‘The Last Jedi’ director Rian Johnson disliked ‘Star Wars’ prequels

Rian Johnson is revealing new information about his relationship with the Star Wars movies.

The Knives Out filmmaker reflected on the backlash to his own installment in the sci-fi franchise, 2017’s The Last Jediin an interview with Rolling Stone published Saturday.

“In the moment, it’s a complicated chain of reactions to it,” Johnson said. “It never feels good to have anybody coming after you on the internet, and especially coming after you saying things that I think I very much do not agree with about a thing I made and put a lot of heart and soul into.”

However, Johnson noted that as a seasoned Star Wars aficionado, he completely understood that disdain for certain entries of the franchise is common in the fandom. “At the same time, having grown up a Star Wars fan ultimately let me contextualize it and feel at peace with it in many different ways,” he explained. “Just remembering, going back on one level to arguing on the playground about Star Wars as a kid.”

The Looper director also remembered being pretty harsh toward George Lucas‘ trilogy of prequel films upon their initial release between 1999 and 2005. “I was in college when the prequels came out,” he said. “My friends and I were Prequel Hate Central. Everyone was ruthless at the time.”

Johnson went on to say he thinks the consensus around the prequel films, which has become far more favorable since the trilogy’s debut, illustrates the psychology of Star Wars fandom.

“Now the prequels are embraced,” he said. “I’m not saying that as a facile, ‘Oh, things will flip around in 20 years, you’ll see!’ It’s more that this push and pull, and this hatred to stuff that seems new, this is all part of being a Star Wars fan. Culture-war garbage aside, I think that essential part of it is a healthy part.”

Johnson previously praised the prequel trilogy in a 2020 social media post, celebrating the films’ political subtext and formal accomplishments. “Lucas made a gorgeous seven-hour-long movie for children about how entitlement and fear of loss turns good people into fascists, and did it while spearheading nearly every technical sea change in modern filmmaking of the past 30 years,” he wrote on X.

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Elsewhere in the interview, Johnson shared his thoughts on 2019’s The Rise of Skywalkerin which director J.J. Abrams concluded the Skywalker Saga in a manner that many fans viewed as a retraction of Johnson’s ideas in The Last Jedi.

“When I saw the movie, I had a great time watching it,” he said. “In my perspective, J.J. did the same thing with the third that I did with the second, which is not digging it up and undoing — just telling the story the way that was most compelling going forward. That means not just validating what came before, but recontextualizing it and evolving and changing as the story moves forward.”

He continued, “I didn’t feel resentful in some way. But you’re talking about a movie made by my friends, with my friends in it. I sit down to watch a movie, and it’s a Star Wars movie. It’s all stuff I love. I’m not the one to come to for a hard-hitting critique. You can go to YouTube for that.”