The “Star Wars” sequel trilogy may have, at times, felt scattered and rudderless — a ship sailing at sea without a plan.
Did JJ Abrams have a plan for ‘Star Wars’ sequel trilogy?
JJ Abrams — the director of the sequel trilogy’s beginning film, “The Force Awakens,” and its final one, “The Rise of Skywalker” — admitted the experience would have been better with some sort of a plan, according to Collider.
Abrams admitted to Collider that the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy probably would have worked out better if the trilogy had a plan from the beginning, much in the same way that television series rely on long-running plans. Here’s what he told Collider:
- “I feel like what I’ve learned as a lesson a few times now, and it’s something that especially in this pandemic year working with writers (has become clear), the lesson is that you have to plan things as best you can, and you always need to be able to respond to the unexpected. And the unexpected can come in all sorts of forms, and I do think that there’s nothing more important than knowing where you’re going.”
Abrams also told Collider that there are shifts and changes to stories you can’t account for, which make it hard to stick to the plan all of the time.
- “I’ve been involved in a number of projects that have been — in most cases, series — that have ideas that begin the thing where you feel like you know where it’s gonna go, and sometimes it’s an actor who comes in, other times it’s a relationship that as-written doesn’t quite work, and things that you think are gonna just be so well-received just crash and burn and other things that you think like, ‘Oh that’s a small moment’ or ‘That’s a one-episode character’ suddenly become a hugely important part of the story.”
Abrams — who set up the sequel trilogy with “The Force Awakens” — had little to do with the sequel trilogy’s second film, “The Last Jedi.” Much of the criticism from that film starts with how director Rian Johnson took Abrams’ ideas from “The Force Awakens” and zigged where Abrams had zagged.
Did JJ Abrams like ‘The Last Jedi’ film?
Abrams admitted to Empire magazine in 2019 that he would have done that film differently. He said he has experience letting other people run with his original ideas so he wasn’t too upset about how the movie turned out.
- “I never found myself trying to repair anything. If I had done VIII, I would have done things differently, just as Rian would have done things differently if he had done VII,” he said, according to ScreenRant.
- He added, “If you’re willing to walk away from the thing that you created and you believe it’s in trustworthy hands, you have to accept that some of the decisions being made are not gonna be the same that you would make. And if you come back into it, you have to honor what’s been done.”
However, Johnson previously said Abrams liked “The Last Jedi” when it first came out, according to CinemaBlend.
- “He was into it. And I remember that I pitched him the story at the very beginning, and he had notes, but ... he was into it because I think he was into the storytelling. He’s a great storyteller himself and he saw the potential of each one of these beats. I think he saw it for what we were going for, which is not ... we weren’t going for, ‘Let’s subvert a ‘Star Wars’ movie.’ We were going for ‘Let’s make a great ‘Star Wars’ movie that has things in it that will push the limits of what we can do.’”