Simon Pegg is a movie geek. There's no about about it. Which is why he's never shy giving his own two cents on what he likes and doesn't like on-screen. So it shouldn't be a surprise whenever he decides to praise or criticize at his own risk. And so, in a new interview on the Adam Buxton Podcast, he spoke about a controversial topic in Hollywood these days: the state of Kathleen Kennedy's "Star Wars" enterprise.
Rian Johnson’s controversial entry in the franchise, ‘The Last Jedi,’ of course came up in the conversation, this got Pegg all excited and ready to spill the beans on what he thought of the troubling state he saw with “Star Wars” fandom.
“There was an odd thing with [‘The Last Jedi’] in that the people who didn’t like it were sort of being gaslighted by the people that did like it, who were just dismissing their complaints about the film as being fanboy butthurt. And yet, the whole thing is just eating itself in a hideous cultural soup,” Pegg explained.
He continued, “It’s a shame because it’s just a film.”
Then he chimed in on his own thoughts about "The Last Jedi."
“I must admit, watching [‘The Last Jedi’], the overriding feeling I got when I came out was, ‘I miss George Lucas.’ For all the complaining that I’d done about him in the prequels, there was something amazing about his imagination,” said Pegg.
This being said, Pegg has mentioned his dissatisfaction for the Prequel Trilogy which he says is due to lack of collaboration between Lucas and others:
“Those first three [‘Star Wars’] films were the product of real collaboration,” he discussed, mentioning Producers Gary Kurtz and Alan Ladd Jr, “Then with the prequels, it was like, ‘Do what you want!’ And without someone to steer him in the right direction, it did overflow into slightly muddled kind of less elegance.”
Back to the new trilogy, Pegg says, “But I do feel like his voice is missing from the current ones.”
‘Episode IX,’ which hits theaters on December 20, 2019.
His reasoning is simple: Cregger sees himself first and foremost as a writer, and he has little interest in shaping stories around the predetermined “data points” that come with established IP.