'Rise of Skywalker' was a lovely if imperfect tribute to Leia Organa

Major spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

"The dead speak!"

So begins the opening crawl to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and while it's clearly a reference to return of Palpatine, it could double as a meta description of the movie itself: The film features Carrie Fisher in a posthumous performance as Leia Organa, as first announced in 2018.

Consisting primarily of unused footage from 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Leia's appearances are clustered in about three main locations: very early in the movie, when she's training Rey; midway through, when she reaches out to Kylo Ren via the Force and dies as a result; and near the end, when a flashback to her post-Return of the Jedi youth reveals she once trained as a Jedi.

When Leia is onscreen, her presence feels slightly surreal. It's possible that moviegoers who don't go in with the knowledge that Fisher had died before this film started shooting won't notice the difference. Director J.J. Abrams and his team are extremely judicious about how much they show of her, and for how long, and from how close, and the results are far more convincing than the resurrected Tarkin or even the younger Leia in Rogue One.

But knowing what we know, it's difficult not to notice how generic and stilted her dialogue is. ("Never underestimate a droid" becomes one of the character's most-quoted lines here, for no good reason.) Or how much of her body is in shadow at key moments. Or that her scenes don't really add up to a character arc befitting one of the franchise's most beloved characters.

On the other hand, it's also easy to forgive these shortcomings. The filmmakers worked with what they had, and just about pulled it off.

They make the gracious choice to extend Leia's impact on the story by making it as much about what she represents as what she does. Leia becomes a symbol of hope and wisdom, an icon for the other characters to look up to. It's not unlike the way Fisher has been for us in our own world, and it allows the characters around Leia to become our surrogates, allowing us to say goodbye to our general and our princess one final time.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Aliens we've never met talk about her, signaling that her reputation has spread to every corner of the galaxy. Lando wistfully asks Poe, Finn, and Rey to "give Leia my love," and later shows up on the Resistance base to reminisce about their days as young Rebel fighters — you know, the ones we saw in the original trilogy. And Poe's battlefield speech in the climax invokes her name: "Today we make our last stand for the galaxy. For Leia."

We're there in the more intimate interactions, too. Her handing of Luke's lightsaber to Rey is a literal passing of the torch. In their last embrace before Rey joins Poe and Finn on the search for the planet Exogol, we are Rey, tears slipping down our own faces as we say a reluctant goodbye to the woman we've loved for so long.

When Lieutenant Connix, played by Fisher's daughter Billie Lourd, offers physical support to a frail Leia, we wish we could have offered Fisher some comfort in her final moments. When Chewie stumbles with grief upon hearing of her passing, we recall how gutted we were to hear the news about Fisher. And when a troubled Poe sits by her body, confessing that he's afraid he's not ready, we are him, feeling a little less certain in a world without her.

Step back a bit, and the truth is that Leia's journey here doesn't entirely make sense. Her decision to sacrifice herself for Kylo Ren feels unearned, and the logistics perplexing. Luke's explanation as to why Leia quit her Jedi training is unsatisfying, a half-baked resolution to an out-of-nowhere plot point. And why, exactly, is her lightsaber buried on Tatooine, a planet she primarily knew as the place where she was once enslaved by Jabba the Hutt?

Most of all, it becomes apparent that what's missing is Leia's essential Leia-ness — that fearless attitude, that dry wit, that sly sex appeal, that sparkle of mischief in her eye. She's become a more anodyne version of herself, all the sweet and soft parts with too little of the spiky ones.

But then we remember that she's been a memory this whole time. Fisher wasn't present for any of the shooting of The Rise of Skywalker, and what this movie is missing of her and her character, no body double or digital tweaking could have provided. This is not a faithful reenactment of Leia but a memorial to her, a tribute of our own affection for her.

The real Leia, the one we fell in love with, lives on inside us as she always has. She still inspires us, amuses us, moves us. And we can visit her anytime we want, at the touch of a play button.