More Behind The Scenes Stuff from Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone listed 14 things learned about Star Wars during their coverage of The Last Jedi, which were not covered in their cover story, which we looked at here.

Among several interesting bits of information, J.J. Abrams explained that he was done directing big budget sequels...

But when the opportunity presented itself to finish a story that we had begun with these new characters, to tell the last chapter of their story, it felt like there was a chance to do it in a way where we could go beyond, and do better than we did in Seven.

So he wants to do better, which is cool. The Force Awakens was a beast at the box office and was well received by critics and new fans, but some older fans were less than impressed. J.J. seems to know this, and is relishing the opportunity to tell a great story without being beholden to the weight of the earlier trilogies.

Rian Johnson has an interesting take on the reveal of Rey's parentage. Not content just to surprise audiences with a twist they never would have guessed, Johnson wants the reveal to resonate with the character, and therefore the viewer, in a way that mirrors the feeling of a historic cinematic reveal from earlier in the saga:

What does it mean to her, what does it mean to us," he says. "I really, really believe that it has to be rooted in something that has an emotional impact, and that's the only thing that matters. Surprise is fine, but surprise by itself is cheap. The emotional and deeply-rooted resonance of 'I am your father' [in The Empire Strikes Back] is why we remember it. Not because, 'Oh my god, I never would have guess that he was.' Now especially that that's set as a pattern, the audience's expectations are now that, 'Oh, you're going to pull something out of your hat for this or that.' And you can, and that'll be fine, but you better damn well make sure that it also means something and is satisfying beyond just the, 'Oh, it was this,' reveal.

Johnson is apparently a huge fan of The Force Awakens, and he "studied [the film] forensically"...

Johnson paid special attention to the flashback in The Force Awakens that gave clues to Rey's past – but he also watched the rest of the movie "a thousand times." Johnson also said, "I love The Force Awakens, and my job was to continue that story in every sense of the word,"

Johnson also enjoyed working with the Story Group, and was surprised at how much creative freedom he had to write his story, knowing as much about Star Wars as he already did...

It was a lot less them saying, 'No, you can't do that.' It was a lot more them giving me permission to do things that I was like, 'Can I do this?'

Although it has been reported that not a frame of film was altered to account for the death of Carrie Fisher, she didn't complete the standard re-recording of dialogue progress during post-production. So Johnson credits the sound team with making it all work, so that nothing was lost.

We had to do a lot of sound work and that was kind of tough, but we managed," says Johnson. "We have a great sound team and we managed to pull her dialogue out and find little snippets from here and there and make it work. You do what you've gotta do.

Like most fans, I usually couldn't get enough of the behind the scenes stuff for the OT and PT. But with three years separating each film in their respective trilogies, and George Lucas overseeing all of it with relatively little drama behind the scenes, it seemed like a stroll in the park compared to the fast-paced production under Disney's watch. It's such a busy time for Star Wars, with this film's production overlapping on one end with Rogue One and on the other with Solo, there's probably so much more going on behind the scenes than we realize. I'd love to see the Blu-Ray BTS documentaries for the Sequels and Standalones someday soon.

---

comments powered by Disqus