Hardcore Star Wars fans are unabashedly pro-George Lucas. That’s just how it’s been ever since “A New Hope” was released to mass fandom and hysteria back in 1977. Hell, a major contingent of the SW fan base even stuck around with Lucas when critics were bashing his prequel trilogy, which included the worst installment of the entire series, “The Phantom Menace.”
Knowing all of this, absolutely no one should have been surprised by the fan backlash that Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” received in 2017. Johnson’s movie is, far and away, the most divisive movie of the entire SW cannon. Why? Quite simply, because Johnson took the universe built up by Lucas over the course of almost four decades and took liberties with it. He re-interpreted the important lores Lucas had built up with passionate energy over the decades.
When Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney earlier this decade he knew he would run the risk of having his vision of what the future films should look like clashing with current Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. She’s the head honcho; she defended what Rian Johnson did, but at the same time, she knows that she kinda fucked up. She lost longtime fans because of “The Last Jedi,” and, Disney being Disney, the only thing to do now would be to try and lure them back.
With the upcoming final chapter, “The Rise of Skywalker,” being released on December 20th, here comes Kennedy (via an interview she did with EW) explaining that before they began work on the upcoming ninth film of the saga, she and her creatives sat down with Lucas and took down a lot of notes about what he thinks should happen in the finale:
“We sat down with George for a long meeting before we ever put pen to paper on this final episode, so we had the benefit of his thoughts. We took a lot of notes.“
She added, “As Yoda would say, there’s great responsibility that goes with doing this, and I think we all take that seriously.”
‘Skywalker’ arrives in theaters on December 20.
This is the adaptation of the nonfiction book by Dan Schilling and Lori Longfritz. It wrapped production in February and has been in post-production ever since. The film test-screened a few months ago.