Here's What Rian Johnson's Original Pitch Was For STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

Kathleen Kennedy was interested in Rian Johnson becoming the director for Episode 8 of Star Wars from the start, but to get the job, the director had to give a successful pitch. Johnson recently revealed the pitch that won him the job on The / Filmcast (via Slashfilm) which you can read below:

...Basically my pitch was the first movie is like the introduction, the second movie is training. And by ‘training,’ I mean we take each of these characters and we really test their mettle. So I said that would be my approach to it, it’s a very character-based approach where we just start with each one of these characters we care about and figure out what the hardest next step is for each of them. So having that trailhead to go from, it was also nice because it gives you a direction as opposed to just having a big cloud of childhood fantasies, of ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to see the Falcon do this or that?’ that you could get lost in, it wasn’t like that…once I actually started doing the work, I found that it felt really comfortable. And then all the childhood fantasy stuff is just fuel for the fire.

I guess I can see how Star Wars: The Last Jedi explored the hardest part of moving forward, especially with the tagline for the film being "let the past die." At the same time, that sounds like a pretty broad pitch that there's no way Kennedy left that first meeting having a full picture of what Johnson had in mind for this film. Do you think Johnson's pitch matched the final product of what he created, or do you think he fell short?

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