Writer-director Rian Johnson has a response for his ‘Last Jedi’ haters.
Johnson discussed the divisive second chapter of Disney’s Star Wars trilogy on an episode of the podcast “Creative Processing with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.”
In the fascinating interview, Johnson mentions how he didn’t understand the backlash from Star Wars purists towards “The Last Jedi” because he was doing what George Lucas had been doing all along with the franchise: Taking risks and subverting expectations. In fact, Johnson says he took the risks in order to pay homage to Lucas’ original trilogy — “it’s all about moving the story forward” he said.
“I think the instant you start thinking in terms of how do you not step outside of the bounds of what the original movies did, you’re not thinking the way the people who made the original movies did,” he said. “With every movie, they were pushing it forward, with every movie they were stepping outside those bounds and pushing the characters into new, emotionally honest, but surprising places.
“That’s why those movies are great. That’s why they’re alive. If they had been looking at something that came before it and saying, ‘Oh, we better not do this because that is outside of this or that,’ it would’ve been different.”
The film grossed only $205M against a $150M budget, losing Paramount a significant amount of money. It did, however, gain a decent following on streaming, but the financial risk for a sequel is ever-present.