Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Rian Johnson Interview

The Life And Death Of Luke Skywalker

Obviously the other big death in the movie was Luke Skywalker, which still hurts...

I know man, me too. Me too.

What was going through your head when you realised 'I'm the guy who is killing off Luke Skywalker'?

Oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh sh*t. [Laughs] But at the same time, there's no way I could've done it if it didn't feel right, I guess. When I realised 'this is what's going to make sense here', I felt the same way everyone feels that he died. I was like 'no, oh no, really, no!' But it also, I don't know, this was such his movie, and the arc of it and heroic place he gets to by the end of this film, and Mark is so powerful in this movie, if there's ever a time to give him his moment of taking the whole thing in and having perspective on all of the previous films going back to the beginning, it's after he has taken on this mantle of 'the legend of Luke Skywalker' and owned it, and realised the next generation needs it as inspiration. That felt like a very powerful place for him to make his exit.

Yeah, and we get the full circle stuff with him looking out at the twin sunset again.

Precisely.

But just before that, we get the scene where he fights Kylo on Crait but isn't really there. What was the thinking behind not having him physically go there?

Well, there were a couple of things. First of all, I couldn't imagine a version of an actual confrontation where - basically, the first thing I was dealing with was Luke comes back, he then has to face Kylo, oh sh*t how do we resolve that? Because I don't want to have Kylo strike Luke down. I don't want to see him struck down by Kylo the same way Han was. Screw that, I don't want to see Luke killed. Luke can't kill Kylo, because we need Kylo in the next movie. Luke can't do, like, some lame thing where he injures Kylo and then there's some reason he can't do the death blow, and he leaves him there, because that's exactly what happened in The Force Awakens. And it was very effective in The Force Awakens, I just didn't want to repeat it in this one. Every single time I kept thinking how this confrontation would go down, there was no satisfying end to it. And when I came up with this, I realised Luke can save the Resistance, he can inspire the galaxy, and he can hand Kylo his ass, and he can do it all without spilling a drop of blood. And when I realised those three things I thought 'that's Luke Skywalker, that's the way it should go down'.

And just before that, we get one of my favourite moments of the film, the reunion between Luke and Leia. As not just the director but also a Star Wars fan, what was that like on set?

It's beautiful, yeah. In the documentary, they actually do this beautiful thing where they show the making of that scene, and you can tell watching it, it felt like church that day on set. Usually, we had a very fun, buoyant set, everyone was goofing around all the time. That day, and it's not like we made an announcement for everyone to be serious, but everyone just came to set and knew that it was different. It was very quiet and respectful, it really was like sitting in church. It felt really special being able to witness that. And you can feel it I think.

Yeah. And all of this ties into Luke's arc as a whole in this movie, which obviously some people have taken issue with. But, given where he was at the end of The Force Awakens and his inaction there - and I know you wrote this before that film came out - was there another option for what you could do with Luke in this movie?

Well, there are always options, but for me it was the combination of several things. It was, like you said, where we find him in The Force Awakens. He's taken himself out of the fight, he's exiled himself, his friends are fighting and dying and he is off on this island. Why? We had to take that question seriously, we couldn't just ignore that and have him be 20-year-old Luke except with a beard, ready for the fight. There's a reason he's taken himself out of it. Also, though, it had to be consistent with what we know about Luke as a character and his weaknesses from the initial trilogy. And he has many weaknesses in the Original Trilogy. I think sometimes people want to remember Luke as being like this superhero, and I don't know if they've seen the Original Trilogy, but he basically fails his way through every test that he does and eventually comes around to the heroic end at the end of Jedi. So it was going back and saying 'what are his weaknesses' and looking at how we project those forward into this version of Luke so that it's consistent. So yeah, you're always making choices, but at the same time - as anyone who writes will tell you - it feels more like excavating a dinosaur skeleton than it does sculpting something. It feels like you're discovering what it wants to be, and there's a very natural shape that it ends up taking that feels right.

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