Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a critical and financial success but proved to be incredibly divisive among the general audience, with Rian Johnson receiving continuous harassment online for the direction that he took the franchise in. The never ending hate that Johnson gets for his film has greatly offended some directors and writers in Hollywood, including
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story scribeGary Whitta.
Whitta has lately been working on a Marvel Comics adaptation of
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and speaking with
Jedi News, he discussed his approach to adapting the film into a comic and how he has given his own approach to events in the movie while not rewriting canon.
The general rule is that you can bend things but not break them. So I can add and interpret and riff and take a different approach but I can’t do anything that would fundamentally change the film’s intent or rewrite canon. And I can’t do anything that might conflict with the movies still to come. Lucasfilm are very good at guiding that process literally on a line-by-line level. They’ve been great to work with and generally I’d say I got to do everything I wanted to in the comic, it’s been a very good experience.
Whitta was asked if he felt any pressure with how he wrote the comic after all of the criticism that the film received but noted that nothing of what he did was affected by public feedback. In fact, when asked if he was surprised by the response
The Last Jedi received from fans, Whitta made it quite clear that he was disgusted with how Rian Johnson has been treated online.
I think what you mean by that when you say “the fans” is actually “a very noisy minority of fans”. Look, I would not necessarily have made every choice that Rian made because I’m not the same person or writer or fan that he is, but I respect and admire and appreciate and support every choice he did make. The film he wrote is far braver and more mature and more challenging than I could ever have written. I suspect that I would have written a more fan service-driven film that would have appeased some of that noisy minority but ultimately would have been a lesser and less important film because of it. Frankly I’m disgusted by the treatment that Rian has received, he’s not just one of the most talented film-makers working today but one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet in any walk of life, and both he and the film he made deserve far better.
Even Whitta admits that he would not have made the choices that Johnson did with
The Last Jedi, but at the end of the day he believes that the bold and mature decisions that Johnson did make resulted in a much better movie than if he had directed a fan-service film.
Be sure to share your thoughts below about what Whitta has said regarding criticism of Rian Johnson and
Star Wars: The Last Jedi.