Rian Johnson certainly hasn’t been unaware of the backlash “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” has received, but he’s more than gamely defended his picture. Whether through sly subtweets or lengthy explanations, the writer/director has patiently advocated for the decisions he made in the movie, and has rightly noted that for the franchise to grow, change is necessary. However, he’s yet to discuss how the criticisms of the movie directly affected him — until now.
The filmmaker sat down for an extended conversation on the /Filmcast, and revealed that he hasn’t been completely immune to the barrage of “Zomg you ruined everything!” that has gone around the interweb.
READ MORE: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Defends ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’
“The crazy thing is, I had no perspective on these tweets. I had no perspective in terms of how big a group of people this was, even what they were upset about specifically. Over the next few weeks, I was able to contextualize it and feel much better about it. But at the time, I thought, ‘Oh my god, does everybody hate this? Did I totally mess up, was I wrong?’ And I had a very dark hour of the soul… because I had no context for this,” Johnson said.
The good news is that as temporarily ruffled as he might have been, the filmmaker clearly stands by “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” In fact, if he had to do it all over again (and kind of will, given that he’s brewing a new “Star Wars” trilogy), he wouldn’t change a thing.
“There’s nothing I’ve read or seen that’s made me think, ‘Oh god, I did kind of mess that up, I would’ve done that differently if I could go back,’” Johnson said. “I still genuinely believe in all the decisions I’ve made.”
Frankly, that confidence is exactly what any franchise needs, and we’re practically glad Johnson is staying in the “Star Wars” universe to boldly take the series in new directions. Listen to the full talk below.
I liked the movie, and think the hate is overdone. But there are two things I would change. (SPOILERS)
1. Take out the Canto Bight section. It was almost prequel-level bad, and ruined the pacing.
2. Give us even a little bit of context as to who Snoke is before killing him off. Like, give Luke a line where he briefly says where Snoke came from and how he was able to contact and manipulate Ben.
Other than that, I enjoyed it very much.
I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, but I Reeeeeally liked the movie and it became my second favorite after The Empire Strikes Back (and though I loved Rose, that Canto Bight section was kind of terrible, but it could be tweeked, not deleted).
And I can’t at all understand or take seriously most of the fanboy criticisism. The thing is, I thought those guys were just a vocal minority…but while not everyone hates it, it’s hard to find someone outside of film twitter that didn’t have a lukewarm reception to it. And that means not only backlash, but less people rewatching it at the theaters, buying less merch and less blu-rays.
While The Last Jedi is making a shit load of money, Disney was hoping for MUCH more, so I think it is pretty safe to assume that once The Last Jedi press tour is over (after blu-ray release and such, or maybe after the other PR disaster they’ll release next December), Kennedy will issue a press release saying that Rian is no longer attached to the new trilogy because of “scheduling issues”. It’ll happen and I’m glad it will, because than Rian can go back to doing his thing without the abusive fans.
I’ve read this blog since it was on blogspot, and watching it turn into what its become is
I hope he feels bad and keeps feeling bad. He ruined Star Wars even more than JJ Abrams did.
All I can say to him is: Dude, you had the job of directing the proper return of one of cinema’s greatest heroes, a 40 year old pop culture icon… yet you do a lot of things that anyone could tell you would have pissed the fans off (and some SW fans aren’t exactly easy to placate and very vocal about it), undercut many of his dramatic moments with stupid gags, Hamill himself told you he fundamentally disagreed with you on every decision and you ignored him, and then practically killed him off as an afterthought in a lazy, very emotionally manipulative way.
He really should have seen this backlash coming.
I love Star Wars, I don’t divide it into trilogies, I just see it as Star Wars, and I love all the movies, despite their flaws. I love Rebels and I especially love TCW (which Disney won’t allow to be finished because they’re cheap) and this movie just left me depressed. It was like a slap in the face, a soulless insult to a series I love from the bottom of my heart and it couldn’t even be bothered to be that daring, as it still heavily relied on rehashing the other movies and worked too hard on trying to surprise people instead of telling a good story.
Quite frankly, Rian Johnson’s arrogance was mistaken for talent.