'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Plot News: Director Rian Johnson Says Movie Will Have A 'Funny' Tone
In a recent press conference for the upcoming premiere of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," director Rian Johnson hinted that moviegoers will likely find some parts of the film funny.
Next week, the world will finally get to see "The Last Jedi" and learn what happens after Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) first meeting.
The director told the press that "The Last Jedi" was naturally expected to be "a little darker," considering that it was the second movie in the trilogy. However, he also admitted that in making the film, he had opted to find inspiration from the earlier "Star Wars" movies which featured a "fun" aspect in its tone of storytelling.
Johnson explained: "The thing is, though, for me, I loved the tone of the original films, and also that J.J. [Abrams] captured in The Force Awakens, of fun. And that, to me, is a Star Wars movie."
He shared that they had worked to let it "feel like a Star Wars movie" which, for Johnson, meant combining "intensity" and "opera." He added: "But it also means that it makes you come out of the theater wanting to run in the backyard and grab your spaceship toys and make them fly around."
"So we're going to go to some intense places in the movie, but I hope also it's fun, and it's funny," Johnson said.
In other related news, Johnson revealed to Collider that the first cut of "The Last Jedi" had run for well over three hours. He had needed to delete a few more scenes to bring down the movie's runtime to about two and a half hours.
The movie director admitted he had removed whole sequences, and not just bits of scenes, to improve the movie cut. However, fans will still get to see them a couple of months later once the Blu-ray copy of "The Last Jedi" is available.
"There's a lot of really substantial, really good scenes. There's a couple whole sequences actually that we lifted out," Johnson said.
"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" premieres on Friday, Dec. 15.
