Rian Johnson has finally set the record straight on how much he and J.J. Abrams spoke in between “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” regarding where the story was going.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published Saturday, Johnson was asked to debunk a fairly popular rumor that he barely spoke to Abrams following dramatic changes to the story after taking the directorial reins for Episode VIII. The “Knives Out” director explained he took a directive to make the sequel trilogy’s “Empire Strike Back” seriously.
“We met and I spent days with him and was able to get into his head and all the choices he had made,” Johnson said. “That having been said, I communicated and I went and made the movie. And he was in the middle of ‘Force Awakens.’ Ultimately, I feel like the choices in it, none of them were born out of an intent to ‘undo’ anything. They were all borne out of the opposite intent of, how do I take this story that J.J. wrote, that I really loved, and these characters he created that I really loved, and take them to the next step?”
He continued: “Kathy [Kennedy] said, ‘We’re looking at someone to do the ‘Empire [Strikes Back]’ of this series.’ I took that assignment very seriously. Maybe more seriously than someone would have liked. I guess to me that didn’t mean making something that just had nods to ‘Empire’ — that meant trying to genuinely do what ‘Empire’ did.”
One of the biggest changes Johnson made was pivoting the big bad of the new trilogy from Supreme Leader Snoke (played by Andy Serkis) to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Many fans assumed that Abrams had set Snoke up to be the Emperor-like antagonist of the new movies in “Force Awakens” only for Johnson to have Kylo and Rey (Daisy Ridley) kill him before the former’s heel turn in “The Last Jedi.”
“The interrogation scene in the first movie, between Rey and Kylo, was so incredibly powerful,” Johnson explained noting how impressed he was with Driver’s performance. “Seeing this complicated villain that’s been created, I was just so compelled by that. This is all a matter of perspective and phrasing, but to me, I didn’t easily dispense with Snoke. I took great pains to use him in the most dramatically impactful way I could, which was to then take Kylo’s character to the next level and set him up as well as I possibly could. I guess it all comes down to your point of view. I thought, ‘This is such a compelling and complicated villain. This is this is who it makes sense going forward to build around.’”
The director was originally tapped for his own trilogy in the “Star Wars” universe following “The Last Jedi,” but that fell by the wayside in recent years. He’s since moved on to make waves in the murder mystery genre with his “Knives Out” films and “Poker Face” series on Peacock.
