Rian Johnson on Incorporating Star Wars’ Goofy Humor in The Last Jedi

During a recent video for GQ in which he went over the films he’s directed, Rian Johnson elaborated on how he went about implementing humor in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

“Everyone has a different take,” Johnson said. “I know there are Star Wars fans who somehow think Star Wars was a serious thing like the Batman movies or something.”

After providing examples of comedic moments from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, Johnson elaborated on how he views humor in relation to Star Wars.

“The slightly self-aware element of gleeful humor is something that is part and parcel to Star Wars,” Johnson stated. “It’s not the whole thing — and we get very serious in the movie as well — and I think that brazen balance of those two things is also something that is part of Star Wars. So for me, that scene with Hux and Poe, besides just being a hell of a lot of fun, was also something that felt essentially Star Wars to me.”

Johnson’s latest film is Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which he wrote, directed, and produced. The sequel follows Daniel Craig’s Detective Benoit Blanc as he travels to Greece to peel back the layers of a mystery involving a new cast of colorful suspects.