Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Rian Johnson Reveals Difficulty of Writing in The Galaxy Far Far Away

01/30/2017 01:39 pm EST

Rian Johnson has been living the Star Wars life for a couple of years now, from writing the screenplay for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, to directing that film, making a cameo appearance in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and now spending time in the edit bay hard at work on bringing The Last Jedi to life. When it came to his first task, actually writing a story in the galaxy far, far awy, he had to take out one of the tools in his arsenal.

"I found myself constantly wanting to push modern idioms into the dialogue, and sometimes that can work, but you have to be very careful," Johnson told Empire in a recent interview. "If you go too far you can break that Star Wars spell."

That's where the foreign-language alien-sounding words like "Nerf herder" and "sleemo" came into play in the original trilogy, of course, giving the people of Star Wars their own idioms, instead of using current ones; it's a long time ago, after all.

"The other challenge is the tech talk, which has to be simultaneously complex enough to sound real and conceptually simpe enough to follow," he said. "The original films were brilliant at that."

Johnson was also surprised during the filming process, that as a director it was still an "intimate" affair, despite this movie being essentially a multi-billion dollar proposition.

"It's huge, sure, and it's filled with pressures great and small. But at the end of the day, it boils down to the same things as the smaller films we've made: telling a story we care about with a camera and some actors," Johnson said, adding, "And a Wookiee."

More Star Wars News: How New Naming Structure for Episode Movies May Reveal Secrets of The Last Jedi | Star Wars: The Last Jedi - The Other Times The New Movie Title Has Been Used | Star Wars: The Last Jedi Director Rian Johnson Teases Opening Crawl in New Still | Who is The Last Jedi? | Major Luke & Rey Reveals Coming | Does Snoke Know About The Last Jedi? | Is Tom Hardy in The Last Jedi? | Reddit User Guessed the Episode VIII Title | Star Wars: Episode VIII title revealed | Star Wars: Episode VIII Title Was Decided Long Ago | Teaser Photos

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, from writer/director Rian Johnson, is in post-production now for a December 15, 2017 release. The film follows-up and continues the story of the next generation of the saga as Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren find their place in the galaxy and follow the legacy of Luke Skywalker, Leia, and Han Solo. Daisy Ridley returns to star as Rey, with other returning stars John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie, Peter Mayhew, Andy Serkis, Anthony Daniels, Lupita Nyong'o Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa. Benicio Del Toro and Laura Dern join the cast in as-yet-unrevealed roles.

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.