Rian Johnson, the writer and director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi , has opened up about the "creative process" behind making a movie, saying it is a "mistake" to solely cater to fans rather than challenge them.

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Per IndieWire , Johnson recently appeared as a guest on Radio.com 's Swings & Mrs Podcast, where he was asked for his thoughts on fandoms influencing filmmaking, to which the director shared his opinion that fans shouldn't necessarily get everything they want."I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result," Johnson said. "Even my experience as a fan, you know if I'm coming into something, even if it's something that I think I want, if I see exactly what I think I want on the screen, it's like 'oh, okay,' it might make me smile and make me feel neutral about the thing and I won't really think about it afterwards, but that's not really going to satisfy me."He went on to explain how he would prefer to be "challenged" whenever he sits down to watch a movie on the big screen, citing the first time that he watched The Empire Strikes Back as an experience that resonated with him long after the final fade to black.Johnson said, "I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized, I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater…What I'm aiming for every time I sit down in a theater is to have the experience [I had] with Empire Strikes Back, something that's emotionally resonant and feels like it connects up and makes sense and really gets to the heart of what this thing is and in a way that I never could have seen coming."J.J. Abrams, director of The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, previously revealed how he reacted to the twists in Johnson's Last Jedi , admitting Dark Luke Skywalker was the "biggest surprise" for him. However, he praised Episode VIII for defying expectations, saying, "the number of things that happened in that movie that aren't the thing you think is going to happen is pretty fun."Abrams also claimed that The Last Jedi didn't derail his vision for The Rise of Skywalker , the final chapter of the Skywalker saga, which blasts into theaters on December 20, 2019.The first reactions for Episode IX started to emerge online this week, alongside our own review of the saga-capper , as the iconic cast and crew gathered to celebrate the ninth film in the long-spanning series at the World Premiere in Los Angeles on December 16, 2019.

Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter