Rolling Stone interview with Kathleen Kennedy. Updated with JJ Interview

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There was a certain amusing irreverence in Rian Johnson’s approach to The Last Jedi — he subverted some of what you set up. Snoke seemed like the major villain, for instance, and he killed him off.

When I read his first draft, it made me laugh, because I saw that was his take and his voice. I got to watch cuts of the movie as he was working on it, as an audience member. And I appreciated the choices he made as a filmmaker that would probably be very different from the choices that I would have made. Just as he would have made different choices if he had made Episode VII.

What surprised you most in what he did?

I felt the biggest surprise was how dark Luke was. That was the thing that I thought: “Oh, that was unexpected.” And that’s the thing The Last Jedi undeniably succeeds at, which is constant subversion of expectation. The number of things that happened in that movie that aren’t the thing you think is going to happen is pretty fun.

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Rian Johnson made some controversial choices in Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. Especially considering its dramatic purpose as the second movie in the trilogy, were you, to an extent, deliberately setting out to challenge fans and their expectations?

We definitely did. We’re talking all the time about how we move Star Wars forward and how we keep it relevant. Obviously, we don’t want to just keep making the same movie over and over again. So I agree with you. I mean, I love what Rian did. It’s an absolutely wonderful movie. I think he’s an extraordinary filmmaker. And I really appreciated the bold moves that he did make. I think people forget that, especially when you’re doing a trilogy structure, the first movie is setting things up, the second is usually the conflict, and the third is the resolution.

I love that we have these amazingly passionate fans who care so much. And I know sometimes they may think we don’t listen, but we do, and I thought it was fantastic that people got that engaged. It just showed me and everybody else how much they care. And that’s important for all of us that are doing this.

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Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack. There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels. We don’t have anything other than passionate storytellers who get together and talk about what the next iteration might be. We go through a really normal development process that everybody else does. You start by talking to filmmakers who you think exhibit the sensibilities that you’re looking for.

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