"Star Wars 8" director: Simply pleasing fans is a mistake

"Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker" will be released in North America tomorrow. Director Rian Johnson was interviewed by foreign media and talked about the two-level fan reputation of "Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi" again. He said: "If you simply want to please the fans when creating, it will be a mistake, and it will eventually lead to the opposite result."

When promoting his new film "Knives Out", Rian Johnson said that he hopes that watching Star Wars in the cinema will have the same feeling as watching "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" that year, which is a little surprising but can resonate emotionally, and at the same time reasonable. "I want to be scared, I want to see surprises, and I want to be caught off guard. I hope the story can be contextualized again. I hope to be challenged as a fan when I sit in the cinema."

When Star Wars 8 was released in 2018, the audience's evaluation was very mixed. The Rotten Tomatoes media index was 91%, but the audience index was as low as 43%. The MTC comprehensive score was 85, the highest among the new trilogy, but the IMDb score was only 7.1, which is currently the lowest among the new trilogy.

Rian Johnson made a lot of changes in this episode, and he took things a bit lightly, like Luke Skywalker throwing away his lightsaber, the heroine Rey turned out to be an ordinary child, and Snoke, who seemed to be the boss behind the scenes, was suddenly killed...

In response to this, J.J. Abrams returned to direct "Star Wars 9" and publicly stated that Rian Johnson's choice was bold and a very good storytelling technique, but it was not friendly enough to the fans: "I think the audience came to see "Star Wars" and didn't want to be told that "none of this matters."

For those who have watched "Star Wars 9" and "Star Wars 8", do you agree more with JJ Abrams or Rian Johnson?