Rian Johnson spoke to the staff of Fast Company and told them how Star Wars is highly influenced by politics.
Fast Company recently spoke with filmmaker Rian Johnson, whose Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi just opened to astronomical box office numbers. Although our full interview will be online soon, here is a stand-alone quote about what it’s like to make a move about a rebel resistance during Trump’s ascendance, while the country appears strongly divided.
“It’s just like when George [Lucas] made the original, or when you make any movie,” Johnson says. “All the things that are in the air and in your head get filtered in. It’s impossible not to put what’s on your mind into the movie. But I maintain that I think the reason these movies are constantly applicable to the real world is that they are never just cheap 1:1 analogies. Because they are about the stuff that’s underneath the stuff–they’re more universal than that. Going back to the original films, they’re still applied to current political situations because they have that kind of archetypal power. We’re living in the real world and we’re the ones telling the stories, so it’s all gonna filter in there, but I think it’s never conceived as a political allegory, per se, and hopefully that’s why it’s especially potent.”