Well here’s something we didn’t necessarily expect: Ahead of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s release next week, J.J. Abrams seems to be gently critiquing the installment that preceded it, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. John Boyega, meanwhile, is also becoming more vocal than ever about his own reservations with the film. The fans who have been complaining about The Last Jedi since it debuted in 2017 will no doubt consider these comments proof that they were right all along—but Abrams, at least, doesn’t seem to be questioning the quality of Johnson’s film, so much as understanding precisely why some fans didn’t jibe with it.

The Last Jedi, which in 2017 followed Abrams’s first Star Wars contribution, The Force Awakens, spurred backlash almost immediately due to its innovation and, some thought, irreverent attitude toward the franchise’s lore and conventions. (Some of the hate, we should also note, was downright racism.) In a recent interview with the New York Times, Abrams credited The Last Jedi for being “full of surprises and subversion and all sorts of bold choices.”

“On the other hand,” he told the Times, “it’s a bit of a meta approach to the story. I don’t think that people go to Star Wars to be told, ‘This doesn’t matter.’” Still, Abrams remained diplomatic, noting that in his mind, The Rise of Skywalker needed a story like The Last Jedi’s to precede it; as he put it, *The Rise of Skywalker “needed a pendulum swing in one direction in order to swing in the other.”

When it comes to Star Wars, there will always be some contingent that’s disappointed. The Force Awakens, after all, faced ire for being too similar to the original trilogy before The Last Jedi got ripped apart for straying too far from tradition.

Either way, speaking with the Times, the cast seemed excited to have Abrams back for the big finish—and though he’s not mentioned by name, the fact that Colin Trevorrow had been hired to direct the film, then fired, might have made Abrams’s return even more welcome. Daisy Ridley told the Times that she cried when she heard the news that Abrams was set to direct because she felt it brought a level of comfort and security to the production. Boyega, meanwhile, said he was glad Abrams would get to finish the story he’d began with The Force Awakens: “Even as a normal person in the audience, I wanted to see where that story was going.”

Speaking of John Boyega, though, the actor seems to be getting even more vocal about his qualms with The Last Jedi as well. At least, he sounded pretty candid in a recent interview with Hypebeast. As the outlet notes in its profile, Boyega has been pretty outspoken on Twitter about his quibbles with the film—and this interview was no different.

“The Force Awakens, I think, was the beginning of something quite solid,” Boyega said. “The Last Jedi, if I’m being honest, I’d say that was feeling a bit iffy for me. I didn’t necessarily agree with a lot of the choices in that, and that’s something that [I] spoke to Mark [Hamill] a lot about and we had conversations about it.” Hamill did at one point publicly voice some of his own qualms with Johnson’s ideas for Star Wars, but has since said that he regrets having done so. He has instead embraced the art of trolling those who can’t stop complaining about the film.

Directing an installment of one of the biggest, most fiercely loved franchises, after all, is to some degree always going to be a losing battle. But at least everyone involved seems to know how to take it in stride.

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