Five years after the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the eighth film in the Skywalker saga remains a contentious work to some and a stroke of genius to others. Debates still rage on about the place it has in the larger Star Wars canon, but also which parts of it work, which parts of it don’t, and whether or not some piece of it “ruined” a character or a franchise that is fifty years old. Speaking in the latest video from GQ‘s “Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films” series, writer/director Rian Johnson opened up about the movie, specifically one of the pieces routinely lambasted by its critics, the humor, calling it something he associates deeply with Star Wars.
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“For me, everything in the movie is Star Wars, and everything in the movie I can trace back to deeply, in a deep way, what Star Wars is for me,” Johnson said. “Everyone has a different take. I know there are Star Wars fans who somehow think that Star Wars was a serious thing, like the Batman movies or something. I was so young that when I watched Empire Strikes Back, it had this deep, profound impact on me, because it was terrifying, because I was just young enough to not experience it as watching a Star Wars movie, but to have it feel like too real.”
The filmmaker called out two specific moments from the original trilogy of movies. Johnson called out in Return of the Jedi when Han Solo is tied up over a pile of tinder and the ewoks are preparing to light it on fire and cook him. In response, Solo tries to blow out the flames.
“Anyone who thinks that slightly goofy humor does not have a place in the Star Wars universe, I don’t know if they’ve seen Return of The Jedi,” Johnson adds. “Even the first movie, they’re in the heart of the Death Star and they’re trying to do this desperate gambit to get out with their lives and save the princess, where they’re pretending that Chewbacca is their prisoner. The little imperial droid comes up, Chewbacca roars at it, and the droid, like a scared dog, goes [screeching].”
Johnson then went on to talk about his appraoch to the film, noting that, despite the assumption by some that his movie was subverting for the sake of doing so, his take wasn’t just as a meta-exercise related to Star Wars.
“It’s not very interesting to just think in a meta way about Star Wars,” Johnson said. “At the same time, you’re dealing with a story that’s about heroes, and about a younger generation meeting their heroes, and a generation that is now the older generation of heroes dealing with being role models for the younger generation, and still being human beings with faults and foibles. And somebody who has the role of a legend but who feels fallible as a human being, by the end of the movie realizing the value that that legend has, and realizing their place is to step up and be that for the younger generation. When you’re dealing with all of these things, the legends that we grew up, that I grew up with, was the characters in Star Wars. If I think about the thing in my life that’s been the most consistent thing of that, it is these movies. And again, anyone who makes a Star Wars movie today is in some way gonna be engaging with their relationship with Star Wars itself.”
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now streaming on Disney+. Johnson’s previously announced new trilogy of Star Wars movies haven’t moved forward at all since they were confirmed, the filmmaker even positing that while he’d be sad if he didn’t make them, “it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
