2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi made a lot of money and reviewed very well. But it also created a firestorm online, one which still rages to this day, over some of its choices. So when The Rise of Skywalker came out and seemingly reversed some of The Last Jedi’s creative decisions, it was a whole new mess. However, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson says ne never felt resentful about the J.J. Abrams-directed sequel’s choices.
In a recent, far-reaching interview with Rolling Stone, the Knives Out writer-director talked a lot about his time on Star Wars and his possible return to the franchise. When asked about the reveal of Rey’s lineage in Rise of Skywalker and other moments in the J.J. Abrams film that seemed to retcon ideas introduced in Last Jedi, Johnson said he wasn’t mad and enjoyed the movie.
“When I saw the movie, I had a great time watching it. Again, this is all about point of view. I never approach this as, like, a territory I’m carving out for my thing,” said Johnson. “In my perspective, J.J. did the same thing with the third that I did with the second, which is not digging it up and undoing — just telling the story the way that was most compelling going forward. That means not just validating what came before, but recontextualizing it and evolving and changing as the story moves forward.”
“I didn’t feel resentful in some way,” continued Johnson. “But you’re talking about a movie made by my friends, with my friends in it. I sit down to watch a movie, and it’s a Star Wars movie. It’s all stuff I love. I’m not the one to come to for a hard-hitting critique. You can go to YouTube for that.”
Johnson also made it clear that he didn’t intend to retcon any moments from 2015's The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams as well. In fact, they communicated during the production of Force Awakens.
“We communicated. We met and I spent days with him and was able to get into his head and all the choices he had made,” said Johnson. “That having been said, I communicated and I went and made the movie. And he was in the middle of Force Awakens.”
Ultimately, I feel like the choices in [The Last Jedi], none of them were born out of an intent to ‘undo’ anything. They were all born out of the opposite intent of, how do I take this story that J.J. wrote, that I really loved, and these characters he created that I really loved, and take them to the next step? Kathy [Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm] said, ‘We’re looking at someone to do the Empire [Strikes Back] of this series.’ I took that assignment very seriously. Maybe more seriously than someone would have liked. I guess to me that didn’t mean making something that just had nods to Empire — that meant trying to genuinely do what Empire did.”
.