“The Last Jedi” director Rian Johnson said in a recent interview that there wasn’t some huge plan for “The Rise of Skywalker.”
What’s going on?
Writer Sariah Wilson said she spoke with Johnson in an interview about “The Rise of Skywalker” and its ending. She asked if “Star Wars” always planned on killing Ben Solo/Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).
- But Johnson said there was no plan at all ... for anything. Or, if there was, he wasn’t privy to it.
- Johnson said the transition from “The Last Jedi” to “The Rise of Skywalker” was a “full hand-off,” according to Wilson. This was the same for the transition from “The Force Awakens” to “The Last Jedi.”
- However, Johnson said he left a few possibilities at the end of “Last Jedi” for “The Rise of Skywalker” to follow up on.
And laughingly asked me what that was for. I told him I had a lot of feelings about that ending and then showed him my Ben Solo Deserved Better T-shirt, which made him laugh more.
— Sariah Wilson (@sariahwilson) March 3, 2021
He explained that it was very much a full hand-off between 7 and 8, just as it was from 8 to 9
"But to have lots of dramatic potential" for 9. He answered my question again by saying he didn't know whether Kylo would live or die, then quickly corrected himself to say he didn't know whether *Ben* would live or die, and how the series would resolve.
— Sariah Wilson (@sariahwilson) March 3, 2021
However ...
In April 2020, reports surfaced that one of the film’s twists was created before the sequel trilogy started production, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
The book “The Art of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” had details of creative meetings from 2014 where writers talked about what needed to happen in the sequel trilogy.
Writer Pablo Hidalgo said in the book that, at the time, he imagined Rey becoming a Skywalker even if it was by name only, according to ScreenRant.
- Hidalgo said: “I like the idea that she’s going to be our Skywalker, but she’s not a Skywalker. Then, for our purposes, ‘the Skywalker’ is really a metaphor. It doesn’t have to be something that’s directly connected to blood.”
Still, “The Rise of Skywalker” writer Chris Terrio said in the same book that he never had to rewrite a movie as many times as he did “The Rise of Skywalker” — showing the film had a lot of different plans.
I’ve never rewritten a film as much as this one. It’s like a tide. There’s a new script every morning. But we just keep going at it and going at it, loosely thinking that it’s not good enough. It’s never good enough.
Luckily, the production team is so good that they can shift and adjust. We’re course-correcting as we go — we’re trying things, and some things don’t work and some things aren’t ambitious enough. Some things are overly ambitious. Some things are too dense. Some things are too simple. Some things are too nostalgic. Some things are too out-of-left-field. We’re finding our balance.