Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson recently had an interview with The Hollywood Reporter where he revealed that he wasn’t all that interested in the larger lore and worldbuilding of the Star Wars universe when he made The Last Jedi, which clearly showed. And it created a number of plot holes for the sequel trilogy that Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams attempted to amend, but unsuccessfully so. Well, some new lore relating to Rey’s genealogical connection Emperor Palpatine was revealed, and it certainly won’t make anyone feel better about how badly Disney butchered the once revered space-fantasy franchise.
So first of all, Rian Johnson revealed his ambivalence towards the Star Wars lore while promoting his movie Knives Out in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
The relevant part of the quote was captured by Bounding Into Comics where Johnson was asked about how he approached creating stories and writing characters for existing universes, and Johnson had this to say…
“No, not at all. Because I don’t really think in terms of universes or in terms of creating worlds or whatever. That’s not that interesting to me.
“The only thing that is interesting to me is story. And the story specific to, like whether you are writing a Star Wars film that’s part of a three movie trilogy or a quote unquote original thing like Knives Out, you are still telling a story that is new to the thing that you are doing that it has to work within the context of that movie.
“So, to me the notion of what’s the entire galaxy or world that you are creating or something, I can’t imagine getting excited about creating that. To me what I’m excited about is creating a two hour long experience for an audience to have in the theater. And that means how they engage moment to moment with the story and the characters that are on the screen. And that doesn’t change in either one of those.”
This explains the discrepancy between Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi when it came to tone, pacing, and characterizations, as well as the mess that was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in its futile attempts to salvage what Johnson butchered.
As explained by Midnight’s Edge, Johnson never should have been hired for the job in the first place.
Of course, Kathleen Kennedy and Bob Iger weren’t concerned about pleasing the fans and telling compelling fantasy stories, they were intent on pushing propaganda down the throats of loyalists, even at the expense of destroying a generation’s old brand.
But it gets worse.
Screenrant discussed something that didn’t even make the cut of Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker due to the fact that there wasn’t enough time nor convenience to discuss Rey’s origins properly. How was she Emperor Palpatine’s granddaughter and how did she get related to him?
Well, it turns out that she’s really not… she’s the offspring of a failed Palpatine clone.
In the novelization of Rise of Skywalker they finally make the revelation something that should have made the cut in the film but didn’t. Thus, further proving that the sequel trilogy was one big slap in the face to fans, and an irrecoverable mess.
(Thanks for the news tip msd and Ebicentre)
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