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If you missed Collider's recent IMAX screening of Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi, followed by an extensive Q&A with Johnson himself, not to worry because we'll be rolling out highlights for you to enjoy. Today's video segment addresses Johnson's writing process for the script, in which he talks about characters that gave him a particularly hard time. We also found out that a very different arc for one of those characters existed in a very early draft, but that was changed for the better of the movie overall.
Here's what Johnson had to say about just which character was the hardest to write for:
Hardest to write for, honestly, just in terms of figuring out what their story was going to be was Poe ... Luke was obviously the hardest overall, but besides Luke, Poe was the trickiest ... Poe is such a clear-cut, simple character in [Episode VII] because he's Oscar Isaac and he's the most charismatic man in the universe and he's just rad. Honestly, I actually wrote, in the very first draft I wrote of it, Poe went with Finn on the mission to Canto Bight, and the two of them were going to be together on the mission. And it didn't work at all because those two get along so well and it'd be really boring.
No one wants a boring movie, so how did Johnson fix that?
So when I split them apart, I thought "Oh, okay, so Poe can have his own deal ... What is Poe's deal?" And then I came up with the thing of, "Okay, he's a hero, but he has to become a leader. Leia needs him to mature beyond brash heroics into someone who can take on the mantle of leading this Resistance."
There you have it! And for more from our conversation with Johnson, be sure to check out these videos:
- Rian Johnson Explains Why There’s No Funeral for Han Solo in ‘The Last Jedi’
- ‘The Last Jedi’: Rian Johnson Details the Deleted Scenes, Explains Why They Were Cut
- ‘The Last Jedi': Why Rian Johnson Chose That Answer for Rey’s Parents
