Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's first spoken word revealed

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director JJ Abrams has revealed the first spoken word of the movie.

Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week, the director gave this nugget of information with absolutely no context and no further clues about the scene. Still, it's nice to know.

Abrams revealed that the word is... "at". To which host Stephen Colbert replied: "Let the theories be spawned."

Colbert himself then theorised that the word is spoken by a new character describing events that have already transpired, setting up the scene that we're about to see in voiceover.

Abrams responded with an unconvinced "okay," leading Colbert to assume he was right.

In the interview, Abrams also spoke about how he always thought of the Star Wars movies he made as a continuation of the saga, not a reboot, but that getting the ending right has been difficult.

"In our minds, it wasn't really a reboot, it was like Chapter 7, 8, and 9 of one book. Ending is much harder. Much, much, much harder. It's so hard to end," he explained.

"It's a huge responsibility. It has to work on its own; beginning, middle, and end for the movie. It's the end of the trilogy, but it's the end of three trilogies.

"So to end nine movies, especially when people care — for some people it's like a religion — so to do something to do service to that story, to end it well, to tell a story that is epic and also funny and also intimate, it's just there were so many issues and things and characters.

"I think every day there was a moment of, 'Oh, god,' but the truth is as challenging as it was, this has by far been the most rewarding and exciting experience that I've ever had, professionally."

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has a release date of Thursday, December 19 in the UK and Friday, December 20 in the US.

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Stephanie Chase

Reporter, Digital Spy 

Stephanie is a writer who specialises in pro wrestling, covering everything from AEW and WWE to NJPW. 

After graduating with a degree in history from Queen Mary University, London, she went on to study journalism at Birbeck University. 

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