Now thatThe Last Jediis in theaters, the conversation is just beginning, but if you still haven’t seen it yet, you must be warned that SPOILERS are coming. Since the movie put up the biggest opening weekend of the year ($220 million), we’re guessing that most of you have seen it already, but for those who have not, you should stop reading now, since director Rian Johnson divulged some new details about why the iconicObi-Wan Kenobicharacter is not seen in the movie. This is your last chance to Avoid SPOILERS so read on at your own risk.
Despite the massive opening weekend,The Last Jedihas proven to be much more divisive than many anticipated, with director Rian Johnson recently explaining thecontroversial Leia scenewhere she uses The Force for the first time, along with the ending, the evolution of Force Ghosts and much more over the past few days. Today the filmmaker addressed the absence of aStar Warslegend, Obi-Wan Kenobi, played in the original trilogy by the late Alec Guinness and in the prequel trilogy by Ewan McGregor. The director revealed that, while he would have loved to find a way to put Ewan McGregor into the story as Obi-Wan, it just wouldn’t have worked from a storytelling perspective. Here’s what he had to say below.
“Believe me, man. I would have loved to have had Ewan McGregor in the movie but it was just a matter of storytelling. The original relationship with Obi-Wan, obviously if Alec Guinness were still with us that would have made sense. But we never saw Luke ever interact with the Ewan version of Obi-Wan, so there’s less of the emotional connection and it might have been a little odd.”
The director added that, “You have to write organically,” stating that trying to find ways to “shoehorn” characters in, “would lead to some really contrived places.” Instead of Obi-Wan coming back, Rian Johnson brought back another iconic character, Yoda, with the help of Frank Oz providing the voice andStar WarsCreature Shop supervisor Neal Scanlan. Here’s what the director had to say about how Yoda was the right character to bring back and helpLuke Skywalker(Mark Hamill).
“Yodawas the one. I think you have to have your wish list in the back of your head. But what you end up getting to pull from has to entirely be dependent on the needs of your main characters. So, it made sense and we could recreate that character [practically], so it made sense that Yoda be the one that comes back and kicks [Luke’s] butt a little.”
We reported earlier today thatThe Last Jedi has already passed $500 million worldwideat the box office, following a massive $220 million domestic opening weekend and $450 million worldwide. It will be just a matter of time beforeThe Last Jeditakes downBeauty and the Beastfor the top domestic ($504 million) and global ($1.2 billion) movie of 2017. You can head on over toThe Playlistfor more of their interview with Rian Johnson forStar Wars: The Last Jedi.
