Rian Johnson Says ‘The Last Jedi’ Wasn’t Meant to Undo ‘The Force Awakens’

Rian Johnson is still clearing the air about The Last Jedi, and he wants people to know he wasn’t trying to undo anything J.J. Abrams did in The Force Awakens. Talking to The Rolling Stone, Johnson explained that his decisions weren’t meant to erase anything from the earlier movie.

“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 borne 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?”

Johnson said that he and Abrams did talk before The Last Jedi. They spent time together, and Johnson got to understand the choices Abrams made. But after that, he went off and made his own movie. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy had told him he’d be doing the “Empire Strikes Back” of the trilogy.

“I took that assignment very seriously. Maybe more seriously than someone would have liked,” he said. “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.”

One of the most talked-about parts of The Last Jedi was the moment when Kylo Ren kills Snoke. Some fans thought this was Johnson throwing away a big setup from The Force Awakens, where Snoke seemed like the main villain. But Johnson says it was the opposite.

“This is all a matter of perspective and phrasing, but to me, I didn’t easily dispense with Snoke,” he said. “I took great pains to use him in the most dramatically impactful way I could, which was to then take Kylo’s character to the next level.”

He felt Kylo Ren was the most interesting villain in the trilogy and wanted to focus more on him. That’s why he made such a bold move with Snoke.

Johnson also talked about how much fun it was to work on a Star Wars movie.

“It was insane,” he said. “If you’re a Star Wars fan, it was the dream you imagine it would be. There was no, ‘Yes, but…’ to it. It was just magical.”

As for rumors that he thought he’d get to make the third movie and tried to squeeze all his ideas into The Last Jedi, Johnson shut that down. He said from the beginning he was only supposed to do the second film, and someone else would handle the third.

“No, absolutely not,” he said. “The reality is, if I thought I was doing both of them, I would have ended it the same way.”

When asked about the Holdo Maneuver, the moment when a ship jumps to lightspeed and crashes through another, Johnson said the idea came from a line in A New Hope.

“It came from A New Hope,” he explained. “When Han tells Luke that without the right calculations they could fly into a star. I thought, ‘Well, if that’s physically possible, what would that look like?’”

Later, in The Rise of Skywalker, a character says the Holdo Maneuver wouldn’t work again. There were also other changes, like making Rey the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, instead of her being a nobody. But Johnson wasn’t upset about those changes.

“I never approach this as, like, a territory I’m carving out for my thing,” he said. “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.”

He still enjoyed watching The Rise of Skywalker, even if it changed some things he did.

“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,” he said.

Johnson also talked about the backlash that came after The Last Jedi was released. Even though it got good reviews and made a lot of money, a loud group online was very angry about it.

“It never feels good to have anybody coming after you on the Internet,” he said. “But at the same time, having grown up a Star Wars fan ultimately let me contextualize it and feel at peace with it… This push and pull, and this hatred to stuff that seems new, this is all part of being a Star Wars fan.”

There had been talk about Johnson doing a whole new Star Wars trilogy, but that didn’t happen. He said nothing dramatic caused that, he just got busy making Knives Out, which led to more projects.

“It’s the sort of thing if, down the line, there’s an opportunity to do it, or do something else in Star Wars, I would be thrilled,” he said. “But right now I’m just doing my own stuff, and pretty happy.”

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