The Last Jedi’s “Slightly Goofy Humor” – Deadline

When Rian Johnson’s Star WarsFilmThe Last Jedi It was released in 2017 and was a critical success. It received four Academy Award nominations, grossing over $1.3B worldwide, and earned four Academy Award nominations. However, diehard fans of the franchise took offense to the title and loudly voiced their disapproval at everything about it, from its plot to its tone.

After absorbing the public discourse surroundingThe Last Jedi a fair number of times in the five years since, Johnson has once again spoken about his intentions with the film and the thinking that informed it — this time, in a video interview with GQ spotlighting his overall filmography, which you can view above.

Johnson says Johnson noted that Johnson was referring to a core issue many people had with The Last Jedi It was the belief that humor had no place in the Star Warscanon, while simultaneously expressing his concern that this view is wrong. “For me, everything in the movie is Star WarsI can trace back to the bottom of the movie and all that is in it, in a deep way, exactly what Star Wars is for me,” he says. “And I know that everyone has a different take. “I know there are. Star WarsFans who think so Star Wars Was a serious matter, like the Batman movies or something.”

The filmmaker makes his argument to the contrary with reference to choices made by the franchise’s creator George Lucas in his original trilogy, which embraced the light as a counterbalance to the dark. He said that he saw the movie for the first time in 1995. Empire Strikes Back as a kid, “it had this deep, profound impact on me because it was terrifying, because I was just young enough to not experience it as watching a Star Wars movie, but to have it feel too real.” But for Johnson, who saw the subsequent entry Return of the Jedi at “exactly the right age in the theater,” the experience inherent to that film was quite different. 

“Anyone who thinks that slightly goofy humor does not have a place in the Star Wars universe, I don’t know if they’ve seen Return of the Jedi. There’s literally a scene where Han Solo is like a cartoon, trussed up to a pole and a torch goes by him to light the fire, to cook him,” says Johnson, referencing the goofy way the character puffs out his cheeks to try to put out the flame. “Even the first movie, they’re in the heart of the Death Star, and they’re trying to do this desperate gambit to get out with their lives and save the princess, where they’re pretending that Chewbacca is like their prisoner. Chewbacca roars at the little imperial droid, and the droid is scared like a dog. [makes a silly, scared sound and flees].”

This “slightly self-aware element of gleeful humor,” Johnson continues, “is something that is part and parcel to Star Wars. It’s not the whole thing, and we get very serious in [The Last Jedi]You can, too. And I think that kind of brazen balance of those two things is also something that’s part of Star Wars.”

Johnson wrote and directed the last film. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery — a sequel to his critically acclaimed, award-winning whodunit Knives Out — which hits Netflix on Friday, December 23rd, having opened in around 600 theaters one month prior. The filmmaker had previously committed to writing a third trilogy in 2017. Star Wars films, and to helm at least the first title in it, when we’ll see those films remains unclear.