If you’re anything like me, last night you waited for the embargo to break on “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” reviews and devoured any you could get your hands on. Thankfully, in my case, I’ve already seen JJ Abrams’ latest “Star Wars” film and was able to read without fear of spoilers. But regardless, even if you glanced at headlines, you know one thing is true — ‘Rise of Skywalker’ is going to inspire many, many thinkpieces and boiling hot takes. And one common thread you’ll see with almost every hot take about the film is how it treats Rian Johnson’s ‘The Last Jedi.’
READ MORE: ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Is Fan Fiction On A Galactic Scale [Review]
Now, I’m not going to get into any specifics about how ‘Rise’ treats ‘Last Jedi,’ but suffice it to say, Abrams is a very different filmmaker than Johnson. And in a recent interview with Radio.com (via IndieWire), ‘The Last Jedi’ filmmaker goes over his creative process and attempts to explain why he wants to avoid giving fans what they think they want. Instead, he wants to give fans something that shocks and surprises them.
“I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson said. “Even my experience as a fan, you know if I’m coming into something, even if it’s something that I think I want, if I see exactly what I think I want on the screen, it’s like ‘oh, okay,’ it might make me smile and make me feel neutral about the thing and I won’t really think about it afterwards, but that’s not really going to satisfy me.”
“I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised,” he added, “I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater…What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theater is to have the experience [I had] with ‘Empire Strikes Back,’ something that’s emotionally resonant and feels like it connects up and makes sense and really gets to the heart of what this thing is and in a way that I never could have seen coming.”
Again, without getting into spoilers at all, it’ll be interesting to see how Johnson’s comments get interpreted after the world experiences ‘Rise of Skywalker.’ This reads like a manifesto to how the filmmaker approaches his films, especially ‘The Last Jedi.’ And in light of ‘Rise,’ it also reads as what many might consider being a fatal flaw to Abrams’ vision for how the Skywalker Saga should end.
Regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, without throwing shade and without commenting directly on specific films or scenes, Johnson has given fans an explanation for what he attempted to do with his entry in the “Star Wars” canon.
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” arrives in theaters on Friday.