and made an emotional speech about the most dear departed member of the Star Wars family, Carrie Fisher.
Thus began a cavalcade of emotional moments that had the 2,600-strong capacity crowd in the Galaxy Room at the Orlando Convention Center sobbing harder than the day Fisher left.
First Lucas introduced Billie Lourd, Fisher's daughter. Lourd, dressed in Princess Leia white, her voice trembling, gave her first public eulogy for her mom.
"My mother taught me two things," Lourd said. The first turned out to be a word-perfect recitation of Leia's complete "help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi" speech.
The second: "If life isn't funny, it's just true, and that is unacceptable."
From there followed a heartfelt Fisher tribute video that immediately went viral online, quickly climbing to the top of YouTube's trending videos.
In the video, we see our first glimpse of Fisher on the set of The Last Jedi last year, a few precious frames of her hanging on the arm of director Rian Johnson.
But mostly the video was packed full of candid outtakes from the Star Wars films and selections from Fisher's feistiest interviews, set to the tune of David Bowie's "Rebel, Rebel."
This was no whitewashing — in the tribute, both Lucas and Lourd emphasized Fisher's ability to tell the hard truths and to look unflinchingly at her own dark side.
Then the stage went dark. The crowd thought the show was over ... until the fans in the front started yelling incoherently, and the lights went up on John Williams.
The 85-year old maestro had been snuck into the room under cover of darkness, along with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra.
They launched into the gentle, haunting strains of Princess Leia's theme.
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Well, that got the waterworks started in all directions.
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One more surprise remained for fans as they exited: a limited-edition poster commemorating everyone's favorite princess. Only 8,000 were made.
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This afternoon's tribute won't be the last emotional remembrance of Fisher — the rest of the schedule is packed with what is sure to be a Celebration-long outpouring of love for the late actress. Thursday night sees the "Drowning in Moonlight" gala in her honor, and Mark Hamill takes the stage Friday for his own tribute, screen brother to screen sister.
If Fisher is watching somewhere, we hope she has a selection of cutting quips to relieve the emotional tension — and that she is secretly loving every minute of it.
Topics Star Wars
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
