'Rise of Skywalker' scribe defends film over giving less space to Kelly Marie Tran's character

Writer Chris Terrio, who wrote "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" with director JJ Abrams, has defended the film that has been facing criticism for sidelining actor Kelly Marie Tran's character Rose Tico.

The movie, which opened worldwide on December 20 last year, has received polarising reviews from the critics, who say that Abrams has tried to retcon the events of franchise's previous installment "The Last Jedi" (2017).

One of the criticisms pertaining to Rose Tico, who was introduced by filmmaker Rian Johnson in "The Last Jedi", was that the character was treated poorly in the latest release.

In an interview with Awards Daily, Terrio explained the less screen time for Tico.

"One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie (Fisher)'s footage in the way we wanted to. We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia.

"We thought we couldn't leave Leia at the base without any of the principals whom we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we'd written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we'd hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film," the writer said.

Terrio maintained they were not trying sideline Tran's character.

"The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly so much so that we anchored her with our favourite person in this galaxy, General Leia," he said.