Rian Johnson, director of the sequel trilogy Star Wars movie The Last Jedi, has said that he still loves Star Wars fans and how they engage with him, even despite the vocal backlash to his movie. The Last Jedi became divisive within the Star Wars fan community for many reasons.
Perhaps the main reason, though, was because the movie decided to take Luke Skywalker’s story in a truly unexpected direction and have him disconnect from the Force after failing to rebuild the Jedi order. At the end of the movie, Luke died after projecting his image across the galaxy to distract Star Wars villain Kylo Ren.
This resulted in a small but noticeable (and very vocal) reaction against the science fiction movie. The debate around the movie became genuinely toxic, and a significant amount of abuse was directed at Johnson directly.
Nevertheless, Rian Johnson has said that he still loves Star Wars and that he even still loves Star Wars fans and their “passion”. Speaking with Insider, the director said “I love the world. I love the people. I love Star Wars fans. I love the passion of how they engage in it, there’s nothing like telling a story in this world and then experiencing people truly connecting to it and letting you know that. It’s extraordinary. So I’m hoping I get to do it again,”
After the release of The Last Jedi, and during the backlash, it was announced that Rian Johnson had agreed to create and lead a new trilogy of Star Wars movies. However, ever since the announcement the details have only become more vague and Johnson has said that there’s still a lot of uncertainty around the project, and that he’s unsure if it will ever come to fruition.
With his clear love for Star Wars, despite all the reaction to his movie, we hope that Johnson does get the chance to create his own Star Wars trilogy separate to the Skywalker saga. His action movie worked best when it was doing new things within the Star Wars framework, and arguably was at its least successful when having to connect to The Force Awakens and set plot points up for The Rise of Skywalker. So, a Johnson trilogy would have a lot of potential.
For more on Star Wars, keep up to date with the Andor with our handy guide to the Andor season 2 release date, as well as our Andor season 1 recap.