'Star Wars' Drama: Rian Johnson Finally Clears the Air on 'The Last Jedi' Fan Backlash
It seems he’s finally fed up with the endless debate.
Did Rian Johnson purposely wreck J.J. Abrams’ carefully built story in Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Many fans thought exactly that. But Johnson says they’ve got it all wrong.
Ever since The Last Jedi came out, fans online have argued endlessly about how it handled big questions left by The Force Awakens. Why was Supreme Leader Snoke killed off so suddenly? What happened to the mysterious Knights of Ren? And how could Rey’s parents turn out to be nobodies after all the hints she might be connected to someone powerful?
Because of this, some viewers believed Johnson was trying to tear down Abrams' ideas — a swipe at Abrams' love of the "mystery box" style of storytelling, where the unanswered question is more exciting than any reveal. But in an interview with Rolling Stone, Johnson pushed back on that theory.
"Ultimately, I feel like the choices in [The Last Jedi], none of them were born out of an intent to 'undo' anything," Johnson explained. "They were all born out of the opposite intent of, how do I take this story that J.J. wrote, that I really loved, and these characters he created that I really loved, and take them to the next step?"
Ironically, when Abrams returned for The Rise of Skywalker and tried to answer every mystery, the result disappointed even more fans and drew harsh reviews from critics.
Maybe that’s the real lesson for Star Wars: not every story needs to solve big puzzles about who’s related to whom or which shadowy villain is pulling the strings. Sometimes it’s more powerful to let characters grow in unexpected ways — even if that means shaking up what fans thought they knew.
