Rian Johnson Looks Back on ‘The Last Jedi’, Mark Hamill’s Reaction to the Movie, Carrie Fisher’s Passing, and More
Five years after the release of The Last Jedi, writer/director Rian Johnson is preparing to launch his second movie since then, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The movie, which will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, is the focus of the cover story of the latest issue of Empire. In addition to speaking to Johnson about the new Benoit Blanc whodunit, Empire also had a lengthy conversation about The Last Jedi and what the movie means to him now.
The feature, available for free on the Empire mobile app, dives deep into the entire process behind the movie, from its inception, to the filming and post-production, to the aftermath of the release. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy hired Johnson in 2014 to write and direct Episode VIII, giving him free rein to tell the story he wanted following up on the events of The Force Awakens. Johnson started putting pen to paper by the time that movie started rolling cameras, but as a lifelong Star Wars fan, he was a bit scared at first, but he used that to his advantage:
“You would think that Star Wars meaning this much to you would make you very terrified of the prospect of the gravity of it, and it did. But the thing that makes you nervous about the gravity of approaching it is the thing that gives you the confidence of ‘I know what this is to me, I know what my connection is to it, I know what I’m doing with it.’ I don’t think I could have done this if I didn’t have those deeply rooted feelings.”
With The Last Jedi, Johnson tried to get to the bottom of what Star Wars meant to him as a child, and why. He tried to reconstruct that myth from the ground up, challenge it, and put it back together. He told Empire:
“I think it’s impossible for any of us to approach Star Wars without thinking about it as a myth that we were raised with, and how that myth, that story, baked itself into us and affected us. The ultimate intent was not to strip away — the intent was to get to the basic, fundamental power of myth. And ultimately I hope the film is an affirmation of the power of the myth of Star Wars in our lives.”
To examine the myth of Star Wars, Rian Johnson decided to challenge everyone, including himself, by choosing none other than Luke Skywalker as the incarnation of what he tried to do.
“The final images of the movie, to me, are not deconstructing the myth of Luke Skywalker, they’re building it, and they’re him embracing it. They’re him absolutely defying the notion of ‘Throw away the past,’ and embracing what actually matters about his myth and what’s going to inspire the next generation. So for me, the process of stripping away is always in the interest of getting to something essential that really matters.”
Ultimately, it was the way he approached Luke what made or broke the movie for a lot of people, even Mark Hamill himself, who was not happy with the decisions made for his character. Johnson, however, understands why he would be frustrated at times, as he explained:
“I mean… [Pause] It was also ultimately… [Another pause] To the point where I… [Another pause] I’m choosing my words carefully, not to be diplomatic, but I don’t want to frame Mark’s experience of this through my lens because there’s no possible way I can ever put myself in the shoes of Mark, or Carrie [Fisher], having lived their entire lives being known as these characters. And what it’s like to play them first in their twenties, and then come back and play them in these movies and have a script handed to you saying ‘Well, it’s this now…’ I can never fathom what that experience is like. It’s impossible.
If Mark Hamill is talking to me about Luke Skywalker, I’m gonna listen to him, and I gotta think about that and argue with him and go back and forth. And genuinely plumb the depths of my soul and what I wrote and figure out if this seems right. Also, though, remembering that, obviously, he created the character on screen, but he’s Mark Hamill, he’s not literally Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker lives as a creation on that screen. He’s a myth. And as such, he only really lives in the minds of people who listen to and in various ways believe that myth. And I know that was me. So, it’s complicated. But I mean, the short answer to your question is, it was fucking terrifying.”
As a professional, Mark Hamill learned how to keep his thoughts to himself and go along for the ride Rian had prepared for his character. That doesn’t mean he ultimately agreed with the choices (though he has regretted airing their disagreements in public), but he decided to do his best with what had been given to him. Johnson recalled it as follows:
“For all the back and forth, on day one of shooting, Mark said, ‘Okay, this is the vision that you’re going for, and I’m going to do the best version of that I possibly can.'”
While the sequel trilogy never saw the reunion of the original trio on screen, The Last Jedi did have one of the most emotional moments in all three movies, when Luke and Leia reunited after many years. As Johnson said, it was even more emotional on set to watch the reunion between Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill:
“Everybody on that massive crew showed up. It was like people arriving to church. There was a silence, and a reverence.”
It’s even more painful now, with the power of hindsight, after knowing that Carrie Fisher would only be with us for a few more months. Johnson also recalled the moment he heard the news, and how that impacted him on a personal level:
“We were in post-production when we got the news, and, um… She had really become a friend, a really important person in my life. She meant a lot to a lot of people. I’m not gonna be able to have good words, I apologize. Carrie meant so much to me.”
According to Rian Johnson, the plan for the sequel trilogy, and what he intended to convey with the ending of The Last Jedi, was to have each movie be about one of the original heroes:
“It always felt natural that it was father, mentor, mother. Those were the three films.”
Fate got in the way, but so did the fan reaction to The Last Jedi. Even though the film grossed $1.3 billion worldwide, and scored a 91% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, there is a loud portion of the fanbase that actively dislikes the movie, still to this day. An even louder minority of that group redirected their anger towards the writer/director, and some of the actors (famously bullying Kelly Marie Tran out of social media). Despite what may seem on the outside, it took Rian Johnson some time to process the fan reaction:
“It’s been a process. At the beginning, it was not easy. It was incredibly painful. It felt horrible. Before the movie came out, if one person said something slightly snarky to me on Twitter, I felt a deep ‘Oh my God, there’s someone out there that doesn’t like me… I have to fix this.’ [Laughs] And I’m cured of that!”
That was an experience on its own, which Rian Johnson is, in part, glad he went through:
“In the context of social media, and maybe in the context just of being a human being in the world, it’s a very healthy thing to have been through the fire on. You could also make the argument that those nerve-endings that have been seared off is a bad thing. I don’t know.”
He insists, though, that he encourages criticism and constructive arguments, but he won’t tolerate trolling and toxicity:
“The element that I talk about when I talk about a small fraction that gets amplified is not the section of Star Wars fans that didn’t like the movie; it’s the section of them that are abusive online, and that are actively hostile and toxic. And it’s very important to make that distinction, because I don’t want anyone thinking that I’m marginalizing anyone who doesn’t like the movie, and saying it’s just a small percentage. Having grown up a Star Wars fan, part of the pleasure of it is everybody liking different stuff and talking about it and arguing and fighting about it.”
Looking back now, Johnson says he’s prouder than ever of what they accomplished:
“I’m even more proud of it five years on. When I was up at bat, I really swung at the ball.
I love it as a Star Wars movie. My intention from the start was to put everything I love about Star Wars into it. And, in a very meaningful way, try and dig into what Star Wars means to me, what Star Wars meant when I was a kid, what Star Wars meant now, through the whole journey I had, that I think a lot of us our age had.”
Shortly before The Last Jedi came out, Lucasfilm publicly stated their trust in the movie when they officially announced that Rian Johnson would be overseeing a brand-new Star Wars film trilogy, and he would at least write and direct the first movie. Five years later, there’s been next to no movement around that project, though the filmmaker is still saying conversations are happening. Earlier this year, Kennedy also hinted that the project may not be dead, but it’s been a matter of scheduling.
We shall see if this is true or not, but it is unlikely we’ll hear more specifics in the next few months or even the next couple of years.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
