‘Star Wars’: Adam Driver Compares ‘Episode VIII’ to ‘Empire Strikes Back’

Director Rian Johnson “trusts [that] his audience is ready for nuance and ambiguity,” actor says

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“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” star Adam Driver is once again teasing the script for “Episode VIII,” this time comparing it to “The Empire Strikes Back.”

“It’s great. It’s similar to how ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ has a different tone,” he told Collider. “For that people always go ‘oooh, it’s dark’ but I don’t know that it necessarily is. It’s just different in tone in a way that I think is great and necessary but also very clear. [Director Rian Johnson] trusts [that] his audience is ready for nuance and ambiguity. He’s not dumbing anything down for someone and that’s really fun to play.”

In March, the actor told Entertainment Weekly that “Episode VIII” will have a different “temperature” than “The Force Awakens” while comparing Johnson and “Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams.

“I feel like there was so many moving pieces in the first one – just trying to solve it and set the vocabulary for what it was,” he had said.

“There’s a lot of that anxiety is gone, because people have developed a language. I think it’s more of a testament to Rian coming into something very established and making it [his own]. I can’t wait to get on set, just because he’s so unassuming and intelligent and approachable. The script they’ve come up with is really great.”

Now, speaking to Collider, he added, “Rian is coming into something that we kind of set up and he just took it to the next level in a really great way. … He was working on [the script] while we were still working on the first one. To understand what J.J. was doing and take ownership from there is kind of a remarkable thing.”

With “Episode VIII” hitting theaters in December 2017, Driver admitted that the “stakes are even higher” for this movie than they were for “The Force Awakens.”

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