Rian Johnson Defends The Goofy Humor Of ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’

Out of all the Star Wars films (12 in total, if you include the 2008 animated Clone Wars), The Last Jedi seems to have made the biggest, and most annoying, impact on the fandom.

Merely typing the film’s title is like casting a spell, that inevitably summons a swarm of perpetually furious fanboys who have spent the past 5 years of their life fuming about the perceived missteps of a family friendly blockbuster.

The film really unsettled a vocal segment of the fandom, who seemed to view the movie as a personal insult, and helped spark the “anti-woke” genre of YouTube, which stokes the grievances of fans.

Watching one’s favorite story slowly bled out by a money-hungry corporation, the magic diluted by a soulless assembly line of unnecessary reboots, spin-offs and sequels can be genuinely crushing, but at this point, it’s pretty much expected; so many nostalgic childhood memories have been flattened into “content,” the success stories of the past endlessly resurrected into sad, shuffling corpses.

Jurassic Park is still crawling along, same with Ghostbusters; even Indiana Jones has come out of retirement, again, to punch Nazis with an arthritis-inflamed fist.

For Star Wars, the retreat into the past began with The Force Awakens, which introduced strong, exciting new characters into a landscape of dreary familiarity; the film casually reset the status quo, completely erasing the victory of the rebels so they could be underdogs once more, and even resurrected the Death Star, for the second time! The film played like licensed fan fiction, and at the time, the fans seemed to love it (in the years since, the film has undergone a more critical reevaluation).

But it was The Last Jedi that tore a loud, obnoxious rift in the fandom, with questions teased in The Force Awakens gifted underwhelming answers, as the franchise took a tonal shift, away from the “chosen one” fairytale of the original trilogy.

But The Last Jedi wasn’t as radical as the haters claimed; it was still a fun space opera about underdogs triumphing against the hubris of the Empire. The movie just deemphasized the importance of Skywalker DNA, and pointed out that hot-headed, short-sighted acts of heroism often fail.

The backlash proved so severe that it sparked harassment campaigns against the actors in the film, such as Kelly Marie Tran, who was inundated with abusive messages, to the point where she had to quit social media. On Twitter, Johnson has pushed back against the trolls, describing them as “manbabies,” and calling them out for their hateful harassment campaigns.

For what its worth, I think that The Last Jedi boasts some of the best scenes in Disney’s sequel trilogy, but isn’t nearly as subversive as either its fans or haters claim; considering all the painful drama that it ignited, the film simply isn’t that interesting.

There’s a long list of other complaints that I don’t have the space to get into here, but one in particular was that director Rian Johnson had incorporated too much goofy humor into The Last Jedi. In a recent interview with GQ, Johnson defended his film, arguing that Star Wars has always featured that kind of humor:

“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… tied up to a pole and a torch goes by him and he [tries to blow it out repeatedly],” Johnson stated.

“The slightly self-aware element of gleeful humor is something that is part and parcel to Star Wars. We get very serious as well. That kind of brazen balance of the two things is also something that is very Star Wars.”

Johnson also cited another scene in A New Hope, when Chewbacca encounters a droid on the Death Star and roars at it; the droid screeches like an animal and wheels away.

On this point, Johnson is correct; George Lucas has previously spoken out to remind fans that Star Wars was always intended to be enjoyed by “12-year-olds.” It’s a family friendly franchise that goes darker than, say, Marvel Studios, but still targets the same demographic.

At this point, Star Wars is big enough to branch out, to tell different stories featuring different tones. And Disney has started to experiment, first with the spectacular Visions, animated shorts that show the true range of the Galaxy Far, Far Away, but also with Andor, an incredible series which leans into the “adult” side, and treats the rebellion as a serious situation.

The Star Wars fandom is so broad that there are always going to be groups that aren’t happy with the latest installment, but we’ve seen what happens when the series tries too hard to soothe angry fans; the near-incoherent Rise of Skywalker proves that fan service does not inspire good storytelling.

Johnson, rather bravely, still intends to create a new Star Wars trilogy, having confirmed that it is still in development, stating:

“It’s just at this point a matter of schedule and when it can happen. It would break my heart if I were finished, if I couldn’t get back in that sandbox at some point.”