Star Wars: Rian Johnson Kept Computer For Writing ‘The Last Jedi’ Script in a Safe

The Last Jedi delivered audiences some extraordinary surprises, many of which were kept a secret right up until fans watched the story unfold in front of their eyes. Writer/director Rian Johnson went to such great lengths to make sure his script wasn’t discovered before the film’s premiere, he would lock his laptop in a safe to ensure no one could sneak a peek at the story.

“I typed Episode VIII out on a MacBook Air. For security it was ‘air-gapped’—never connected to the internet,” Johnson revealed to the Wall Street Journal. “I carried it around and used it for nothing except writing the script. I kept it in a safe at Pinewood Studios. I think my producer was constantly horrified I would leave it in a coffee shop.”

Given the number of twists and turns the story took, we can only imagine what would have happened had the script fallen into the wrong hands.

Protecting the script presented some challenges, but even crafting the story came along with difficulties the filmmaker hadn’t expected.

“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 last year. “If you go too far you can break that Star Wars spell.”

Creator George Lucas was often criticized for incorporating senseless jargon into his scripts, which was another element of the story Johnson struggled with.

“The other challenge is the tech talk, which has to be simultaneously complex enough to sound real and conceptually simple enough to follow,” Johnson pointed out. “The original films were brilliant at that.”

Harrison Ford has regularly poked fun at Lucas for his cumbersome dialogue, having decreed on multiple occasions, “You can type the sh*t but you can’t say it.”

Despite The Last Jedi being on a much larger scale than any of his previous projects, Johnson claimed there wasn’t much difference writing this film than any of his others.

“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.”

Johnson will soon be getting back to writing a Star Wars film as he will be helping develop an all-new trilogy of films that aren’t connected to the Skywalkers.

The Last Jedi is in theaters now.

[H/T Wall Street Journal]