Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Editors Think The Last Jedi “Undid” the Storytelling of The Force Awakens

It’s been over two years since Rian Johnson‘s Star Wars: The Last Jedi hit theaters, but the film remains a hot topic as people continue to discuss the film, especially as compared to the final installment of the latest trilogy, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. While The Rise of Skywalker itself has proven to be a bit divisive among fans, strong opinions about The Last Jedi remain. That includes Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey, editors on The Rise of Skywalker, who recently spoke about the film and said that they feel like The Last Jedi “undid” the storytelling of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first film in the final trilogy.

In a recent appearance on Light The Fuse: A Mission: Impossible Podcast, Brandon and Markey were asked about their thoughts on The Last Jedi and both appeared to see The Last Jedi as something of an outlier in the trilogy.

“I feel very much like, in hindsight, that the trilogy, the last part of the trilogy, needed one vision,” Brandon said.

Markey took things a bit further, stating that she felt like the film undid The Force Awakens.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Markey said. “It’s very strange to have the second film … consciously undo the storytelling of the first film. I’m sorry, that’s what it felt like.”

What The Last Jedi did — or did not do — in regard to Star Wars has been a topic of discussion since the film’s debut, but once The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters, the conversation became a little more complicated. Some fans felt that it was The Rise of Skywalker that intentional undid elements of The Last Jedi, though not everyone agrees with that take, either.

Greg Grunberg, who played Temmin “Snap” Wexley in both The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, told The Hollywood Reporter that he was shocked that people thought J.J. Abrams retconned The Last Jedi in The Rise of Skywalker.

“I was shocked. This is part of Star Wars, which is finding conflict,” Grunberg said. “People are going to make things up. I never heard one disparaging thing from J.J. about Rian. Rian is a brilliant storyteller and filmmaker. It’s one of those things where if you pay attention to the film and engage with it, all it does is keep that story going. But I’m glad you’re asking me because I would absolutely tell you if there were moments here and there. And there weren’t. There just absolutely weren’t.”

He added, “If anybody was going to try and dig that out of J.J., it’d be me. I wanted to work with Rian so badly, and it just didn’t happen. So, I would be looking for any reason to go, ‘Oh yeah, well,’ but J.J. loves that guy. He loves how creative and how brilliant he is.”

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