Rian Johnson Compares STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI to RETURN OF THE JEDI

Anyone could see that The Force Awakens was heavily influenced by A New Hope. From a desert planet, to the opening shot with the ominous villain, to a cantina like place for them to meet up. Heck, both movies even had a giant spherical world destroyer taken out by a small fleet of ships. It isn't too hard of a leap to say the two are similar. This has many fans thinking that The Last Jedi will be based on The Empire Strikes Back, however, director Rian Johnson recently has teased that there might be a different movie they are taking pointers from.

While at the D23 Expo, Johnson made mention of the fact that a lot of the film was actually influenced by Return of the Jedi. This has many people worried, because to some, this is the weakest of the original trilogy. But maybe it's not going to be a bad thing.

"The automatic temptation is to say 'Well it's a middle chapter, so it's got kind of that Empire thing.' But at the same time, I really wanted to maintain the same sense of fun that J.J. had in The Force Awakens, that to some extent in Return of The Jedi, which I was like 10 years old, that was prime for me when that came out, and the sense of playfulness, I think.

"So when I say Empire, I guess I don't want to give the impression that it's kind of a dark, gloom and doom. It was also really important to me that this was a fun adventure. I don't know, it's a mixed bag of a lot of different stuff. And hopefully some unique stuff too."

So it sounds like Rian Johnson isn't completely getting rid of the tone of the middle chapter movie by making it too kid friendly like Return of the Jedi. Instead it's capturing the fun and excitement that made it so good. Think back. The opening stuff with Jabba and Luke and everything else was AWESOME. And then we had a great forrest battle and space battle. It was fun. That's ultimately what makes Star Wars great in my mind, the fun. The people who made the originals were doing what they wanted to. This just makes me more excited than ever for the next chapter in this trilogy.