Originally published December 17, 2019. Updated December 18, 2019.
J.J. Abrams, the director of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, has revealed the biggest challenge of following The Last Jedi.
It is officially only days until Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrives in cinemas. Soon, fans around the world will be able to see what director J.J. Abrams has managed to achieve with the final film in the saga but how difficult was it to follow The Last Jedi?
Well, in an interview with Screen Rant, Abrams revealed the biggest challenge: “Well, we knew from the beginning, before I even called Chris Terrio to ask if he would do it with me – I was a huge fan of Argo, and I’d read a number of scripts that he’d written. I was just blown away. He wrote these amazing, really brilliantly written, muscular scenes, and I just was such a fan. But before I even called him, I was like, ‘This is going to be so hard. The challenge is gonna be crazy.’ And calling Chris was a bit of [knowing] I’m going to need someone who is not just a great writer, but a lover of Star Wars will be with me every step.
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“When we started working on this, it was looking at not just The Last Jedi, but all eight films that preceded this. And because I’d had a lot of conversations with Larry Kasdan on The Force Awakens about where the story might go, and much of what we had sort of generally talked about was still possible and still felt like the right direction, it was really about looking at everything that we inherited and saying, ‘What do we want to see?’ What makes us laugh and scream and cry, and what feels right?
“It was really just doing the best we could for ourselves to not trying to check boxes and say, ‘These are the things that we must do.’ But what are the things that we feel the story needs to do? And knowing going into it that we’re certainly never going to please everyone. But if we’re not being true to ourselves, it’s never going to work.”
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It’s certainly going to be fascinating to see how Episode IX plays out. Fingers crossed that it delivers a fitting end to the Skywalker saga.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker sees J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) directing a cast that includes Star Wars veterans Daisy Ridley (Rey), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), John Boyega (Finn), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata), Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico), Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Billie Lourd (Lieutenant Connix), Greg Grunberg (Snap Wexley), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian), Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine) and Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa) as well as new additions Naomi Ackie (Lady Macbeth), Richard E. Grant (Logan), Dominic Monaghan (Lost), and Keri Russell (The Americans).
