Today, Rian Johnson finds it difficult to find time to work on the Star Wars trilogy that he agreed with Disney nearly five years ago. The main reason is his commitment to Netflix and the saga of Puñales por el espalda (which has just released its second installment, The Mystery of the Glass Onion), but surely it will not help speed up procedures how controversial his previous film was, and still is. contribution to the Lucasfilm brand. The Last Jedi, although it has a considerable fandom behind it, is a film that has managed to irritate and make quite a few viewers uncomfortable, for reasons as varied as its reflective potential on Star Wars itself or, especially, its sense of humor.
Moments like that shot where what looks like a landing ship turns out to be an imperial plate have cemented the impression that Johnson was too funny. The subject has come up during an interview with the director in GQ, where he has explained what Star Wars means to him and why he believes that criticism for humor is somewhat unfair. “In The Last Jedi you can deeply trace everything that Star Wars means to me,” he says. “Everybody has a different vision. I know there are Star Wars fans who somehow think Star Wars was something serious, like the Batman movies or something.”
“I was very young when I saw The Empire Strikes Back and it hit me because it was terrifying, because I was young enough not to experience it as a Star Wars movie, but to feel it too real. With Return of the Jedi, he was the right age to see it in the cinema. The mention of Return of the Jedi is timely, because its premiere in the early 80s was quite surprising due to the bright turn compared to The Empire Strikes Back, thanks among other things to the Ewoks. Johnson points out that this type of grace was also present in the first film of all, A New Hope, giving as an example that gag of Chewbacca scaring one of the tiny droids of the Death Star with his roar.
“For anyone who thinks goofy humor has no place in the Star Wars universe, I don’t know if you’ve seen Return of the Jedi. The slightly self-conscious element of humor is something that is part of Star Wars. It is not everything, and we can also get serious. But I think that kind of cheeky balance is also part of Star Wars.” Johnson directly addresses a scene from The Last Jedi in which Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) taunts General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) by pretending he isn’t listening over the intercom. The director assures that “besides being very funny, it is something that is pure Star Wars”.
Another recurring criticism of Episode VIII is for the meta component, how Johnson wanted to reflect on the Star Wars legacy. The director believes that it was not such a big deal: “I definitely did not consider the issue as a meta exercise, because above all I wanted to be an honest expression of what the characters are experiencing in it. It’s not very interesting to think in a meta way about Star Wars,” he acknowledges.
“At the same time it is a story of heroes, of a young generation knowing their heroes, and a generation that is now the older generation of heroes facing role models for the younger generation and still being human. with defects. And someone who has the role of a legend, but who feels fallible as a human being, at the end of the movie realizes the value of that legend and realizes that his place is to step up and be that for himself. the younger generation.” Johnson is referring to Luke Skywalker, in a view of the character that even Mark Hamill was in on (although he recently admitted to being somewhat more comfortable with her).
“When you are faced with all these things, the legends that I grew up with were precisely the Star Wars characters. If I think about what has been the most constant in my life, it’s these movies. I think anyone who makes a Star Wars movie today is going to reflect in some way on their relationship with Star Wars itself,” Johnson concludes. How well this boy speaks.