Greg Grunberg played Snap Wexley in the new Star Wars movie, and when The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the actor to discuss The Rise of Skywalker, he had something to say about the claims that director J.J. Abrams used the Skywalker Saga finale to pander to longtime fans.
"When the movie came out, I was so pissed off and angry about one specific criticism that I heard. It said 'Oh he's just pandering to the fans.'" he says, "It's like, ‘What are you talking about? A movie like this is all about satisfying the fans.’" Unfortunately, it didn't really manage that, and it was hard to escape the feeling that Abrams was trying hard to make everyone happy.
An argument could be made that he need to after the response to Rian Johnson's divisive movie The Last Jedi, and when Grunberg was asked about the rumoured friction between the two filmmakers, he was quick to dismiss there being any sort of issue between them.
"I never heard one disparaging thing from J.J. about Rian," Grunberg said. "It's one of those things where if you pay attention to the film and engage with it, all it does is keep that story going."
"I would absolutely tell you if there were moments here and there. And there weren't. There just absolutely weren't. If anybody was going to try and dig that out of J.J., it'd be me," he added.
Johnson really shook things up with The Last Jedi, undoing a lot of what Abrams did. Then, in Abrams' movie, he seemingly undid many of his predecessor's decisions, including bringing back Kylo Ren's helmet and revealing that Rey's parents weren't nobodies after all (unfortunately).
Do you guys believe there's no tension between Abrams and Johnson?