It appears Disney has taken its most recent Rise of Skywalker crossover-promotion with Epic Games’s Fortnite to the next level by making part of it canonical. If you have already watched the movie but were not lucky enough to make it into the event lobby, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. However, you may have already noticed it after the opening crawl was finished.
That terrible opening crawl for #RiseOfSkwalker that was leaked… is REAL.
This movie is trash from start to finish. pic.twitter.com/3ST0444gbe
— ⚡T E V E N -- The Fandom Menace Illustrator™ (@StevenWayneArt) December 19, 2019
Notice the bit at the beginning about a “mysterious broadcast” featuring Palpatine announcing his return? Did you wonder why that message is never heard during Rise of Skywalker? That is because the only place you can hear the message was actually during the in-game Fortnite event.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that Fortnite, nor the in-game event are canon to the actual Star Wars Universe. However, for an event that featured a Stormtrooper skin voiced by Ben Schwartz and a personalized JJ Abrams skin, voiced by the man himself descending from the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon, Risky Reels is not the place most people would look for fairly important context for the actual canon storyline.
If you want to watch the complete gong-show that was the event in its entirety, here you go.
Why, though?
It’s not entirely clear what the thinking behind inserting this fairly important piece of exposition into the event was. Maybe Abrams just could not find room in the runtime after using the first 20 minutes of it attempting to retcon the events of The Last Jedi.
You don’t even have to like the character of Rose Tico, but Abrams did her dirty in this one.
My suggestion to Abrams would have been to substitute it for one of the incredibly uncomfortable scenes featuring the CGI Leia delivering her lines like the Mr. Burns-A.I. that Smithers had installed on his computer.
If Abrams needs a scene featuring someone kept alive by the dark forces of necromancy, it might as well be integral to the plot.
