Star Wars: The Last Jedi Director Rian Johnson Says He Was ‘Hoping For’ Fan Pushback, Rather Than Being ‘Afraid of Doing Anything That Shakes It Up’
Rian Johnson, director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, has said he anticipated and welcomed the movie’s polarizing response — and argued it would have been worse to create something “afraid” of shaking up the franchise.
Speaking to Polygon, Johnson said Star Wars had a history of challenging fan expectations of where the saga’s story was headed ever since the series’ second release, Empire Strikes Back. With its shock character deaths and fresh uses of the Force, this is something The Last Jedi certainly also did, while generating a wave of backlash from many of the franchise’s most vocal online followers.
Despite this, Johnson said he had intended to deliver a movie that “shook the box” and upended fan expectations, rather than simply serving up something that handled the franchise and its audience with “kid gloves” — something other entries in Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy have also been accused of.
“I was hoping for that — I wasn’t afraid of it per se,” Johnson said. “Having grown up a Star Wars fan, I know that thing where something challenges it, and I know the recoil against that. I know how there can be infighting in the world of Star Wars. But I also know that the worst sin is to handle it with kid gloves.
“The worst sin is to be afraid of doing anything that shakes it up,” he continued. “Because every Star Wars movie going back to Empire and onward shook the box and rattled fans, and got them angry, and got them fighting, and got them talking about it. And then for a lot of them, got them loving it and coming around on it eventually.”
Johnson has said similar in the past with regard to how the tastes of many Star Wars fans have changed over time — with many now looking more fondly upon George Lucas’ prequel movies, for example, which also received significant pushback upon their initial release. (Indeed, Johnson has previously said that his days “arguing on the playground about Star Wars” and having “ruthless” discussions about The Phantom Menance helped him process The Last Jedi’s online backlash.)
Johnson continued his comments on The Last Jedi by equating its handling of Star Wars lore with how he has attempted to carefully handle the subject of religion in the upcoming Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
“People who are raised outside of faith sometimes think it’s this touchy thing that you have to handle with kid gloves,” he said. “I grew up very Christian. It was a very personal thing for me. I’m not a believer anymore. I’m no longer a Christian. But when I was… You’re constantly rattling the box for yourself. You’re constantly being offended by things. But then it’s not like that just shuts off [the real world and how it challenges your beliefs].
“It’s just like being a Star Wars fan and seeing a twist where you’re like, ‘Oh God, that doesn’t make me feel great, because that’s not what I expected,’” he says. “As a Christian, the world is constantly throwing that at you. It’s just your daily life. Assimilating that is how you grow. That’s part of the purpose of both [fandom and religion] — it’s only alive when it’s interacting with the world.”
With the upcoming launch of Johnson’s third Knives Out murder mystery film, the writer and director has now left Star Wars behind, with no current plans for him to return and make that MIA new Star Wars movie trilogy that LucasFilm once announced.
Next year will see the launch of The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first new Star Wars movie since 2019’s unpopular Rise of Skywalker. A continuation of the hit Disney+ TV series, it will see the fan-favorite duo make their theatrical debut in what has been seen by fans as a safer return to theaters for the franchise following a long seven-year hiatus. Following that, Ryan Gosling will star in the standalone Star Wars: Starfighter, due in 2027.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
