10 Simple Fixes That Would Have Saved The Star Wars Sequels

Turns out the anonymous-looking red planet Kylo Ren made a very brief trip to at the start of The Rise of Skywalker was actually Mustafar of Revenge of the Sith fame, not that you'd notice if you haven't read the film's visual dictionary.

You'd be forgiven for not realising, of course, as Mustafar looked nothing like it did in its last Skywalker Saga appearance. Lava fields have been replaced by dark trees thrown against an ominous red mist, and there's none of the symbolic "more machine than man" metal structures which helped make Obi-Wan and Anakin's final fight so visually compelling.

In fact, Mustafar looks so different that it might as well not be Mustafar at all.

This isn't the first time Disney Star Wars has smuggled in Mustafar without acknowledging its existence. The planet last appeared in 2017's Star Wars Story Rogue One, a movie which made a big deal of labelling the names of its planets on screen. The staggeringly short shot of Mustafar, however, didn't get the same treatment.

Maybe director Gareth Edwards didn't want to spoil Vader's appearance too early (we saw the lava, guys, we knew what was about to happen), but more likely Disney was following its trail of Prequel erasure by reusing assets from the universally panned trilogy without overtly acknowledging its existence.

Either way, it turns out Kylo Ren was looking for the Sith wayfinder amongst the ruins of Vader's castle, which had somehow become a forest overrun by trees in the space of about thirty years. Seeing Vader's castle in all its sinister glory would have not only made it obvious that this opening planet actually had a connection to other movies in the franchise, but also would have been a pretty cool backdrop to an action-packed scene.