Page 9 - Star Wars Insider - The Last Jedi 2018

JOURNEY TO THE LAST JEDI

“
I had the time of my life making this movie.

”

Rian Johnson
5 /
But while, inevitably, there was pressure and expectation,
and attendant nerves and fear, Johnson felt that as a result
of his “primal connection to the world, the overriding
emotion of the process was happiness. I had the time
of my life making this movie. In many ways it felt the
closest I’ve ever gotten to a professional equivalent of that
freewheeling play, being a kid and running around the
room with action fi gures.”
By far the biggest film that Johnson has made to

date—in both size and scope—his attitude going in
was to jump right in and tackle it headlong. “If I had
let myself zoom back and look at the enormity of the
task, and the responsibility of it, I would have just been
paralyzed and spent the last few years curled up in the
fetal position.” Examining where The Force Awakens
had left matters, Johnson wrote down the names of
each of the characters and began asking himself what
he knew about them. “What do I think they want?
Where can I see them going? And what would be the
hardest thing for each of them to come up against? And
once I got to a place where I had something for each
one of them that made sense, I started drawing it out
into a story. So it’s kind of like eating an elephant. You
just do it one bite at a time.”
Johnson knew that he didn’t have to concentrate
so much on the epic nature of the fi lm, understanding
that the bigger elements of the movie—the battles and

general spectacle—would flow from simply getting
to play within the Star Wars universe. Much more
important were the characters and the story. Not only
did these need to be the starting point for the whole
enterprise, but with the film being the middle part of a

trilogy, it was necessary to take some time to drill down
into what made the characters tick.

6 /

5 / A porg (the brainchild
of Rian Johnson) offers
some comic relief.

6 / Finn takes on Phasma
as FN-2187 confronts
his former captain.
7 / While much of The
Force Awakens was
about the search for
Luke Skywalker, The Last
Jedi dealt with why he
didn’t want to be found.
(See opposite page)

10 | STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

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