Anna Daniels
In the Star Wars fandom, arguments will rage for years about whether or not Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker undid several of the key decisions made in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But while fans dig into their respective battle stations and shout at those who oppose them, the directors of the two movies have largely been cordial to each other in public.
That cordiality continues in The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson‘s off-the-cuff review of The Rise of Skywalker, which he gave to a reporter on the Oscars red carpet a couple of nights ago. Spoiler alert: he seems to have enjoyed the movie.
This past Sunday night, MTV News’s Josh Horowitz caught up with Johnson on the red carpet of the Academy Awards, where Johnson was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for his work on his murder mystery Knives Out. The interviewer couldn’t resist asking for Johnson’s thoughts about The Rise of Skywalker, and it certainly seems as if Johnson liked what he saw:
.@joshuahorowitz caught up with @rianjohnson on the #Oscars red carpet to talk about the forthcoming #KnivesOut sequel and what Rian thought of ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ pic.twitter.com/B1tPNlIM0x
— MTV NEWS (@MTVNEWS) February 10, 2020
That’s exactly the type of nice, classy reply we expect from Johnson, who’s been a champ from day one when it comes to Star Wars, even in the face of extreme online vitriol. But here’s the thing: Rian Johnson is one of the nicest people in Hollywood, and he’s also incredibly savvy – he knows that everything he says about Star Wars is going to be dissected and picked apart by the fan community, so even if he hated the movie, there’s absolutely no way he would ever trash it in public. So it’s no surprise to hear that he has positive things to say about the experience of watching the follow-up, which he didn’t know a single thing about before he saw the movie. Long before he sat down to see it for the first time, he said:
“I want to sit down like a Star Wars fan and just get my popcorn and just be 10-years-old again and see this whole thing brought home in a beautiful way that surprises me…it’s Star Wars. It takes you there. It transports you. The instant that John Williams score comes up, the instant you’re back in that world and hear those lightsaber sounds, it’s just [snaps] – you’re back to being ten.”
It sounds like the movie worked on that level for him, at least – even though we may never know his full, unvarnished thoughts about how the Skywalker saga came to a close.
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