Rian Johnson is currently doing the rounds to promote his new movie
Knives Out, but the subject of
Star Wars inevitably keeps coming up. The filmmaker delivered one of the most divisive instalments in the franchise to date with
The Last Jedi, and it was recently put to him that the response to that movie isn't all that different to how
The Empire Strikes Back was originally received.
While Johnson was reluctant to talk too much about that, he acknowledged that he was among those who were disappointed by Empire when it was originally released.
"Luke gets symbolically castrated by his father," Johnson said, reflecting on what it was like to watch that movie as a child. "It sticks. That's why that's the one that, even though at that time I had that reaction to it, it stuck in me and it resonated with me."
"I think that anything with a passionate following always has a passionate following, and Star Wars is that, even more so," he continued, explaining why he has nothing against those who didn't like The Last Jedi. "You can't be angry at one side of it when it's the reason the positive is so passionate, you know? It's all part of the same thing, and it always was like this basic thing."
"That's why I love it," the director concluded.
Johnson remains hard at work on a brand new trilogy of
Star Wars movies, and while it's still very early days, it seems as if fans are going to have to get used to him being part of this Galaxy Far, Far Away.
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